CHAPTER XI

A FEW days after the report of Dora Barry’s fall had permeated Stafford from the town’s centre to its scattering outskirts, and the beautiful girl’s disgrace had been duly recorded as the now certain explanation of Fred Walton’s flight, it came to his father’s ears in a rather indirect manner. Old Simon was erroneously supposed to have learned the truth, even before it became town-talk; for it was vaguely whispered that the banker had been so moved by Mrs. Barry’s personal appeal to him in behalf of her daughter that he had called in the sheriff with the intention of having his son held to honor by sheer force, but for some reason had refrained from taking action.

There are individuals in every community, too, who are bold enough to mention a delicate topic even to those most sensitively concerned, and as old Walton was going to the bank on the morning in question Bailey Thornton, a man of great size, who kept a grocery where the banker bought his supplies, essayed a jest as he passed the old man’s morning cigar to him over the showcase. The bystanders thoroughly understood what was meant, as was evinced by the hearty laugh which went round, but the old man didn’t.

“Don’t be hard on the boy, Mr. Walton,” Thornton added, and he smiled broadly enough to explain any ordinary innuendo. “Remember your own young days. I’ll bet Fred came by it honestly. The whole town knows the truth; there is no good in trying to hide it. Tell him it is all right, and make him come back home.”

Old Simon grunted and walked on, flushing under the irritating chorus of laughter which followed him out of the store. “Come by it honestly!” he repeated. “What could the meddling fool mean? The whole town knows the truth!”

He fell to quivering, and almost came to a dead halt in the street. Surely the circumstance of the bank’s loss was not leaking out, after all his caution? He decided that he would at once sound Toby Lassiter. Perhaps Fred had confided in others. The bare chance of the shortage being known and used against him by the rival bank alarmed him. In fancy he saw the report growing and spreading through the town and country till an army of half-crazed depositors, egged on by his enemies, was clamoring at the door, and demanding funds which had been put out on collateral security, and could not be drawn in at a moment’s notice.

As he was passing along the corridor by the counting-room, where, beyond the green wire grating, the bookkeepers were at work, he caught Lassiter’s glance, and with a wild glare in his eyes he nodded peremptorily toward the rear. He had just hung up his old slouch hat and seated himself in his chair when the clerk joined him, a look of wonder in his mild eyes.

“Say, Toby, sit down—no, shut the door!” Simon ordered; and when the clerk had obeyed and taken a chair near the desk, the banker leaned toward him.

“I want to know,” he panted, “if the report is out about Fred’s shortage?”

“Why, no, Mr. Walton,” the clerk said, astonished in his turn; “that is, not to my knowledge. I haven’t heard a word that would indicate such a thing. In fact, they all seem so busy with—” But Lassiter colored deeply, and suddenly checked himself.

“Well, something is in the wind, I know,” Simon went on, his lip quivering. “It may be that Thornton only had reference to the boy’s general extravagance, or he may have heard false reports about my own bringing-up; but I am not sure, Toby, but that the thing we are trying to hide is out.” Thereupon old Simon, his anxious eyes fixed on the face of his clerk, recounted in detail all that the grocer had said, and exactly how it had come up.

“Oh, I see!” Lassiter exclaimed, in a tone of relief. “He didn’t refer to the money, Mr. Walton. He meant—” It was loyalty to his absent friend which again checked the conscientious Toby, who was trying to reconcile two adverse duties, and now sat twirling his thumbs in visible embarrassment.

“You see what?” old Simon demanded, fiercely. “Don’t you begin shifting here and there, and keeping things from me. I want to know what’s took place, and I will! You and I have always got on harmoniously, but I don’t like your shillyshallying whenever that boy’s name is mentioned. The other day, when I sent for the sheriff—well, you happened to be right in stopping me that time, I’ll admit, but I want to know what you think Bailey Thornton meant by what he said. Do you know?”

The clerk looked down. His face was quite grave and rigid.

“Mr. Walton,” he faltered, “I don’t like to carry tales about matters which don’t concern me, and when a nasty report gets in the air I try to keep from having anything to do with it.”

“I’m talking to you about business now!” Old Simon raised his voice to a shrill cry, which, had it not stranded in his throat, would have reached the adjoining room.

“The report touches on my affairs here in this house, and if you don’t tell me, if you don’t aid me with whatever knowledge you may have run across, you can draw your pay and quit.”

Lassiter saw the utter futility of remaining silent longer, and with a desperate look on his face he answered: “I didn’t want to make the poor boy’s case any worse, Mr. Walton, and so I hoped it would turn out untrue before it got to you; but they say the girl admits the whole thing. The minister of the church where she plays the organ told me it was true.”

“Girl? What girl?” the banker gasped. “Why do you take all day to get at a thing?”

Then, as Lassiter told the story which was on every tongue, old Simon stared, his mouth falling open and his unlighted cigar seesawing between his jagged stumps of teeth.

“So you are plumb sure it wasn’t the money that Thornton was talking about!” he exclaimed, with a deep breath of relief.

“Yes, I am sure of that, Mr. Walton. They have been so full of chatter about the girl that not a word has been said about money, although some think you actually furnished the ready cash for him to get away on.” The two sat silent for several minutes; then, shaking his tousled head and shrugging his gaunt shoulders in his faded black alpaca coat, the banker said, with grim finality of tone: “He’s a bad egg, Toby. That fellow is rotten to the core. This last discovery really helps us hide the other matter, but the two of them put together will wipe his name off the slate of this town forever. He’ll never dare to show his face here again. He might have tried to get around me and live down the shortage, but I reckon both things coming to a head at once kind o’ broke his courage, and he decided to skedaddle. I have no pity for the girl neither—not a smidgin; a woman that would give in to a scamp like him don’t deserve any man’s pity. Say, Toby, I’m a peculiar in some ways: as long as I felt that I owed something to that boy as his father his doings kind o’ lay on my mind, but he has plumb cancelled that obligation. I can get along without worry over him if he is put clean out of my calculations, so after this I don’t want no human being to mention his name to me. I’ll let ‘em know that they can’t joke with me about it on the street. I want you to go this minute to Bailey Thornton’s store and ask him for my account up to date. Then I’ll send him my check, and do my trading with Pete Longley. He will be trotting in to apologize, but keep him away from me. Huh! he can’t sneer at me as I walk along the public highways of this town; his account with us isn’t worth ten cents a month, and he’s shaky, anyway. I wish I’d hit him in the mouth as he stood there gloating over his dirty joke!”