The Circular Staircase - Page 44/154

On the afternoon before, Monday, while the Traders' Bank was in the

rush of closing hour, between two and three, Mr. Jacob Trautman,

President of the Pearl Brewing Company, came into the bank to lift a

loan. As security for the loan he had deposited some three hundred

International Steamship Company 5's, in total value three hundred

thousand dollars. Mr. Trautman went to the loan clerk and, after

certain formalities had been gone through, the loan clerk went to the

vault. Mr. Trautman, who was a large and genial German, waited for a

time, whistling under his breath. The loan clerk did not come back.

After an interval, Mr. Trautman saw the loan clerk emerge from the

vault and go to the assistant cashier: the two went hurriedly to the

vault. A lapse of another ten minutes, and the assistant cashier came

out and approached Mr. Trautman. He was noticeably white and

trembling. Mr. Trautman was told that through an oversight the bonds

had been misplaced, and was asked to return the following morning, when

everything would be made all right.

Mr. Trautman, however, was a shrewd business man, and he did not like

the appearance of things. He left the bank apparently satisfied, and

within thirty minutes he had called up three different members of the

Traders' Board of Directors. At three-thirty there was a hastily

convened board meeting, with some stormy scenes, and late in the

afternoon a national bank examiner was in possession of the books. The

bank had not opened for business on Tuesday.

At twelve-thirty o'clock the Saturday before, as soon as the business

of the day was closed, Mr. John Bailey, the cashier of the defunct

bank, had taken his hat and departed. During the afternoon he had

called up Mr. Aronson, a member of the board, and said he was ill, and

might not be at the bank for a day or two. As Bailey was highly

thought of, Mr. Aronson merely expressed a regret. From that time

until Monday night, when Mr. Bailey had surrendered to the police,

little was known of his movements. Some time after one on Saturday he

had entered the Western Union office at Cherry and White Streets and

had sent two telegrams. He was at the Greenwood Country Club on

Saturday night, and appeared unlike himself. It was reported that he

would be released under enormous bond, some time that day, Tuesday.

The article closed by saying that while the officers of the bank

refused to talk until the examiner had finished his work, it was known

that securities aggregating a million and a quarter were missing. Then

there was a diatribe on the possibility of such an occurrence; on the

folly of a one-man bank, and of a Board of Directors that met only to

lunch together and to listen to a brief report from the cashier, and on

the poor policy of a government that arranges a three or four-day

examination twice a year. The mystery, it insinuated, had not been

cleared by the arrest of the cashier. Before now minor officials had

been used to cloak the misdeeds of men higher up. Inseparable as the

words "speculation" and "peculation" have grown to be, John Bailey was

not known to be in the stock market. His only words, after his

surrender, had been "Send for Mr. Armstrong at once." The telegraph

message which had finally reached the President of the Traders' Bank,

in an interior town in California, had been responded to by a telegram

from Doctor Walker, the young physician who was traveling with the

Armstrong family, saying that Paul Armstrong was very ill and unable to

travel.