With his new authority as his father’s representative, Bill Brady went into consultation with the experts who had been going over the books, and found that the expert was far from sharing President Bromlow’s opinion as to the innocence of Riggs.
“That money wasn’t taken yesterday, Mr. Brady,” said the expert. “He’s worked it carefully, and in another day there’d have been no chance for us to trace the defalcation. But now it’s as plain as daylight. It seems obvious to me that this Riggs took the money, probably intending to put it back, and then, at the last moment, seeing a chance to get clear, tried to make use of that counterfeit money in the vault to conceal his own shortage. We came on him before he was ready—and I think, myself, he’d have been wiser not to monkey with that counterfeit money at all. It looks very fishy to me, if you want my opinion.”
Bill Brady took the result of his investigation to Dick Merriwell at once.
“Here’s the net result, you see,” he said. “That old fool Bromlow thinks that they’ve discovered a motive for Jim to rob the bank—the utterly absurd one that he’s in league with you to cover the deposit of counterfeit money. He doesn’t seem to see that his own theory is full of holes. That money is pretty well made, but, while it would deceive me, and almost any one else not especially trained to watch money, I don’t think it would fool a banker for a minute. Now, Riggs took that deposit from you. Entirely aside from the fact that you and I know that the money was deposited was all right, why didn’t Riggs at once discover that it was not real money, if it was not? He had to go over the money as he counted it, so his explanation that it didn’t occur to him that anything could be wrong with the money you handed in falls down.”
“It looks to me,” said Jim Phillips, “as if this Riggs held the key to the whole mystery. If he actually stole a thousand dollars from the bank, it was his interest to cover that theft, and he would have been able to do that had a larger sum been taken. I know that that was the idea of those men I surprised there—they were out to make a big haul.”
“I can explain Mr. Bromlow’s feelings, I think,” said Dick Merriwell quietly. “You must know, Brady, that he has been in financial difficulties of late. That is one of the reasons why your father was able to buy the control of his bank. Mr. Bromlow very foolishly became associated in a lumber deal with a man called Phelps.
“I discovered this not long ago, when I tried, in behalf of the company in which Chester Arlington and I are interested, to renew one of the company’s notes in that bank. Mr. Bromlow refused to renew the note, although the security, as he himself admitted, was first class. It was simply annoying—we had little difficulty in getting the money we wanted elsewhere. But it showed the way the wind was blowing.”
“Now, there’s the matter of Foote,” said Brady, darkening. “He isn’t a principal—whatever he’s done has been under orders from some one else. I think the same thing applies to Riggs. He probably went into the game because he saw a chance to escape the consequences of a crime that he knew was bound to be discovered within a week or two, at the outside.”
They were in Jim Phillips’ room. As Jim spoke, there was a knock at the door, and Detective Jones appeared.
“They’ve found the watchman, Mr. Phillips,” he said. “He was trussed up in the cellar of the bank. He’s in a pretty bad way—not dangerously hurt, but pretty sick. They’re bringing him here.”