"A to M" went on growling and sputtering, like a leaky shower-bath.
"That's all very well," said Geoffrey; "but you fellows are playing a trick on me, and I don't scare worth a cent."
Everybody could hear this conversation. Geoffrey then stepped on a stool and leaned over the partition, smiling, and seized the hard-working receiving-teller by the hair.
"Come, you beggar, I tell you I don't scare. Just hand over the money. Really, it's a very poor kind of a joke."
"What's a poor kind of a joke? Seizing me by the hair?"
Geoffrey looked at him smilingly, as if he did not believe him and still thought there had been a plan to abstract the money and frighten him.
"Well, I don't care much personally; but that packet of fifty thousand is gone, and if any fellow is playing the fool he had better bring it back."
Several of the clerks now came round to his wicket. This sort of talk sounds very unpleasant in a bank.
"Where did you leave the bills?" they asked.
"Right here," said Geoffrey, laying his hand on a little desk close beside the wicket, opening into the box in which Jack had worked.