“Hell to pay!” he panted. “McNamara’s taking your dust out of the bank.”
“What’s that?” they cried.
“I goes into the bank just now for an assay on some quartz samples. The assayer is busy, and I walk back into his room, and while I’m there in trots McNamara in a hurry. He don’t see me, as I’m inside the private office, and I overhear him tell them to get his dust out of the vault quick.”
“We’ve got to stop that,” said Glenister. “If he takes ours, he’ll take the Swedes’, too. Simms, you run up to the Pioneer Company and tell them about it. If he gets that gold out of there, nobody knows what’ll become of it. Come on, Bill.”
He snatched his hat and ran out of the room, followed by the others. That the loose-jointed Slapjack did his work with expedition was evidenced by the fact that the Swedes were close upon their heels as the two entered the bank. Others had followed, sensing something unusual, and the space within the doors filled rapidly. At the disturbance the clerks suspended their work, the barred doors of the safe-deposit vault clanged to, and the cashier laid hand upon the navy Colt’s at his elbow. “What’s the matter?” he cried.
“We want Alec McNamara,” said Glenister.
The manager of the bank appeared, and Glenister spoke to him through the heavy wire netting.
“Is McNamara in there?”
No one had ever known Morehouse to lie. “Yes, sir.” He spoke hesitatingly, in a voice full of the slow music of Virginia. “He is in here. What of it?”
“We hear he’s trying to move that dust of ours and we won’t stand for it. Tell him to come out and not hide in there like a dog.”