"ArkCovenantPart1" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacClure Victor)

lawful occasions.
The pierman, an old friend of mine called O'Grady, gave me my mooring ticket and
would have held me inconveniently in gossip, but I shook him off and legged it
up Battery Place in pursuit of my father, whose impatience forbade him to wait
for me. It was lucky I overtook him, because a cordon of police had been drawn
around the Wall Street area, east and west from Trinity Place to Pearl Street,
and, I presently discovered, north and south from Beaver Street to Liberty
Street. The police saluted the old man and would have stopped me, but he snapped
one word at them, whereupon they stepped back and let me pass. The presence of
so many policemen at such a distance from the bank made me begin to think that
the robbery was something of an affair.



A Startling Tale
WE went right up Broadway, my father and I. As I walked behind him, I realized
again his great bulk and, tall as I am, I felt for all the world like some
faithful but skinny pup tagging at his heels. All about me were clusters of foot
police round the doors of various buildings. I wanted to stop and find out what
they were doing on guard so far away--as I thought--from the scene of the
robbery, the National Metallurgical being up Broadway at the corner of Liberty
Street, but I hung close to my father in case I were challenged. We arrived at
the door of the bank.
The squad of policemen who were strung across the doorway made an opening for
the president and myself, and I followed him right into his room. We were
immediately joined by Jaxon, officer in charge of the armed guard which was
mounted every night in the bank. Poor Jaxon looked like a man who had just come
out of a bout of fever. He was in a daze.
"Well ?" the old man snapped.
Jaxon simply lifted his arms and let them drop in a gesture pitiful in its
expression of helplessness--especially pitiful since the man normally was alert
as a terrier and sharp as a needle.
"I don't know what to say, Mr. Boon," he gulped. "I just can't understand it."
A quick look at the man made my father suddenly grow kind.
"'Sit down, Jaxon," he said. "Let's get to the bottom of this. When and how did
you first realize that the bank had been robbed?"
"About five o'clock, Mr. Boon. I--I--woke up--"
"You woke up ! Do you mean to tell me you had been asleep?"
"I wish I could say--I musta been doped--me and all the other five guards"
"What! All six of you doped?"
"All of us, Mr. Boon," Jaxon said, sullenly. "And what's more--it looks like
everybody in the district has been doped-- "
"Rubbish!" the old man barked. "Talk sense if you can, ]axon. Who could dope a
whole district?"
"I wish I knew--and I am talking sense, Mr. Boon. As far as I can make out,
everybody between here and Battery Park was asleep between three and five this
morning. Yes--and what's more --this is not the only bank that's been robbed.
The Sub-Treasury, the Guaranty Trust, the Trade Bank, and the Dyers'
National--they've all been entered. All the lot of them."
Jaxon slumped forward in his chair. The old man shot a look at me and signaled