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Updated: June 20, 2025
He came out with the bulky, old-fashioned leather note case stamped on the back in gilt letters, "Bills Discounted." In this were the notes due the bank with their attached securities, and the major, in his rough way, dumped the lot upon his desk and began to sort them over. By this time Nettlewick had finished his count of the cash.
You may hold me personally responsible for their absence." Nettlewick felt a slight thrill. He had not expected this. He had struck a momentous trail when the hunt was drawing to a close. "Ah!" said the examiner. He waited a moment, and then continued: "May I ask you to explain more definitely?" "The securities were taken by me," repeated the major.
Presently Nettlewick was aware of a big man towering above him at his elbow a man sixty years of age, rugged and hale, with a rough, grizzled beard, a mass of gray hair, and a pair of penetrating blue eyes that confronted the formidable glasses of the examiner without a flicker. "Er Major Kingman, our president er Mr. Nettlewick," said the cashier. Two men of very different types shook hands.
He did not speak at once, and Nettlewick felt, perhaps, that the ice could be broken by something so near its own temperature as the voice of official warning. "Your statement," he began, "since you have failed to modify it, amounts, as you must know, to a very serious thing. You are aware, also, of what my duty must compel me to do.
There was something so icy and swift, so impersonal and uncompromising about this man that his very presence seemed an accusation. He looked to be a man who would never make nor overlook an error. Mr. Nettlewick first seized the currency, and with a rapid, almost juggling motion, counted it by packages. Then he spun the sponge cup toward him and verified the count by bills.
Nettlewick, you can't make a friend of a thief, but neither can you make a thief of a friend, all at once." The examiner made no answer. At that moment was heard the shrill whistle of a locomotive pulling into the depot. That was the train on the little, narrow-gauge road that struck into San Rosario from the south. The major cocked his ear and listened for a moment, and looked at his watch.
An official report of the matter would be an absurdity. And, somehow, he felt that he would never know anything more about the matter than he did then. Frigidly, mechanically, Nettlewick examined the securities, found them to tally with the notes, gathered his black wallet, and rose to depart.
Nettlewick felt that he owed it to him at least to listen if he wished to talk. With his elbow on the arm of his chair, and his square chin resting upon the fingers of his right hand, the bank examiner waited to hear the confession of the president of the First National Bank of San Rosario.
He saw some one in the Stockmen's National Bank reach and draw a yellow shade down the whole length of its plate-glass, big front window, although the position of the sun did not seem to warrant such a defensive movement against its rays. Nettlewick sat up straight in his chair. He had listened patiently, but without consuming interest, to the major's story.
Opposite hung the major's old cavalry saber that he had carried at Shiloh and Fort Pillow. Placing a chair for Nettlewick, the major seated himself by the window, from which he could see the post-office and the carved limestone front of the Stockmen's National.
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