CHAPTER XXIII
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
While Kusiak slept that night the wind shifted. It came roaring acrossthe range and drove before it great scudding clouds heavily laden withsleety snow. The howling storm snuffed out the moonlight as if it hadbeen a tallow dip and fought and screamed around the peaks, whirlingdown the gulches with the fury of a blizzard.
From dark till dawn the roar of the wind filled the night. Beforemorning heavy drifts had wiped out the roads and sheeted the town invirgin white unbroken by trails or furrows.
With the coming of daylight the tempest abated. Kusiak got into itsworking clothes and dug itself out from the heavy blanket of white thathad tucked it in. By noon the business of the town was under way again.That which would have demoralized the activities of a Southern city madelittle difference to these Arctic Circle dwellers. Roads were cleared,paths shoveled, stores opened. Children in parkas and fur coats troopedto school and studied through the short afternoon by the aid of electriclight.
Dusk fell early and with it came a scatter of more snow. Mrs. Selfridgegave a dinner-dance at the club that night and her guests came in fursof great variety and much value. The hostess outdid herself to makethe affair the most elaborate of the season. Wally had brought thefavors in from Seattle and also the wines. Nobody in Kusiak of anysocial importance was omitted from the list of invited except GordonElliot. Even the grumpy old cashier of Macdonald's bank--an old bachelorwho lived by himself in rooms behind those in which the banking wasdone--was persuaded to break his custom and appear in a rusty old dresssuit of the vintage of '95.
The grizzled cashier--his name was Robert Milton--left the clubhouseearly for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down.Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. Hisbrain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read"Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the readingtogether would make him drowsy.
Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked thedoor. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stoppedhim halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for arepetition of the noise. It came once more--the low, dull rasping ofa file.
Shivers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head tothe roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank--at two o'clock in themorning--with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, broughtup in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the maligntragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quakedas he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only alocked door stood between him and violent ruffians.
But though his knees trembled beneath him and the sickness of fear wasgripping his heart, Robert Milton had in him the dynamic spark thatmakes a man. He tiptoed to his desk and with shaking fingers gripped therevolver that lay in a drawer.
The cashier stood there for a moment, moistening his dry lips withhis tongue and trying to swallow the lump that rose to his throat andthreatened to stop his breathing. He braced himself for the plunge,then slowly trod across the room to the inner, locked door. The palsiedfingers of his left hand could scarce turn the key.
It seemed to him that the night was alive with the noise he made inturning the lock and opening the door. The hinges grated and the floorsqueaked beneath the fall of his foot as he stood at the threshold.
Two men were in front of the wire grating which protected the big safethat filled the alcove to the right. One held a file and the other acandle. Their blank, masked faces were turned toward Milton, and eachof them covered him with a weapon.
"W-what are you doing here?" quavered the cashier.
"Drop that gun," came the low, sharp command from one of them.
Under the menace of their revolvers the heart of Milton pumped waterinstead of blood. The strength oozed out of him. His body swayed and heshut his eyes. A hand groped for the casement of the door to steady him.
"Drop it--quick."
Some old ancestral instinct in the bank cashier rose out of his panicto destroy him. He wanted to lie down quietly in a faint. But his mindasserted its mastery over the weakling body. In spite of his terror, ofhis flaccid will, he had to keep the faith. He was guardian of the bankfunds. At all costs he must protect them.
His forearm came up with a jerk. Two shots rang out almost together. Thecashier sagged back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor.
* * * * *
The guests of Mrs. Selfridge danced well into the small hours. TheCalifornia champagne that Wally had brought in stimulated a gayety thatwas balm to his wife's soul. She wanted her dinner-dance to be smart, tohave the atmosphere she had found in the New York cabarets. If everybodytalked at once, she felt they were having a good time. If nobodylistened to anybody else, it proved that the affair was a screamingsuccess.
Mrs. Wally was satisfied as she bade her guests good-bye and saw thempass into the heavy snow that was again falling. They all assured herthat there had not been so hilarious a party in Kusiak. One old-timer, atrifle lit up by reason of too much hospitality, phrased his enjoyment alittle awkwardly.
"It's been great, Mrs. Selfridge. Nothing like it since the days of theopen dance hall."
Mrs. Mallory hastily suppressed an internal smile and stepped into thebreach. "_How_ do you do it?" she asked her hostess enviously.
"My dear, if _you_ say it was a success--"
"What else could one say?"
Genevieve Mallory always preferred to tell the truth when it would dojust as well. Now it did better, since it contributed to her own ironicsense of amusement. Macdonald had once told her that Mrs. Selfridge madehim think of the saying, "Monkey sees, monkey does." The effervescentlittle woman had never had an original idea in her life.
Most of those who had been at the dance slept late. They were obliviousof the fact that the storm had quickened again into a howling gale.Nor did they know the two bits of news that were passing up and downthe main street and being telephoned from house to house. One of theitems was that the stage for Katma had failed to reach the roadhouse atSmith's Crossing. The message had come over the long-distance telephoneearly in the morning. The keeper of the roadhouse added his privatefears that the stage, crawling up the divide as the blizzard swept down,must have gone astray and its occupants perished. The second bit of newswas local. For the first time since Robert Milton had been cashier thebank had failed to open on the dot. The snow had not been cleared fromthe walk in front and no smoke was pouring from the chimney of thebuilding.