“No, mom, you can’t, Mrs. Aydelot. Let me show you why.”
He opened the drawer of his rickety desk and out of a mass of papers he fished up a copy of the Cincinnati Enquirer, six weeks old. “Look at this,” and he thrust it into Virginia’s hand.
The head-lines were large, but the story was brief. The 115 failure of the Cloverdale bank, the disappearance of the trusted cashier, the loss of deposits—a story too common to need detail. Virginia Aydelot never knew until that moment how much that reserve fund had really meant to her. She had need of the inherited pride of the Thaines now.
“The papers are not always accurate,” she said quietly.
“No, mom. But Mr. Smith here has interests in Cloverdale. He’s just come from there, and he says it’s even worse than this states it.”
Virginia looked toward Mr. Smith, who nodded assent.
“The failure is complete. Fortunately, I lost but little,” he said.
“Why hasn’t Mr. Aydelot been notified?” she demanded.
“It does seem queer he wasn’t,” Thomas Smith assented.
Something in his face made Virginia distrust him more than she distrusted Darley Champers.