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PETER

A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero

By F. Hopkinson Smith




CHAPTER I


Peter was still poring over his ledger one dark afternoon in December,
his bald head glistening like a huge ostrich egg under the flare of the
overhead gas jets, when Patrick, the night watchman, catching sight of
my face peering through the outer grating, opened the door of the Bank.

The sight so late in the day was an unusual one, for in all the years
that I have called at the Bank--ten, now--no, eleven since we first knew
each other--Peter had seldom failed to be ready for our walk uptown when
the old moon-faced clock high up on the wall above the stove pointed at
four.

"I thought there was something up!" I cried. "What is it, Peter--balance
wrong?"

He did not answer, only waved his hand in reply, his bushy gray eyebrows
moving slowly, like two shutters that opened and closed, as he scanned
the lines of figures up and down, his long pen gripped tight between his
thin, straight lips, as a dog carries a bone.

I never interrupt him when his brain is nosing about like this; it is
better to keep still and let him ferret it out. So I sat down outside
the curved rail with its wooden slats backed by faded green curtains,
close to the big stove screened off at the end of the long room, fixed
one eye on the moon-face and the other on the ostrich egg, and waited.

There are no such banks at the present time--were no others then, and
this story begins not so very many years' ago--A queer, out-of-date,
mouldy old barn of a bank, you would say, this Exeter--for an
institution wielding its influence. Not a coat of paint for half a
century; not a brushful of whitewash for goodness knows how much longer.
As for the floor, it still showed the gullies and grooves, with here
and there a sturdy knot sticking up like a nut on a boiler, marking the
track of countless impatient depositors and countless anxious borrowers,
it may be, who had lock-stepped one behind the other for fifty years
or more, in their journey from the outer door to the windows where the
Peters of the old days, and the Peter of the present, presided over the
funds entrusted to their care.

Well enough in its day, you might have said, with a shrug, as you looked
over its forlorn interior. Well enough in its day! Why, man, old John
Astor, James Beekman, Rhinelander Stewart, Moses Grinnell, and a lot of
just such worthies--men whose word was as good as their notes--and
whose notes were often better than the Government's, presided over its
destinies, and helped to stuff the old-fashioned vault with wads of
gilt-edged securities--millions in value if you did but know it--and
making it what it is to-day. If you don't believe the first part of my
statement, you've only to fumble among the heap of dusty ledgers piled
on top of the dusty shelves; and if you doubt the latter part, then try
to buy some of the stock and see what you have to pay for it. Although
the gas was turned off in the directors' room, I could still see
from where I sat the very mahogany table under which these same
ruffle-shirted, watch-fobbed, snuff-taking old fellows tucked their
legs when they decided on who should and who should not share the bank's
confidence.

And the side walls and surroundings were none the less shabby and quite
as dilapidated. Even the windows had long since given up the fight
to maintain a decent amount of light, and as for the grated opening
protected by iron shutters which would have had barely room to swing
themselves clear of the building next door, no Patrick past or present
had ever dared loosen their bolts for a peep even an inch wide into the
canyon below, so gruesome was the collection of old shoes, tin cans,
broken bottles and battered hats which successive generations had
hurried into the narrow un-get-at-able space that lay between the two
structures.

Indeed the only thing inside or out of this time-worn building which the
most fertile of imaginations could consider as being at all up to date
was the clock. Not its face--that was old-timey enough with its sun,
moon and stars in blue and gold, and the name of the Liverpool maker
engraved on its enamel; nor its hands, fiddle-shaped and stiff, nor
its case, which always reminded me of a coffin set up on end awaiting
burial--but its strike. Whatever divergences the Exeter allowed itself
in its youth, or whatever latitude or longitude it had given its
depositors, and that, we may be sure, was precious little so long as
that Board of Directors was alive, there was no wabbling or wavering, no
being behind time, when the hour hand of the old clock reached three and
its note of warning rang out.

Peter obeyed the ominous sound and closed his Teller's window with a
gentle bang. Patrick took notice and swung to the iron grating of the
outer door. You might peer in and beg ever so hard--unless, of course,
you were a visitor like myself, and even then Peter would have to give
his consent--you might peer through, I say, or tap on the glass, or you
might plead that you were late and very sorry, but the ostrich egg never
turned in its nest nor did the eyebrows vibrate. Three o'clock was three
o'clock at the Exeter, and everybody might go to the devil--financially,
of course--before the rule would be broken. Other banks in panicky
times might keep a side door open until four, five or six--that is, the
bronze-rail, marble-top, glass-front, certify-your-checks-as-early-as-
ten-in-the-morning-without-a-penny-on-deposit kind of banks--but not the
Exeter--that is, not with Peter's consent--and Peter was the Exeter so
far as his department was concerned--and had been for nearly thirty
years--twenty as bookkeeper, five as paying teller and five as receiving
teller.

And the regularity and persistency of this clock! Not only did it
announce the hours, but it sounded the halves and quarters, clearing its
throat with a whirr like an admonitory cough before each utterance.
I had samples of its entire repertoire as I sat there:

One...two...three...four...five--then half an hour later a whir-r and a
single note. "Half-past five," I said to myself. "Will Peter never find
that mistake?" Once during the long wait the night watchman shifted his
leg--he was on the other side of the stove--and once Peter reached up
above his head for a pile of papers, spreading them out before him under
the white glare of the overhead light, then silence again, broken only
by the slow, dogged tock-tick, tock-tick, or the sagging of a hot coal
adjusting itself for the night.

Suddenly a cheery voice rang out and Peter's hands shot up above his
head.

"Ah, Breen & Co.! One of those plaguey sevens for a nine. Here we are!
Oh, Peter Grayson, how often have I told you to be careful! Ah, what
a sorry block of wood you carry on your shoulders. I won't be a minute
now, Major." A gratuitous compliment on the part of my friend, I being
a poor devil of a contractor without military aspirations of any kind.
"Well, well, how could I have been so stupid. Get ready to close up,
Patrick. No, thank you, Patrick, my coat's inside; I'll fetch it."

He was quite another man now, closing the great ledger with a bang;
shouldering it as Moses did the Tables of the Law, and carrying it into
the big vault behind him--big enough to back a buggy into had the great
door been wider--shooting the bolts, whirring the combination into
so hopeless and confused a state that should even the most daring and
expert of burglars have tried his hand or his jimmy on its steel plating
he would have given up in despair (that is unless big Patrick fell
asleep--an unheard-of occurrence) and all with such spring and
joyousness of movement that had I not seen him like this many times
before I would have been deluded into the belief that the real Peter
had been locked up in the dismal vault with the musty books and that an
entirely different kind of Peter was skipping about outside.

But that was nothing to the air with which he swept his papers into the
drawer of his desk, brushed away the crumpled sheets upon which he
had figured his balance, and darted to the washstand behind the narrow
partition. Nor could it be compared to the way in which he stripped
off his black bombazine office-coat with its baggy pockets--quite a
disreputable-looking coat I must say--taking it by the nape of the neck,
as if it were some loathsome object to be got rid of, and hanging it
upon a hook behind him; nor to the way in which he pulled up his shirt
sleeves and plunged his white, long-fingered, delicately modeled hands
into the basin, as if cleanliness were a thing to be welcomed as a
part of his life. These carefully dried, each finger by itself--not
forgetting the small seal ring on the little one--he gave an extra
polish to his glistening pate with the towel, patted his fresh,
smooth-shaven cheeks with an unrumpled handkerchief which he had
taken from his inside pocket, carefully adjusted his white neck-cloth,
refastening the diamond pin--a tiny one but clear as a baby's tear--put
on his frock-coat with its high collar and flaring tails, took down
his silk hat, gave it a flourish with his handkerchief, unhooked his
overcoat from a peg behind the door (a gray surtout cut something like
the first Napoleon's) and stepped out