The teller laughed outright at this.
"You are showing wonderfully discreet abilities Richard, and I can easily prophesy a great future for you. It happened by the merest chance that I had met Mr. Cheever before, down in Boston, when he was known under another name," he said, mysteriously.
"What? Mr. Cheever—isn't that his real name, and he a bank examiner?"
"So-called just at present. Dick, he begged me not to say a word to any one in the bank, but I told him I must take you into my confidence, since we were working this thing together. He also declared that your suspicions might be well founded, and that he would take measures to investigate the interior of Mr. Graylock's home without that gentleman's knowledge."
Then light suddenly burst in upon Dick.
"I begin to see what you are hinting at—he is no bank examiner at all, but the officer Mr. Gibbs said he would have to send for!" he exclaimed.
"Exactly; a detective who is accustomed to handling such cases, and who was once a genuine bank examiner, so that he knows just how to go about these things so as not to excite the suspicions of bookkeeper or tellers. Payson does not suspect the truth, nor do any of the others. Indeed, I am not sure that even the cashier knows it. So you see he is able to work inside the bank without suspicion being aroused as to his real character. Of course, his idea was that it had been an inside job, for it really seemed impossible that any one outside could have taken the papers from the vault. As I said it happened that I knew him, and he immediately bound me to secrecy. But after I had a chance to talk with him this noon he drew around to our opinion, to the effect that the securities which Mr. Graylock claims were stolen from his packet never went into the safe at all!"
Dick was vastly interested in all this news.
He had never seen a real live detective in his whole life, and the way in which this smooth gentleman seemed to be working in his capacity as a regular bank examiner was simply wonderful, in his opinion.
"If all this is so I don't wonder that you told him what we suspected. And you say, Mr. Winslow that he took to the idea at once?" he asked, breathlessly.