"I'll tell you what I mean." Roland clenched both fists and thrust his chin out pugnaciously. "I'd been a-goin' steady with Josie Lockwood for more'n a year before you come here and thought that, on account of her money, you could sneak in and cut me out...."
"Was her money the reason you were after her, Roly?"
"What——?" The question brought Roland momentarily up in the wind. "'Tain't none of your business if it was!" he snapped, recovering. "But here's what I'm gettin' at." He tapped his breast-pocket with a sneer of bucolic triumph. "Just about ten months ago," he continued meaningly, "they was a cashier skipped out of the Longacre National Bank in Noo Yawk, and they ain't got no track of him yet."
So this was why Roland had been so assiduous a student of the back files in the Citizen office!
"Indeed?"
"Yes, indeed. I had my suspicions all along, but didn't say nothin', but just to-day I got a description of him, and the description just fits, Mr. Mortimer Henry."
"Just fits Mr. Mortimer Henry? But what has that——?"
"Ah, don't you try to seem too darn' innocent," Roland snarled. "You can't fool me!"
A light dawned upon Nat, and laughter flooded his being, although outwardly he remained imperturbable—merely mildly curious. But his fingers were itching.
"So you think I'm the absconding cashier, eh, Roly?"