IV
THE PRIVATE BANK PUZZLE
"Planning to rob us?"
"I am sure of it!"
"But I don't understand, Gordon! Who? How? What are they planning to rob?" the young acting-president of the bank demanded, sharply.
"The safe, Mr. Howell—the safe!" the old cashier repeated. "Some one inside the bank is planning to rob it!"
"How do you know?"
"I feel it; I know it. I am as certain of it as though I had overheard the plot being made! But I cannot tell you how I know. Put an extra man on guard here to-night," the old man appealed, anxiously, "for I am certain that some one in this office means to enter the safe!"
The acting-president swung his chair away from the anxious little man before him, and glanced quickly through the glass door of his private office at the dozen clerks and tellers busy in the big room who sufficed to carry on the affairs of the little bank.
It was just before noon on the last Wednesday in November, in the old-established private banking house of Henry Howell & Son, on La Salle Street; and it was the beginning of the sixth week that young Howell had been running the bank by himself. For the
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