"ArkCovenantPart2" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacClure Victor)

CHAPTER TWO OF ARK OF THE COVENANT
Clues and False Leads


IT WAS around quarter past eight o'clock when I got back to the National
Metallurgical. I found it difficult to realize that only an hour had passed
since I had landed with my father at the seaplane jetty on the west side of
Battery Park, and I had a feeling that the time should have been close to noon
at least, for the hour had been crammed with incident and impression.
A number of the bank executives had arrived, and the place already had a
flustered air of activity. The chief accountant was with my father, and judged
by the look of him that he was a very scared man. Apparently he and the
president had been calculating the bank's losses, for as I came into the room
the old man drew a firm line under two rows of figures he had written on a small
piece of paper.
"A good haul, Risbridger," my father was saying casually. "Two hundred and
fifty-three thousand, five hundred dollars in gold. Two hundred and thirty-four
thousand, seven hundred in securities. But God knows they didn't take all we
had. You had better see about broadcasting the descriptions and numbers of the
securities, and inform the police. If the thieves have not succeeded in getting
out of the country, we may get a line on them, should they attempt to dispose of
the scrip. See to this at once, will you?"
The white-faced official scurried away, glad to have something to occupy his
mind, and my father turned to me.
I told him everything I had picked up, and he listened without comment until I
had finished.
"M'm," he said. "That's a queer thing about the gold tarnishing. What do you
make of it, son?"
"I don't know quite what to make of it," I told him. "My mind somehow connects
it with whatever was used to dope the watchmen and the police. The stuff would
have to be distributed in such a way that its fumes could be breathed. The whole
affair has such unusual features, it might even prove that if we were to
discover what had sent everyone to sleep, we might land on the thing that
tarnished Jaxon's watch and the policeman's locket. I don't know of anything
that has such an effect on gold, nor of anything capable of producing the
anaesthesia. I'm inclined to think some sort of gas was used. The first
difficulty we're up against is that none of the sufferers were conscious of even
the slightest smell."
"Whew!" my father whistled. "A new gas, eh? If you're right, Jimmy, we're up
against a big thing. When a gang of crooks can put the whole of the Wall Street
district to sleep and get away with it, can you prophesy where the game finds
its limit?"
"It opens up limitless possibilities," I agreed.
"There's no saying where this morning's work will end," the old man mused. "As
it stands, if the other banks have been as easily entered as we have, there's
the makings of a fine old panic."
"If there's going to be ructions, dad--don't you think you'd better meet them in
comfort? What about a bath and breakfast?"
The old man surprised me by letting out a sudden little laugh, with a queer note
in it, as if some hidden chord in his memory had been struck.