"Nothing but blank brown paper!" he screamed, hoarsely. He collapsed, falling with his arms across the table, his eyes bulging as though an epileptic seizure threatened him.
With a fearful gasp Henry Hawkins snatched up another package, tearing it nervously apart. Conroy did the same with the third package. In each case the result was the same.
"Three million dollars worth of brown paper!" clicked one of the bank examiners.
Gaston Giddings, moaning piteously, turned, tottering back to his desk, where he fell heavily into his chair, next letting his head fall forward on his arms. Messrs. Hawkins and Conroy recovered much more quickly. They darted out into the counting room, but presently came back to report.
Frank Rollings had been gone more than an hour. When he left, he had carried a satchel. Some fifteen minutes before leaving the bank he had been in the main vault, the huge steel door of which he had afterwards closed. Conroy was now in that vault, with several subordinates, engaged in making a rapid survey of the other contents.
In the president's room Henry Hawkins, who no longer waited to consult the almost paralyzed young president, went swiftly to the telephone. The Bankers' Protective Association, advised by telephone, swiftly had half a dozen detectives scurrying to the bayside, to take up the trail at the ferry that furnishes the sole avenue to the east. Others of these detectives covered the docks of vessels due to sail that day from the port of San Francisco.
Nor did the bank examiners present fail to do their duty promptly. Within a few minutes a United States assistant district attorney and two deputy marshals arrived at the bank.
From the first moment none who had knowledge of the affair believed Frank Rollings, the absent cashier, to be innocent. The assistant district attorney swiftly drew up an information, which Giddings and Hawkins signed under oath. The law's officer rushed off to get from a United States judge a brief warrant authorizing the arrest of the cashier, for the Sheepmen's was a national bank, and the robbery came under the jurisdiction of the United States courts.
Then came a telephone message from the Banker's Association: