The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 1 — page 77: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE GILDED TRAP. and a lot of other important mail. And he’s put the key of the stamp-drawer in his desk and then forgotten it. He hasn’t the price of the stamps on him, so all the mail can lie here from Saturday afternoond”’ “How did that happen?” Bennet de- manded. He was of the sort who do not easily display wrath. Now he merely raised his eyebrows as if irritated more by the row than the cause of it. His query was di- rected at Evans. , “T don’t know how it happened,” Evans confessed. ‘I know I did not leave the key in my desk. I hunted through it when I couldn’t find the key where it’s always kept on the back of Mr. Mercer’s. I hadn’t enough money to buy the needed stamps. I tried to telephone Mr. Wheelock about it, but could not get him. I—” | “Well, don’t- waste any more time about it. It seems to me it’s very care- less; though. If such a thing happens again, Wheelock, just fire somebody. We can’t have that sort of thing in this place.” Bennet turned back to the front of the bank. “ That’s better than I’d have done for you,” snapped Wheelock. ‘ You’re lucky he came in and saved you from being fired now.” He stood as if waiting for some answer, then turned into his own office, next be- hind that of the president. And Mercer gave vent to a little laugh. It was the last straw on the back of the overpatient drudge. Evans suddenly saw red. From his lips burst a string of oaths such as he had never uttered in his life before. ; All the petty tyrannies, all the extra jobs Mercer had heaped upon him, arose before and within him. Upon that weighed the conviction that Mercer held his place solely through favoritism built upon the fact that his uncle was the owner of the bank’s heaviest bulk of deposit. ‘““Some day,” he finished a tirade more vitriolic than Wheelock’s, and only absurd because of the helplessness of fe speaker = | to make it more than a bluster of words - —‘“‘some day Josiah Wilbridge will take his account out of this bank, and I guess something will drop around here.” They were foolish words, sheer bluster; an instant’s reflection would have told him not to utter an insinuation for which he had nothing in the way of proof. They frightened him a little when he had spoken them. He stopped, scared at his own boldness and foliy. Then he suddenly realized that he had said something unusual. The face of the man he addressed had been growing red under the torrent of futile vitupera- tion. His lips had parted over grinding teeth, and he had taken a step toward Evans’ s desk with his fists clenching as he came. Now the lips parted farther, and the © ‘teeth fell apart to permit a gasping suck > of air. The face changed color. Evans realized that the whole room seemed charged with static force on the edge of an explosion. Then he perceived that Mercer’s eyes were shifting to something beyond his own face, that in them was some telegraphic appeal. Hardly had this impression—it had no time to become a_ thought— crossed his mind, when he heard Wheelock’s voice again. “Get back to your work, you fellows,” the cashier snarled. here.” “Evans, you come > ee CHAPTER III. OPEN SESAME. he followed the cashier Bruce Evans felt something as a mouse no doubt A® would feel, if he had time, when the nib- bling of a cheese-bait is followed by its cataclysmic effect. To hint at the favoritism he suspected had been foolish; .but even more reason- ing consideration could hardly have led him to expect it to result so startlingly. He had spoken rather because he believed (E(0) DOOKS AMG Col