“Oh, it belongs to some of the clerks, I suppose,” answered the president. “Often they go out of town for week-end visits. To save time so as not to have to go back home, or to their boarding-places, after the bank closes, they bring their valises down here with their change of clothes in, and take the train from here. That is nothing.”
“No,” agreed Larry. His gaze went farther about the cage and rested on the open door of a sort of closet, or vault. It was practically a vault, for there was a heavy iron portal to it.
“Is that where you keep the bank’s money, Mr. Bentfield?” Larry asked, with a smile. “It does not seem to be a very safe place.”
“No, that’s a vault where we keep old ledgers that are out of use. We file them away merely for reference. They are seldom looked at, and sometimes we burn them up. The vault is fire-proof, and that’s the most that can be said of it. I don’t know why the door wasn’t closed to-night. Some one was careless.”
Hardly knowing why he did it, Larry walked into this vault. There was an incandescent lamp swinging from the ceiling by a green cord. The young reporter reached up, and switched it on. He still had no particular object in his actions. It was more to cover every bit of the ground, so as to be in a position to testify accurately, in case he was called on as a witness, as would be probable.
There were rows and rows of old ledgers on the shelves of the vault. Big, heavy books, some of them nearly a foot thick. Their gold-lettered backs stood out in the glow of the electric light.
“I shouldn’t want to carry many of those books around,” said Larry, as he raised his hand to push against one of the largest, and so judge of its weight. “They are pretty heavy. I should think——”
But he never finished that sentence. For, as his fingers came in contact with the back of the old ledger it moved—it slid in on the shelf, and, not only did that book move, but also the one next to it. And Larry knew, full well, that not by a mere pressure of his fingers could he move one of the heavy books on the shelf, to say nothing of two.
“What is it? What is the matter?” demanded Mr. Bentfield, attracted by something strange in the young reporter’s action. “Have you found anything of importance?”
Larry did not answer. He tried to push a book that stood next to the two which he had been able to move with such ease. He found it impossible.