"I'll take you over and bring you back," interposed Adine Lough. "I want to hear that man sass you over the phone, if he can get in a word edgewise, and you on the other end of the line."
Davy laughed with the others. "Well, the parade starts promptly at eleven, the doors to the Big Show open at one, let's git goin'," said the little man, simulating a circus announcer.
Adine went to the house for her hat. Potter maneuvered her roadster out to the driveway, after checking the gas and oil. Then a flushed girl, a midget man, and an aging Nestor of other days drove away on a mission that pleased them all.
12[ToC]
The State Bank of Adot had been an important institution in an unimportant community. It employed three people and enlarged its chartered rights to perform many services in the little community. In the prosperous days following the World War it added to its surplus and paid fair dividends to scattered owners of limited shares. Its service was appreciated by home folks; its prosperity attracted the attention of Aaron Logan.
Logan, with limited capital and an alert mind, operated a petty loan business. He traded for what-have-you. In the early twenties, he exchanged his chips and whetstones for single shares of bank stock. Arriving at a favorable status, he persuaded the bank directors to enlarge the capital to absorb his petty loan business. In 1924, he quit the "street" to accept a cushioned chair in the rear room of the bank. His experience would add caution and prudence.
For, just now, the cattle business was slipping; prices were falling below the cost of production. Home folks were not buying; the rescued European nations forgot, as usual, their benefactor and dickered for meager supplies of meats and grains at other marts. America's foreign trade sank to a new low. Her thousands of merchant craft rocked listlessly and rusted quickly in stagnant waters while the false prophets of Mammon urged idle capital to pyramid a luring stock market to a glorious peak and final crash.
The banks of America were the first to feel the pinch. Some waited too long—waited to dole out to a frenzied public all available cash and close the doors too late for solvency. But not so with the Bank of Adot. Aaron Logan got his order for receivership before his public went frantic and while cash was yet available. Under court order he was proceeding to thaw out the frozen items of assets, and planned to open the institution to those who would limit their withdrawals to stated amounts. He made progress in these endeavors until he bumped into the stone wall of the Barrow loan. Really, it wasn't a giant sum, as such sums are rated in banking circles, but in the present instance it represented the difference between opening a bank or keeping it closed.