A Rock in the Baltic | Page 2

from her face, while a deep sigh marked the
passing of a crisis.
At this juncture an extraordinary thing happened. The cashier counted
out some golden coins, and passed them through the aperture toward
their new owner.
"Thank you," said the girl. Then, without touching the money, she
turned like one hypnotized, her unseeing eyes still taking no heed of the
big Lieutenant, and passed rapidly out of the bank, The cashier paid no
regard to this abandonment of treasure. He was writing some
hieroglyphics on the cashed check.
"By Jove!" gasped the Lieutenant aloud, springing forward as he spoke,
sweeping the coins into his hand, and bolting for the door. This was an
action which would have awakened the most negligent cashier had he
been in a trance. Automatically he whisked out a revolver which lay in
an open drawer under his hand.
"Stop, you scoundrel, or I fire!" he shouted, but the Lieutenant had
already disappeared. Quick as thought the cashier darted into the
passage, and without waiting to unfasten the low door which separated
the public and private rooms of the bank, leaped over it, and,
bareheaded, gave chase. A. British naval officer in uniform, rapidly
overtaking a young woman, quite unconscious of his approach,
followed by an excited, bareheaded man with a revolver in his grasp,
was a sight which would quickly have collected a crowd almost
anywhere, but it happened to be the lunch hour, and the inhabitants of
that famous summer resort were in-doors; thus, fortunately, the street
was deserted. The naval officer was there because the hour of the
midday meal on board the cruiser did not coincide with lunch time on
shore. The girl was there because it happened to be the only portion of

the day when she could withdraw unobserved from the house in which
she lived, during banking hours, to try her little agitating financial
experiment. The cashier was there because the bank had no lunch hour,
and because he had just witnessed the most suspicious circumstance
that his constantly alert eye had ever beheld. Calm and imperturbable
as a bank cashier may appear to the outside public, he is a man under
constant strain during business hours. Each person with whom he is
unacquainted that confronts him at his post is a possible robber who at
any moment may attempt, either by violence or chicanery, to filch the
treasure he guards. The happening of any event outside the usual
routine at once arouses a cashier's distrust, and this sudden flight of a
stranger with money which did not belong to him quite justified the
perturbation of the cashier. From that point onward, innocence of
conduct or explanation so explicit as to satisfy any ordinary man,
becomes evidence of more subtle guilt to the mind of a bank official.
The ordinary citizen, seeing the Lieutenant finally overtake and accost
the hurrying girl, raise his cap, then pour into her outstretched hand the
gold he had taken, would have known at once that here was an
every-day exercise of natural politeness. Not so the cashier. The farther
he got from the bank, the more poignantly did he realize that these two
in front, both strangers to him, had, by their combined action, lured him,
pistol and all, away from his post during the dullest hour of the day. It
was not the decamping with those few pieces of gold which now
troubled him: it was fear of what might be going on behind him. He
was positive that these two had acted in conjunction. The uniform worn
by the man did not impose upon him. Any thief could easily come by a
uniform, and, as his mind glanced rapidly backwards over the various
points of the scheme, he saw how effectual the plan was: first, the
incredible remissness of the woman in leaving her gold on the counter;
second, the impetuous disappearance of the man with the money; and,
third, his own heedless plunge into the street after them. He saw the
whole plot in a flash: he had literally leaped into the trap, and during
his five or ten minutes' absence, the accomplices of the pair might have
overawed the unarmed clerks, and walked off with the treasure. His
cash drawer was unlocked, and even the big safe stood wide open.
Surprise had as effectually lured him away as if he had been a country
bumpkin. Bitterly and breathlessly did he curse his own precipitancy.

His duty was to guard the bank, yet it had not been the bank that was
robbed, but, at best a careless woman who had failed to pick up her
money. He held the check for it, and the loss, if any, was hers, not the
bank's, yet here he was, running bareheaded down the street