II THE BANK WRECKER
Billy Gard was not thinking of business at all. As a healthy, ultranormal young man, he was drowsing over his breakfast as one has a way of doing when at peace with the world and when unaroused by any call of the present. He had reached the rolls and coffee stage of his meal in a spirit of detachment that took no account of the somewhat garish flashiness of the hotel dining-room in this typical hostelry of a city that had become noted as a maker of industrial millionaires. Then as his glance idly trailed among the other breakfasters, it automatically picked up an incident that flashed a light into his dormant brain and brought it to full consciousness.
A spoon had started from a grape fruit to the mouth of the tall, curly-haired man two tables away. Half way on its journey the hand which held it had twitched violently and spilled most of the contents. The brown eyes of the man stole out somewhat furtively to learn if anybody had noticed his nervousness.
Special Agent Billy Gard now gazed at the ceiling, but his mind was busy. It was running over the facts that it contained with relation to Bayard Alexander, who was this morning not himself and apprehensive lest the fact be noticed. For Alexander was of the class of men of whom it was his business to know. He was cashier of the Second National bank and Uncle Sam keeps a pretty close watch on such institutions when they happen to be located in communities of feverish activity.
So the special agent recalled that the tall man with the damp curls was a moving spirit in the city, an important instrument in its development, a man of many philanthropies, personal friend of a United States Senator, cashier and active head of one of the most powerful financial institutions in the community. He was a man of very great energy, but one who led a normal, wholesome life and who, at the age of forty-five, seemed just coming into his stride. The bank examiner, Gard recalled, had steadily given the Second National a clean bill of health.
Why, then, should Alexander be nervous and, granting him that privilege, why should he fear its being noticed?
All of which was the seemingly illogical reason why Gard went to Wheeling that very night and was not seen about the metropolis for a week thereafter.