The window men greeted their customers with infrequent smiles, with caution and reserve so great that it was positively chilly. Suspicion seemed in the air. The bank's reputation for guarding the sanctity of wealth seemed to rest heavily upon each pair of bowed shoulders. Even the stenographers were unhandsome women, weary-eyed, drearily efficient, and obviously respectable.
As befitted so old and conservative a New Orleans institution, much of its business was transacted in French.
The business customers of this bank found their affairs handled coldly, efficiently, with an inhuman precision that was admirable. It was good for business, and they liked it. There were no mistakes.
People who were accustomed to dealing with bankers of cordial smile and courteous word, people who liked to walk into a bank and to be met with a personal greeting, did not come here, nor were they wanted here. The Exeter National was a place for business, not for courtesy. It was absolutely precise, cold, inhuman, and spelled business from the ground up. Its oldest customer could not buy a draft on Paris or London or other of the bank's correspondents without paying the required fee. The wealthiest depositor could not expect to overdraw his checking account one dollar without being required to settle up before the next day was gone. Loans were made hesitatingly, grudgingly, and of necessity, always on security and never on character.
Such was the Exeter National. Its character was reflected in the cold faces at its windows, and the chance customers who entered its sacred portals were duly cowed and put in their proper place. Most of them were, that is. Occasionally some intrepid soul appeared who seemed impervious to the gloomy chill, who seemed even to resent it. One of these persons was now standing in the lobby and staring around with a cool impudence which drew unfavourable glances from the clerks.
He was a decently dressed fellow, obviously no customer of this sacrosanct place, obviously a stranger to its interior. Beneath a rakishly cocked soft hat beamed a countenance that bore a look of self-assured impertinent deviltry. After one look at that countenance the assistant cashier crooked a hasty finger at the floor guard, who nodded and walked over to the intruder with a polite query.
"Can I help you, sir?"
The intruder turned, favoured the guard with a cool stare, then broke into a laugh and a flood of Creole dialect.
"Why, if it isn't old Lacroix from Carencro! And look at the brass buttons—diable! You must own this place, hein? la tchè chatte poussé avec temps—the cat's tail grows in time, I see! You remember me?"
"Ben Chacherre!" exclaimed the guard, losing his dignity for an instant. "Why—you vaurien, you! You who disappeared from the parish and became a vagrant——"