“By the way,” said Brady, “who do you suppose I saw in town to-day? That chap Barrows, that faced us down so on the Marina until I called his bluff and told him what would happen if Jim had been hurt. He pretended that he didn’t see me, but he did all right. In fact, I had an idea that he had been looking at me pretty closely, and trying to figure out what I was doing.”
“I wonder what he’s doing here,” said Dick, with a frown. “I should think he wouldn’t be anxious to show up around New Haven very much after that trouble he ran into at New London. That must have cost those fellows a pretty penny.
“I understand they haven’t got enough money to repair the Marina, and they must have lost a great deal if they bet at all heavily on Harvard to win the race, even at the odds they got. I understood that our boys and the alumni won about forty thousand dollars altogether on the race, and I don’t believe the Harvard men themselves bet very heavily. It looked as if they were hopelessly beaten after that time trial. But they put up a wonderful fight. I never saw a closer, better race.”
“I was in the Elm National,” said Brady. “It’s a secret so far, but my father has just bought practically all the stock of that bank. He’s interested in a number of Connecticut enterprises, and he needed a very close banking connection up here. So he has picked up all the stock pretty quietly, and I guess he’ll soon reorganize it and go to work to make a big bank of it.”
“That’s where I keep my account,” said Dick. “I’m glad to hear your father is interested in it, Brady. He’s the sort of a man to inspire confidence in those who deposit in any institution that he controls.”
“I don’t believe any one has ever lost a penny through any enterprise the governor was connected with,” said Brady, with pardonable pride. “He’s never believed in taking chances with the money that other people have intrusted to him, like some of these high financiers, and I guess he’d rather lose some money than do it. Anyhow, it was while I was in there that I saw Barrows. He was hanging around on the other side of the street, and he seemed to be rather interested in my movements. I went in there to cash a check—they don’t know, in the bank, except for some of the high officials, that my father’s connected with it at all.”
“Maybe he’s planning to rob the bank,” said Watson.
“Hardly,” said Brady, with a smile. “They’ve got a really modern system of vaults and safeguards in there. It’s only been installed for about two years, and the biggest house in the country put them in. It’s practically impossible for any burglar to break in there. The detective company that protects the bank says it’s the best and safest institution, physically speaking, outside of New York and Chicago, in the whole country. And that’s a pretty high compliment from them.”
“I guess that bank is reasonably safe from that sort of danger,” said Dick Merriwell. “In fact, I’ve heard that some of the other banks here, when they have unusually large sums of money on hand, use its vaults for greater safety.”
“I don’t think Barrows is the type of the bank robber, anyhow,” said Jim Phillips. “He might try forgery, or something of that sort, but the regular work of going into a building at night and blowing a safe, or something of that sort, requires a sort of a courage he hasn’t got—or, at least, didn’t show when I saw him on the Marina.