CHAPTER XX

PUT TO THE QUESTION

Tobias had more than satisfied his curiosity in coming to town. His discovery of the gold penknife was the sum of the assistance he could give Arad Thompson, the bank's president, at this time. His interest in the burglary, however, continued to be keen; but he went back to the Twin Rocks Light soon after noon.

He could take little cheer to Heppy. For just how much the depositors of the bank must suffer because of the loss of the hundred and forty thousand dollars, Tobias had no idea. Nobody with whom he talked seemed to know. All were pessimistic.

"Looks like something was the trouble besides just the burglary," croaked one bird of ill-omen, perched like a buzzard on the horse rack before Silas Compton's store. "Else Arad would have sent for some cash from somewhere and gone on with business, same as usual. This shutting the bank tight's a drum----"

"They say it's the new bankin' law done it," interposed somebody.

"Dunno. Don't look right. If the bank's rotten we'd ought to have a chance to get what money we can out of it."

"That's right! 'Fore we lose it all."

"Guess it's all gone by now," groaned another.

"Say!" observed Tobias, after listening to this talk for some time, "I give it as my opinion Arad Thompson is a purty slick citizen. He was smart to get that bank examiner here--no two ways about it! Otherwise there would have been a run on the bank. We'd all have been crazy to try to get our money."

"Why shouldn't we get it? It's our'n."

"Wal," Tobias said slowly. "I don't s'pose Arad can call all his loans in on the dot. Nossir! Why should we expect him to pay us just whenever we want it--all in a lump?"

The lightkeeper could study out the reason for the bank president's attitude and logically come to the conclusion he did. Arad Thompson knew Clinkerport folk well. Suspicion would be rife in any case and the moment announcement was made of the robbery many would rail against his management of the bank's funds. The president was taking no chances.

Without a penny of cash left in the bank, the depositors would have been clamoring at the cage windows like wolves had the doors not remained barred.

There were those people, too, who had "inside information." There are always these "know-it-alls" in every community.

"No use trying to smooth it over, Tobias," whispered one of these to the lightkeeper. "There's something fishy about Arad's bank. I ain't got a cent in it--never would put any in. I always have had my suspicions of Arad Thompson.

"But Phil Henry is my next-door neighbor, an' Phil Henry is cashier. He ain't been let into the bank this morning no more than the other officers. And Phil told me that right lately Arad's been getting his hands on all the cash he could. Mebbe he did have as much as a hundred and forty thousand there."

"Wal?" proposed Tobias, unshaken.

"Drat it all, Tobe? Don't you see? Or won't ye? Mebbe there ain't been no real burglary at all. Looks funny. They say the vault door was opened on the combination. That 'twasn't busted."

"Huh?"

"Arad just _says_ there was a burglary. S'pose he'd arranged for somebody to saw them bars on the sly and bust the winder-lock and drug Bill Purvis's tea? Heh? S'pose Arad robbed the bank hisself?"

"Oh, sugar!" murmured Tobias. "That's what they all say. Why don't you suggest something new?"

"All right! All right! Don't you believe it, Tobe," said his acquaintance. "You will remember what I told ye when you don't see hide nor hair of your money again."

"I don't see it now," confessed Tobias rather ruefully. "But I still have hopes of Arad's being pretty average honest."

He found Heppy one of the most pessimistic of all those affected by or interested in the bank burglary. She was actually ill. Whether it was the excitement or the over-exertion of climbing the lighthouse stairs to the lamp room, the woman gave every indication of bodily as well as of mental illness.

She sat in her rocking chair before the kitchen stove, weaving back and forth, and sobbing. When she raised her head to look at her brother as he entered, he was actually startled by her appearance.

"Oh, sugar, Heppy! What's the matter o' ye?"

"Did--did you get our money, Tobias?" she gasped.

"No, no! O' course not. Things have got to be straightened out."

"Did you see Arad Thompson?"

"Yes. I talked personally with him, Heppy."

"What did he say?" urged the woman.

"Why, he couldn't say nothin' yet. Not till the bank's books was gone over. It's bein' done."

"Tobias, that's only an excuse. We'll never see a penny of our money again!" And his sister broke into passionate sobs.

"Dad fetch it!" ejaculated Tobias, "I give it as my opinion that there ain't never been such a unanimity of opinion on one subject in this community since Noah stepped ashore from the ark. You folks have got it all settled that Arad Thompson is so crooked that he can't lay straight in bed. Oh, sugar!"

It was a very gloomy afternoon and evening at the Twin Rocks Light. The men got what little supper there was. Heppy went to bed still weeping and with a hot brick at her feet.

"An' I give it as my opinion, 'Zekiel," said the lightkeeper to the younger man, with frank disgust in his tone, "that Heppy can think with that hot brick just as good as she can with her head. There ain't no mortal sense in her fussin' and fumin' the way she does."

"But, Tobias! if the money is gone?"

"Oh, sugar!" snorted Tobias. "Mourning over it won't bring our money back. If we've got to lose it, we've got to--that's all."

"But--eight--thousand--dollars!"

"I know. You say it like 'twas eight hundred thousand. But neither sum seems to mean so much to me--not re'lly. I sure won't lose no sleep over it--nor ary meal o' victuals, if I can help it.

"'What can't be cured must be endured,'" repeated this longshore philosopher. "I never re'lly felt that I had much part nor lot in our savings. Once I was in New Bedford when some whalers was paid off after a four-year cruise. A drunken boat steerer stood on the corner of the street an' fed silver dollars into the mouth of a sewer till the police stopped him.

"Puttin' money in the bank always seemed to me something like that, 'Zekiel. You see it go in, but where it goes to, an' what happens to it, is like what the Scriptures says about the ways of the Almighty--they are 'past finding out.'"

"Huh!" said Zeke. "Looks like we know what's happened to this money. 'Twas stole by somebody."

"Oh, sugar!" murmured Tobias. "Is that any satisfaction?"

Tobias Bassett had refused to admit to Arad Thompson that he had any suspicion as to the identity of the owner of the gold penknife he had found under the bank window. Nor did he have such suspicion.

It was merely that the old lightkeeper felt that sometime, somewhere, he had seen such a toy worn on a watch chain by somebody he knew. Unlike Lorna Nicholet he did not remember that Ralph Endicott owned such an ornament.

The young woman rode home from her marketing expedition in a very anxious condition of mind. One moment she mentally castigated herself for considering at all the suggestion that the penknife might be Ralph's property. The next instant the suspicion would attack her from another angle and his possible connection with the bank burglary would expand until she was fairly terror-stricken.

If Ralph had been seen in the town the previous evening by other eyes than those of Conway Degger! If Ralph had seemed to leave Clinkerport in the afternoon, how explain his later presence there?

If Degger thought he could cast any reflection upon Ralph by reporting his observation of the latter in town the night of the burglary, of course he would do so. There was no doubt of that in Lorna's mind. She had no longer any illusions regarding the character of Degger, no matter how much she might disapprove of Ralph. Degger was Ralph's enemy, and a bitter enemy indeed.

Innocent men have fallen under the burden of false accusation, often and again. Several things seemed to yield circumstantial evidence connecting the bank robbery with Ralph Endicott, ridiculous as such evidence must be to the minds of those who really knew him.

If the penknife was his--or like the one he wore! If he really had returned to Clinkerport secretly last evening! If it was a fact that Cora Devine was hounding Ralph for money! And if, as Lorna supposed, the Endicotts were in financial straits and Ralph was without funds!

These suppositions and possibilities wrought upon the young woman's mind until, when she arrived home, she found it almost impossible to hide from the family her perturbation. Her father had not yet returned from Boston. Had he been at home she would have put her fears and suspicions before him.

For, after all, John Nicholet bred a greater confidence in his daughter's mind and heart than did the self-repressed Miss Ida. With the latter Lorna could not bring herself to discuss the mystery of Ralph Endicott's affairs.

She gave to her aunt the bald statement of the bank's loss, and that was all. But Lorna felt that she must search and find all she could that might explain the mystery which, like a haze, surrounded Ralph's absence from home.

She went to Jerome, the Endicott's doddering old servant whom the professor's "Cousin Luce," who was supposed to preside over the household, was forever threatening to pension off.

Miss Ida had scornfully stated that "Lucy Markham ran the Endicott house by fits and starts--the fits being frequent and the starts but seldom!" a statement which was scarcely a libel. If Cousin Luce did not feel like leaving her bed, or had a more than usually interesting novel to read, she remained unseen by the family, sometimes for a couple of days. But the family somehow muddled along without her.

Ralph was too old to lose much by the lack of system in the home. And of course Professor Endicott did not even notice when household matters went wrong. The children helped each other, and somehow were happy.

As it chanced, Mrs. Markham was not visible when Lorna made her appearance at the Endicott house. Whether it was a new novel or a twinge of rheumatism that kept Cousin Luce in her room Lorna did not inquire. An interview with Professor Endicott, had she wished it, was quite out of the question, for he was deep in his experiments.

"Jerome," said Lorna to the old servant, "do you know if Ralph lost that little gold penknife that he wears on the end of his watch chain?"

"No, Miss. I do not know. Was it lately he lost it?"

"That is what I wish to know. _Did_ he lose it?"

"I couldn't say, Miss. He said nothing about losing it to me."

"Then it is pretty sure he did not lose it before he went away yesterday--if he lost it at all," murmured the young woman thoughtfully. "You would probably have missed it yourself, Jerome."

"I don't know about that, Miss. I don't have much to do with Master Ralph's things. No, Miss. Maybe Mrs. Malloy----"

But the housekeeper knew no more than Jerome. Lorna dared go no further with her inquiries. She feared that she might rouse suspicion in the minds of the servants.

She heard nothing more about the bank burglary that day, or what was being done regarding it. She spent a most miserable night. By morning she could not longer remain idle in the matter. She felt that she must confer with somebody and she started for the Twin Rocks Light. Lorna wanted to learn if Tobias Bassett likewise suspected that the gold penknife he had found belonged to Ralph.

Although the time was mid-forenoon, Tobias was smoking his pipe on the bench outside the lighthouse door. And he wore one of Miss Heppy's voluminous kitchen aprons.

"Why, Mr. Bassett! what is the matter?"

"Oh, sugar! That you, Lorny? I've been promoted to be chief pot-walloper of this here craft. 'Zekiel is aloft, cleaning the lamp."

"But Miss Heppy?"

"She's abed. I cal'late she's down for a spell o' suthin', I dunno what 'tis, and I reckon she don't. But whatever 'tis it's struck in."

"Tobias! She is not really ill!"

"She's sick enough," he rejoined, shaking an anxious head. "Bein' sick is mostly in your mind, it always did seem to me. If your mind ain't ready for doctorin' you manage to keep on deck and muddle through somehow. But once your mind gets sick, you lose all holts. And Heppy's lost all holts this time, I do allow. She thinks she won't never see none o' that money we had in the Clinkerport Bank again--never! And it's just about scuttled the ship for her--yessir!"

"But, Tobias! of course the bank isn't bankrupt. There will be no great loss for each individual depositor."

"We dunno that. Dunno much of anything about it. I give it as my opinion that it looks queer. And, as I said afore, Heppy's gin up all hope."

"Oh, that is too bad!" Lorna said. "I must see her. Is she alone?"

"Ain't no women folks around, if that's what you mean. 'Zekiel and me air the whole crew and afterguard. The captain's forsook the ship."

Lorna hesitated before going into the lighthouse, staring down at the rather despondent looking Tobias. She spurred her courage to ask:

"I am told that you found a penknife under the bank window that may have been dropped by one of the burglars."

"So I did," replied Tobias placidly.

"Do you really think it was lost by one of the robbers?"

"Likely. Don't see how else it would have got there."

"Have you no idea who the owner is?"

The lightkeeper wrinkled up his eyes shrewdly and stared at her. He removed the pipe from his mouth.

"I don't count a wide acquaintance among burglars and such, Miss Lorny."

"But--but it might not belong to a burglar!"

"Sure enough. Who do you cal'late it might belong to?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I--I--why do you ask that?" Then, her eyes searching the highway in the direction of Clinkerport, she cried: "Who is this coming, Tobias?"

He turned from her to stare at the blue motor car approaching. He still held his pipe at a reflective poise, for Lorna's evident disturbance of mind had impressed him.

"Oh, sugar!" he murmured. "This here is Arad Thompson's car. You don't s'pose he's come to bring me and Heppy our money, do you? It 'ud please Heppy purt' nigh to death."