A Rock in the Baltic. Barr Robert
from the face of the cashier.
“You must come back to the bank,” he reiterated.
“Oh, I say,” protested the Lieutenant, “you are now exceeding your authority. I alone am the culprit. The young lady is quite blameless, and you have no right to detain her for a moment.”
The girl, who had been edging away and showing signs of flight, which the bareheaded man, visibly on the alert, leaned forward ready to intercept, seemed to make up her mind to bow to the inevitable. Ignoring the cashier, she looked up at the blond Lieutenant with a slight smile on her pretty lips.
“It was really all my fault at the beginning,” she said, “and very stupid of me. I am slightly acquainted with the bank manager, and I am sure he will vouch for me, if he is there.”
With that she turned and walked briskly toward the bank, at so rapid a pace as to indicate that she did not wish an escort. The bareheaded official found his anger unaccountably deserting him, while a great fear that he had put his foot in it took its place.
“Really,” said the Lieutenant gently, as they strode along together, “an official in your position should be a good judge of human nature. How any sane person, especially a young man, can look at that beautiful girl and suspect her of evil, passes my comprehension. Do you know her?”
“No,” said the cashier shortly. “Do you?”
The Lieutenant laughed genially.
“Still suspicious, eh?” he asked. “No, I don’t know her, but to use a banking term, you may bet your bottom dollar I’m going to. Indeed, I am rather grateful to you for your stubbornness in forcing us to return. It’s a quality I like, and you possess it in marvelous development, so I intend to stand by you when the managerial censure is due. I’m very certain I met your manager at the dinner they gave us last night. Mr. Morton, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” growled the cashier, in gruff despondency.
“Ah, that’s awfully jolly. One of the finest fellows I’ve met in ten years. Now, the lady said she was acquainted with him, so if I don’t wheedle an introduction out of him, it will show that a man at a dinner and a man in a bank are two different individuals. You were looking for plots; so there is mine laid bare to you. It’s an introduction, not gold, I’m conspiring for.”
The cashier had nothing further to say. When they entered the bank together he saw the clerks all busily at work, and knew that no startling event had happened during his absence. The girl had gone direct to the manager’s room, and thither the young men followed her. The bank manager was standing at his desk, trying to preserve a severe financial cast of countenance, which the twinkle in his eyes belied. The girl, also standing, had evidently been giving him a rapid sketch of what had occurred, but now fell into silence when accuser and accomplice appeared.
The advent of the Englishman was a godsend to the manager. He was too courteous a gentleman to laugh in the face of a lady who very seriously was relating a set of incidents which appealed to his sense of humor, so the coming of the Lieutenant enabled him to switch off his mirth on another subject, and in reply to the officer’s cordial “Good-morning, Mr. Morton,” he replied:
“Why, Lieutenant, I’m delighted to see you. That was a very jolly song you sang for us last night: I’ll never forget it. What do you call it? Whittington Fair?” And he laughed outright, as at a genial recollection.
The Lieutenant blushed red as a girl, and stammered:
“Really, Mr. Morton, you know, that’s not according to the rules of evidence. When a fellow comes up for trial, previous convictions are never allowed to be mentioned till after the sentence. Whiddicomb Fair should not be held against me in the present crisis.”
The manager chuckled gleefully. The cashier, when he saw how the land lay, had quietly withdrawn, closing the door behind him.
“Well, Lieutenant, I think I must have this incident cabled to Europe,” said Morton, “so the effete nations of your continent may know that a plain bank cashier isn’t afraid to tackle the British navy. Indeed, Mr. Drummond, if you read history, you will learn that this is a dangerous coast for your warships. It seems rather inhospitable that a guest of our town cannot pick all the gold he wants out of a bank, but a cashier has necessarily somewhat narrow views on the subject. I was just about to apologize to Miss Amhurst, who is a valued client of ours, when you came in, and I hope, Miss Amhurst”—he continued gravely, turning to the girl—“that you will excuse us for the inconvenience to which you have been put.”
“Oh, it does not matter in the least,” replied the young woman, with nevertheless a sigh of relief. “It was all my own fault in so carelessly leaving the money. Some time, when less in a hurry than I am at the present moment, I will tell you how I came to make the blunder.”
Meanwhile the manager caught and interpreted correctly an imploring look from the Lieutenant.
“Before you go, Miss Amhurst, will you permit me to introduce to you my friend, Lieutenant Drummond, of H.M.S. ‘Consternation.’”
This ritual to convention being performed, the expression on the girl’s face showed the renewal of her anxiety to be gone, and as she turned to the door, the officer sprang forward and opened it for her. If the manager expected the young man to return, he was disappointed, for Drummond threw over his shoulder the hasty remark:
“I will see you at the Club this evening,” whereupon the genial Morton, finding himself deserted, sat down in his swivel chair and laughed quietly to himself.
There was the slightest possible shade of annoyance on the girl’s face as the sailor walked beside her from the door of the manager’s room, through the public portion of the bank to the exit, and the young man noticing this, became momentarily tongue-tied, but nevertheless persisted, with a certain awkward doggedness which was not going to allow so slight a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure demanded justification on his part.
“You—you see, Miss Amhurst, we have been properly introduced.”
For the first time he heard the girl laugh, just a little, and the sound was very musical to him.
“The introduction was of the slightest,” she said. “I cannot claim even an acquaintance with Mr. Morton, although I did so in the presence of his persistent subordinate. I have met the manager of the bank but once before, and that for a few moments only, when he showed me where to sign my name in a big book.”
“Nevertheless,” urged Drummond, “I shall defend the validity of that introduction against all comers. The head of a bank is a most important man in every country, and his commendation is really very much sought after.”
“You appear to possess it. He complimented your singing, you know,” and there was a roguish twinkle in the girl’s eye as she glanced up sideways at him, while a smile came to her lips as she saw the color again mount to his cheeks. She had never before met a man who blushed, and she could not help regarding him rather as a big boy than a person to be taken seriously. His stammer became more pronounced.
“I—I think you are laughing at me, Miss Amhurst, and indeed I don’t wonder at it, and I—I am afraid you consider me even more persistent than the cashier. But I did want to tell you how sorry I am to have caused you annoyance.”
“Oh, you have not done so,” replied the girl quickly. “As I said before, it was all my own fault in the beginning.”
“No, I shouldn’t have taken the gold. I should have come up with you, and told you that it still awaited you in the bank, and now I beg your permission to walk down the street with you, because if any one were looking at us from these windows, and saw us pursued by a bareheaded man with a revolver, they will now, on looking out again, learn that it is all right, and may even come to regard the revolver and the hatless one as an optical delusion.”
Again the girl laughed.
“I am quite unknown in Bar Harbor, having fewer acquaintances