Part 20

For a moment the culprit's eyes wandered helplessly about the room and then returned to the rugged face of the minister, with so much of gentleness and so much of strength upon it. Looking at the man thus, Rollie had a sudden, envious wish for his power. This man had a strength of character that was enormous and Gibraltar-like.

"You can help me if you will!" he broke out wretchedly, straining and twisting his neck like a man battling with suffocation.

"Yes," said the minister quietly, his eyes searching to the fellow's very soul, "I can--if you will let me."

"Let you?" and a hysterical smile framed itself on the young man's face. "My God, I will do anything."

"It's something you must _be_, rather than do," explained the physician to sick souls, once more deeply sympathetic, and leaning forward, he continued significantly: "I want to help you, not for your mother's sake, nor your father's, but for your own whenever you are ready to receive help upon proper terms. You have come here seeking a way out. There is no way out, but there is a _way up_!"

The cowering man shook his head hopelessly. He had not courage enough even to survey a moral height.

For a moment the minister studied his visitor thoughtfully, wondering what could make him see his guilt as he ought to see it; then abruptly he drew close and began to talk in a low, confidential tone. Almost before the surprised Rollie could understand what was taking place, the Reverend John Hampstead, to whom he had come to confess, was confessing to him; this man, whom he had thought so strong, was telling the story of a young girl's love for him; of his weak infatuation for another woman, of the heart-aches that half-unconscious breach of trust had occasioned him, and worst of all, the pangs it had cost the innocent girl who loved him and believed in his integrity with all her impressionable heart.

There was a moisture in the minister's eye as he concluded his story, and there was a fresh mist in Rollie's as he listened.

But the clergyman passed on immediately from this to tell modestly how, when the death of Langham had imposed the lives of Dick and Tayna on him like a trust, he had been true to it, although at the cost of his great ambition; but that afterward this surrender had brought him all the happiness of his present life as pastor of All People's, while the hope of winning that first love back had been given to him again.

"And so," Hampstead concluded, "to be disloyal to a trust has come to seem to me the worst of all crimes; while to be true to one's obligations appears to me as the highest virtue. In fact, the whole active part of my creed could be summed up pretty well in this little idea of trust.

"Trust is almost the highest thing in life. It is the cement of civilization. Trust is the very foundation of banking. You believe in banking, don't you? In the principle? The idea that hundreds of people trust some banker with their surplus funds, and he puts those funds at the service of the community as a whole through loaning them to persons who redeposit them, to be reloaned and redeposited again, so that the bank, a bundle of individual trusts of rich and poor, becomes one of the fulcrums upon which civilization turns?"

Burbeck listened rather dazed. "I never thought of the principle," he faltered after a minute, "I thought of it as a job."

"Well, you see the point, don't you? It's rather a high calling to be a banker. Now in this case the dead man whose fund you have looted trusted the bank; the bank has trusted you, and you have stolen from the bank. Miss Dounay has trusted you, and you have stolen her diamonds. You see at what I am getting?"

Hampstead paused and glanced penetratingly into the face of Rollie, who had been a little swept out of himself, as much in wonder at the new insight into the life of the minister as at the convincing clarity of the lesson conveyed.

"Yes," he replied thoughtfully and with an air of conviction, "that I am not to think of myself as merely a thief, but as something worse,--as a traitor to many sacred trusts."

"Exactly," exclaimed the minister with satisfaction at the sign of moral perception growing. "To shield a thief from exposure is possibly criminal. To help a man repair the breaches of his trust, to put him in the way of never breaking another trust as long as he lives, that is the true work of the ministry. If it is for that you want help, Rollie, you have come to the right place."

"I did not come for that," admitted the young fellow, strangely able to view himself objectively as a sadly dispiriting spectacle. "I came, as you said, in cowardice, because I didn't know which way to turn, desiring only to find a way out. Somehow, I felt myself a victim. You make me see myself a crook. I came here feeling sorry for myself. You make me hate myself. You make me want to be worthy of trust. You give me hope. I have a feeling I never had before, that I am not much of a man, that I am not equal to a man's job. But tell me what I must do to repair the breaches in my trust, and let me see if I think I can do them."

Burbeck's manner had become calmer, and something of the grayness of despair had left his face, but now at the recurrence of all his perplexities, he presented again the picture of a man cowering beneath a mountain that threatened to fall upon him.

"First of all, you must go back to Miss Dounay with her diamonds," prescribed the minister seriously. "If you have not manhood enough to face her with your confession, I do not see the slightest hope for your character's rehabilitation."

"But the executors!" exclaimed Rollie, with the sense of danger still greater than his sense of guilt. "They will be checking me up at eleven. I've got to cover the shortage, or I'm lost. J.M. would be more terrible than Miss Dounay. It would not be vengeance with him. He'd send me to San Quentin, entirely without feeling, just as a matter of cold duty. He'd shake hands and tell me to look in when I got out. That's J.M."

"Yes, I think it is," said the minister, pausing for a moment of thought. His body was balanced and rocking gently in the swivel chair, his hands were held before him, the tips of the thumb and fingers of the right hand just touching the tips of the thumb and fingers of the left hand and making a rudely elliptical basket into which he was looking as if for inspiration.

Rollie, waiting,--hoping, without knowing what to hope,--had begun to study Hampstead's face with a respectful interest he had never felt before. He noticed the dark shadows beneath the gray eyes, and that lines were beginning to seam the brow, while just now the broad shoulders had a bent look. For the first time it occurred to him that Hampstead's work might be hard work, and he began to feel a kind of reverence for a man who would work so hard for other people, and to reflect that it was noble thus to expend one's energies,--noble to be true to trusts of any sort. It was admirable. It was worthy of emulation. A sudden envy of Hampstead's character seized him, and he began, in the midst of his own distress, to think how one proceeded to get such a character. By the simple process of being true to trusts, the minister had suggested. But this seemed rather hopeless for Rollie. His chance had gone--unless! His mind halted and fastened its hope desperately to this grave, silent, meditative face.

The minister was considering very delicate questions: trying to decide how much weight the slender moral backbone of this softling could carry, asking whether by leaning upon the side of mercy, by taking some very serious responsibility upon himself, he might not shelter him from the consequences of his crime while a new character was grown.

But such questions are not definitely answerable in advance, and it was neither Hampstead's usual magnanimity nor his leaning toward mercy, but his moral enthusiasm for the rehabilitation of lost character that impelled him to take a chance in his decision.

"When do you say they will be upon your books?" he asked abruptly.

"Before twelve, sure; by eleven, probably," was Rollie's quick, nervous answer.

"And how much is your defalcation?"

"Forty-two hundred," sighed Rollie.

"The expedient is almost doubtful," announced the minister solemnly, and with evident reluctance; "and I do not say that the time will not come--when you are stronger, perhaps--when you must tell Mr. Manton that you were once a defaulter; but that bridge we will not cross this morning, and in the meantime, I will let you have the money to cover your shortage."

"Brother Hampstead!" gulped Rollie, reaching out both hands, while his soul leaped in gratitude. It was also the first time he had ever called Hampstead "Brother" except in derision.

The minister waved away this demonstration with a gesture of self-deprecation, and a smile that was almost as sweet as a woman's lighted up his face, while he took from a drawer of his desk a small, flat key, familiar to Rollie because he had seen it before, and many others resembling it.

"Here," said Hampstead, "is the key to my safe deposit box in the Amalgamated National vault. In that box is eleven hundred dollars. It is not my money, but was provided by a friend for use in a contingency which has not arisen. I feel at perfect liberty to use it for this emergency. As you will remember, there is already on file with the vault-room custodian my signed authorization for you to visit the box, because you have served as my messenger before. You will be able, therefore, to gain unquestioned access to it the minute the vaults are open, which as you know is nine o'clock. Take the envelope marked 'Wadham currency.' In the meantime I will go to a friend or two, and within thirty minutes after the bank's doors open, I will bring you another envelope containing thirty-one hundred dollars."

Rollie listened as a condemned man upon a scaffold listens to the reading of his reprieve.

"How can I thank you?" he croaked finally, clutching at the minister's hand.

"You don't thank me," adjured Hampstead, towering and strong, while he gripped the pulseless palm of Burbeck. "Don't thank me! Do your part; that's all."

Rollie clung to the strong hand uncertainly for a few seconds until he himself felt stronger, when his face seemed to lighten somewhat.

"You have a wonderful way with you, Doctor Hampstead," he exclaimed. "You have put conscience into me this morning--and courage."

"Both are important," smiled the minister.

At this moment, Rollie, who was beginning to recover his presence of mind, did one of those innocent things which thereafter played so important a part in the tragical chain of complications which followed from this interview. The act itself was no more than to select from a small tray of rubber bands upon the study desk, the only red one which happened to be there, and to snap it with several twists about the neck of the vault-box key, remarking as he did so:

"For ready identification. There are sometimes several of these keys in my possession at once."

The minister nodded approvingly. "I suppose," he commented, "other people make use of you as a messenger to their boxes."

"Half a dozen of the women have that habit," the young man observed.

"Trusted!" exclaimed the minister impulsively, laying a cordial hand upon the young man's shoulder. "You have been greatly trusted. It is a rare privilege, isn't it?"

Rollie nodded thoughtfully.

"And these?" questioned Doctor Hampstead, motioning to where the diamond necklace curled, appearing to Rollie less like a serpent now and more like a strangler's knot.

"I'm afraid of them," said the young man with a shudder. "Couldn't--couldn't you take them back to her and tell the story?"

The clergyman shook his head solemnly.

"I cannot confess your sins for you," he averred. "If you are not man enough for that, we might as well stop before we begin."

Hampstead's tone was final.

"You are right," admitted Burbeck, in tones of conviction; "you are right."

But still he could not bring himself to touch the diamonds, and stood gazing as if charmed by the evil spell they wrought. Sensing this, the minister took up from his desk a long envelope which bore his name and address in the corner, opened it, lifted the sparkling string by one end, dropped it inside, moistened the flap, sealed it, and handed it to Burbeck.

"There," he exclaimed, "you don't even have to touch them again. Go straight to her hotel."

"Oh, but I cannot," exclaimed Rollie, apprehension trembling in his tones. "I shall not dare to leave the bank until the shortage is covered. The executors might come in ahead of time, and I must be there to stall them off, if necessary. But I might telephone to Miss Dounay."

"Telephones are leaky instruments," objected Hampstead, with a shake of his head.

"Or send her a note," suggested Burbeck.

"Notes miscarry," controverted the minister sagaciously, "and they do not always die when their mission is accomplished. Since you are taking my advice, I would say summon all your self-control, contain your secret in patience during the hours you must wait until your shortage is made good, and you can leave the bank to see Miss Dounay in person. You must do your part entirely alone, for my lips are sealed."

"Sealed?" questioned Rollie, not quite comprehending.

"Yes, the secret is your own. Think of your confession as made to God!"

"You mean that you would never tell on me, no matter what happened?"

"Just that. The liberty is not mine. I can only expect you to be true to your trust as I am true as a minister to mine."

This was an idea Rollie could not grasp readily. It was taking away a prop upon which he had meant to lean.

"But," he argued, "you make it possible for me to take your money and that of your friends and keep it, if you don't have some kind of a club over me."

"Exactly," replied the minister. "I want no club over you, Rollie. You must be a free agent, or else I have not really trusted you. Your right action would mean nothing if compulsory. You must be true to your trust from some inner spiritual motive."

But Rollie was still groping. "And if I should, for instance, steal the money you give me?"

"You would know it, and I, and one other," replied the minister, raising his eyes devoutly.

Rollie swept his hand across his face slowly, with a gesture of bewilderment. This minister was taking him to higher and higher ground. He began to feel as if he had been led up to some transfiguring mountain peak of moral eminence.

"It is the highest appeal which could be made to the honor of another," he breathed in tones approaching awe.

"Exactly," declared Hampstead again with that air of finality, "and if I should fail to be true to my part of the trust, what has passed between us this morning has been the mere compounding of a felony and not the act of a priest of God looking to the regeneration of a soul."

In a wordless interval, Rollie Burbeck pressed the minister's hand once more and departed, his face still wearing a veiled expression as if he had not quite caught the import of all that had been said.

But neither, for that matter, had the minister; although he was never surer of himself than now, when he ushered his guest out of the side door with a cheery, courage-giving smile, and hastened in to his greatly delayed breakfast.

With a thoughtful air and a feeling of intense satisfaction in his breast, he unfolded his napkin, broke his egg, and sipped his coffee, still with no suspicion that this was the day of all days for him, or that he had just sawed and hammered the cross which might make his title clear to saviourhood.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*HIS BRIGHT IDEA*

Young Burbeck's desk at the Amalgamated National was in an open space behind a marble counter. About him in the same open space were desks of two other assistant cashiers. Back of these were the private offices of the cashier, the president and the vice-president, as well as one or two reception rooms. Beyond the marble counter was a broad public aisle, on the farther side of which the tellers and bookkeepers worked, screened by the usual wire and glass. The safe deposit vaults were in the basement and reached by a stairway from the open lobby on the first floor.

Hurrying from the minister's house, Burbeck reached his desk at ten minutes before the hour of nine. This left him ten minutes of waiting before he could get the eleven hundred dollars of the Wadham currency; and waiting was the very hardest thing he could do under the circumstances. He was the first of the assistant cashiers to arrive, but the cashier, Parma, heavy-jowled, with dark wall eyes, was visible through the open door of his office, checking over some of the auditor's sheets with a gold pencil in his pudgy hand. His thick shoulders and broad, unresponsive back somehow threw a chill of apprehension into Rollie. What brought that old owl down here at this time of the morning, he wondered.

The colored porter, resplendent in his uniform of gray and brass, advanced with obsequious courtesy and proffered a copy of the morning paper. Rollie snatched at it with a sense of relief, but the relief was only momentary. There was the hateful headline again. It had been hours, days, weeks since he saw that headline first, while standing on the street and looking up for the rope that was to be swinging over the cornice of the Hotel St. Albans. Couldn't they get something else for a headline? Why, of course not. The paper had been on the street but three hours. That headline must hold sway till the noon edition. Besides, it was a good headline.

Rollie grasped the paper firmly with both hands, threw his head back, and pretended to read; but he was not reading. He was looking to see if his hands trembled. Unmistakably they did. They trembled so the paper rattled as if it were having a chill. But pshaw! There was really little to read anyway, beyond the headline. The news had come in too late to make a story for the morning papers. It only said that Miss Dounay had been entertaining some friends and on retiring at half-past two had chanced to notice that her diamond necklace was missing. A search failed to reveal it in the apartment. She at once notified the police. That was all. No word as to who was present, who was suspected, whether a guest, or a servant, or a burglar, or whether any clue had been discovered. There had been no time for that. That would be the story for the afternoon papers. They would find out all about Miss Dounay's movements the night before, and all about her party, and who was present. They would interview each guest, and get a statement from him. They would be sure to interview John Hampstead. Rollie had a sudden feeling of security as he thought of their investigating Hampstead. It was amazing what a rocklike confidence a man could feel in Hampstead.

But they would also interview him--Rollie Burbeck. Because he was so readily accessible, they would interview him first. What would he tell them? How would he bear himself? Would his voice tremble when he tried to talk, as now his hands trembled when he tried to hold the newspaper?

At this very moment the diamonds were in his inside coat pocket. Could he receive the reporters with his usual urbanity, sit smiling nonchalantly, and recite the incidents of the evening, suggest theories and clues, express his righteous indignation at the crime,--all with that envelope and its contents rustling under every movement of his arm? Could he?

To the young man's tortured imagination, the necklace became again a serpent. He could feel it crawling there over his heart, could hear it hissing and rattling as if about to strike. Then it ceased to be a serpent, and was a nest of birds. He knew that every time a reporter asked a question, one of those birds would stretch its wings and call "Cuckoo."

There! It said "Cuckoo" just then. Was the bank haunted? Rollie looked up frightened. Cold sweat was on his brow. Not his hands alone but his whole body trembled. He was really in a very bad way. Could a man have delirium tremens, just from fright? Rollie didn't know, but if a reporter came in just then, he was sure that he would take out the diamonds and hurl them at the news gatherer.

Speaking of delirium tremens, he wished he had a good stiff highball. He must slip out presently long enough to get one. Worse than reporters would be coming round, too. Detectives would come. Chief of detectives Benson might come in person. Rollie disliked Benson and mistrusted him. Benson went on the theory that it takes a crook to catch a crook! When it came to inducing a crook to talk, he was a very handy man with a club. Benson would at once scour the pool rooms and hop joints. Suppose he got the Red Lizard in the dragnet. Suppose he hit the Red Lizard a clip or two with that small, ugly billy that was generally in Benson's pocket when he went to the sweat room; or suppose he kept Red's 'hop' away from him for a few hours? Or suppose Benson happened to know in that uncanny way of his that he, Rollie, had done business with Spider Welsh? He might just walk into the bank and search Rollie on suspicion. And Rollie would have to submit, would have to seem to invite him, almost. His teeth were chattering at the thought.

Discovery--disgrace--conviction--ruin--that was the sequence of the ideas. Stripes! Ugh! Just when the way out, "the way up," was opening to him, too. Discovery, now that a moral hope was gleaming, would be infinitely more terrible than an hour ago, when he was only a rat burrowing from a terrier.

He tried to shake himself together. He must brace up and play the game with a cool head, or he could not play it at all. One thing was clear. The diamonds must be got out of his possession temporarily. But where should he put them? In his desk? Anywhere about the bank? Benson would find them if he started a search, and if Benson didn't search, some one in the bank might stumble upon them accidentally, and then the cat would be out of the bag for fair.

There was a police whistle now! The agitated young man looked about, startled, and then laughed at himself. It was not a police whistle at all. It was the first clear, bell-like note of the bank clock, beginning the stroke of nine.

With a sensation of relief that for a few minutes waiting was over and there was occupation for mind and body, Rollie took the minister's key and strolled in the most casual manner he could command down to the vault room.

"Doctor Hampstead's box," he announced, exhibiting his key. The vault clerk turned to his card index as a mere matter of form, for he remembered well enough Rollie's authorization, and read upon the card of the Reverend John Hampstead his signed permission for Rollo Charles Burbeck to do with his box "as I might or could do if personally present." The clerk stepped inside the vault, scanned the numbers and tiers, and thrust his master-key into the proper lock. Rollie slipped the minister's key into its own place, turned it, and the door flew open. The vault clerk returned to his stand outside the door. Rollie took the box and walked into one of the private rooms provided for the safe deposit patrons. In a moment he was ripping open the envelope marked "Wadham Currency", which he found exactly as the minister had described it.