“I have no reason to suspect anything. I wish to know who and what he is, what he does, and, especially, you must watch the Assay Office. He deposits large amounts of gold there. I want to know where that gold comes from. Find out all you can from the Assay Office people. See the truckman. Probably it comes from some mine. He brought me a letter from Professor Willetts, of the Columbia School of Mines. Say nothing to any one of this.”
“Very well, sir.”
Thursday came. A stock operator, famous for his keen reading of conditions, which came from his possession of a marvellous imagination combined with logical reasoning power, walked into the bank, and was impressed by the vaguely uneasy something in the air. He at once called on his friend, and occasional accomplice, Dawson. The president assured him that he had no news; wherefore, the imaginative plunger reasoned: “If it were good news he’d let me know, because it would help him to have me know it. The news, whatever it is, must be bad,” and left the bank hurriedly. A few minutes later the stock-market became very weak—the suspicious gambler was selling stocks to be on the safe side. But the president paid no attention to the whirring ticker in the corner. He was waiting for the arrival of Mr. George K. Grinnell. At one o’clock the president was angry. At two o’clock the clerks began to call the bets off; they had a pool on the amount Grinnell would deposit. At half after two Mr. Grinnell walked in, wrote out his deposit slip very deliberately, and presented it, with a check and his passbook, at the receiving-teller’s window.
“You are late to-day, Mr. Grinnell,” incautiously said the teller.
“Oh, you expected me?”
Grover was made uncomfortable. “You see, Mr. Grinnell, you’ve been coming here on Thursdays so regularly that we’ve—” He stopped abruptly as he looked at the slip, and the Assay Office check for five millions of dollars. He credited the amount on the pass-book very slowly.
Mr. Dawson came out of his private office. One of the clerks, who had been stationed at the door, had notified him of Mr. Grinnell’s arrival.
“How do you do?” said the president cheerfully. “You are a little late to-day.”
“So the teller was just saying.”
The president was annoyed, exceedingly, that Grinnell should have learned that his arrival had been expected; but he explained smilingly: “Well, you have been so punctual on Thursdays that, I fancy, we’ve grown rather into the habit of looking for you. What have you done to us to-day?”