“Very well! Code a message to Number One, and tell him Number Seven has completed his work. Tell him again to take no chances by hurrying things; that he is to wait until they are asleep. And warn him again that under no circumstances is our hand to show in this to-night.”
A slight confusion followed from below—the scuf-, fling of feet, the murmur of voices mingling with curious, indefinable metallic sounds. And then suddenly the Ladybird's voice again:
“No—never mind that message! Damn my cursed, useless legs!” A flow of unbridled oaths followed—the sacrilege the more horrible, the menace the more ghastly for the languid, conversational tones in which the blasphemy rolled so smoothly from the man's lips. “I'll trust to no message tonight! Curse my legs! If I could only get there myself! Failure! Failure! Failure! Gnats! But I will not have my plans ruined to-night by any fool! Here, you, Dixer! Where's Dixer?”
“I'm here,” a voice answered.
“Listen, them!” murmured the Ladybird. “You haven't got any more brains than any of the rest of them, but you're so cautious you wouldn't take a chance on swapping a Mexican dollar for a gold eagle unless you had a bottle of acid in your pocket—for fear the eagle was bad! I want caution tonight, and I want orders obeyed to the letter, and that's all I want. You take the runabout and go down there. You've lots of time. Tell Number One you're in charge. I'll wire him to that effect. And now pay attention to me so you won't have ignorance for an excuse! It's time the police and the rags they call newspapers around here had a little something to divert their attention—from us. They're getting to be pests, and I want a lull in which to devote a little more attention to—the Hawk. It's about time they understood we are modest enough not to hog all the lime-light!” He laughed a little, a low, modulated, dulcet laugh, that rippled like a woman's—but in the ripple there was something that was akin to a shudder. “Twice in the last month, the Traders' National has made remittances to its banking correspondent at Elkhead for the mine country pay rolls and on account of general business. They did it very neatly, they fooled us completely—because the remittances were only piker amounts, and because it was only a question of letting them get fed up enough with their own cleverness to pull a good one! They're pulling a good one to-night!” The Ladybird's laugh rippled out again. “To outwit us, and paying us the compliment of not daring to trust to ordinary means of shipment, they've had a little arrangement in force with Lanson, the division superintendent. It was very simple. Lanson, in his car, making a trip over the division, could never interest us—certainly not! Why should it? Only they did not count on Number Eleven inside the bank. Very well! They wrapped their banknotes up in small packages, sealed them with the bank's seal, wrapped these small packages up again into an innocent looking parcel without a seal, and handed it over to a trusted young employé by the name of Meridan—Paul Meridan. On both the former occasions, Meridan left the bank at the usual closing hour, took the parcel with him, and went home; but, later on, in the evening, he slipped down to the railroad yard, boarded Lanson's private car, locked the parcel up in a small cupboard at the bottom of the bookcase with which the main compartment of the car is equipped, smoked a cigar with Lanson, turned in, the car was coupled to the night express, and in the morning Meridan delivered his package in Elkhead.
“That was the way it was done before, Dixer”—the Ladybird's voice, if anything, grew softer—“and that's the way it is being done this time—only there are more little sealed packages in the parcel to-night. And to-night Meridan will sneak out of his home again, and go down to the private car with the money as usual. Your way, yours and the Butcher's, and that of the rest of you, would be to lay a blackjack over Meridan's head on the way to the railroad yard, and snatch the parcel. It's not my way. It's too hot, as it is, around here now, and there's got to be a big enough noise made to attract attention to the other side of the fence and give us a breathing spell. Paul Meridan stands for this to-night. There's nothing new about one of those ubiquitous 'trusted employés' going wrong, but everybody sucks in their breaths just the same every time it happens, and the splash is always just as big. Understand? Number One has got a dummy package identical in appearance with Meridan's—each of the small packages is sealed with the bank's seal in dark-green wax, and the whole is wrapped up with the bank's special wrapping paper and tied precisely as is the one Meridan has in his possession. Number Eleven did his work well. There was, of course, no opportunity to effect the exchange in the bank itself, and the dummy parcel had to be made up outside, but there was no difficulty in carrying away enough wrapping paper and wax for the purpose—and, as far as the seal was concerned, it was you, Dixer, who engraved it a week ago, wasn't it?”
“Yes,” said Dixer. “You took me off the new twenty-spot plate for that.”
“Exactly!” lisped the Ladybird. “Well, though this exchange could not be effected in the bank, there was no great ingenuity required to get Meridan to handle, perhaps only to lift, say, a pile of the bank's wrapping paper from one position on a table or desk to another. If the under sheet happened to be slightly smeared, and so left a not too evident, but still well-defined finger print, it was, I am afraid, our friend Meridan's great misfortune! That was one of the sheets Number Eleven took away with him. Very good! Meridan delivers his package to his bank's correspondent in Elkhead to-morrow morning. When the seals are broken, the little packages are found to contain—piles of blotting paper, neatly and carefully cut to the size of banknotes! There could be no reason for suspecting Meridan, the trusted employé—no one would think of such a thing. He had simply been the victim of a clever substitution. He was entirely blameless. Naturally! That would be the way Meridan would reason, and that would be the way they would figure he had reasoned when they read the letter from 'a friend' that we are sending to-night, and which they will receive in the morning. Meridan did have an ample opportunity to effect the substitution himself. The letter simply suggests a close inspection of the wrappers for finger prints, and directs attention to Apartment B, on the ground floor of The Linden—a rather fashionable abode for a young and newly married bank clerk—where there might possibly be found certain articles such as, say, a counterfeit of the bank's seal, a quantity of the bank's special dark-green wax, and some superfluous sheets of the bank's particular wrapping paper!”
There was utter silence from the cellar below for an instant, then there came a callous guffaw.
“Some plant, all right!” applauded a voice hoarsely. “And it was twenty-five thousand dollars, you said, wasn't it, chief?”