Otherwise Phyllis Part 48

At that moment Amzi Montgomery, in his seersucker coat and with his old straw hat tilted to one side, stood at the door of his bank and observed half a dozen men on the steps of the First National. Amzi, a careful student of his fellow-townsmen, was aware that men and women were pa.s.sing into the rival bank in larger numbers than usual, even for a Sat.u.r.day, and that the mellifluous oratory of Alec Waterman had not drawn from the First National corner a score of idlers who evidently felt that the center of interest lay there rather than at the court-house. Amzi planted himself in his favorite chair in the bank window and watched the crowd increase.

By half-past two the town marshal had taken official notice that citizens were gathering about the bank doors, and overflowing from the sidewalk halfway across Main Street, to the interruption of traffic.

Women and girls, with bank-books in their hands or nervously fingering checks, conferred in low tones about the security of their deposits. The Citizens' National and the State Trust Company were also receiving attention from their depositors. As three o'clock approached, the Montgomery Bank filled, and the receiving-teller began to a.s.sist the paying-teller in cashing checks. Amzi lounged along the lines outside, talking to his customers.

"Going to buy automobiles with your money, boys? Thunder! You in town, Jake?"

He greeted them all affably, ignoring their anxiety.

"Boys, I'll have to get a new shop if business keeps on like this."

A depositor who had drawn his money and was anxiously hiding it in his pocket, dropped a silver dollar that rolled away between the waiting lines.

"Never mind, gentlemen, we sweep out every night," said Amzi. "Now, let's all understand each other," he continued, tilting his hat over his left ear, and flourishing his cigar. "It's all right for you folks to come and get your money. The regular closing time of banks in this town is 3 P.M., Sat.u.r.days included. We've got a right to close in fifteen minutes. But just to show there's no hard feeling, I'm going to change the closing hour to-day from 3 P.M. to 3 A.M. Tomorrow's Sunday, and you can tell folks that's got money here that they won't have any trouble getting their change in time to put it in the collection basket to-morrow morning."

A number of depositors, impressed by Amzi's tranquillity, tore up their checks and left the bank. To a woman who asked him what the excitement meant, Amzi explained politely that the town was experiencing what he called a "baby panic."

"As an old friend, Martha, I advise you to leave your money here; if I decide to bust, I'll give you notice."

Along the two lines, that now extended out upon the sidewalk, there was a craning of necks. A demand from one depositor that he repeat to all what he had said to the woman caused Amzi to retire behind the counter.

There he stood upon a chair and talked through the screen,

"I don't blame you folks for being nervous. n.o.body wants to lose his money. Money is hard to get and harder to keep. But I've never lied across this counter to any man, woman, or child"--and then, as though ashamed of this vulgar a.s.sertion of rect.i.tude, he added--"unless they needed to be lied to."

There was laughter at this. The room was packed, and the lines had been broken by the crowd surging in from the street.

"You can all have your money. But I hope you won't spend it foolishly or stick it in the chimney at home where it'll burn up. I ain't going to bust, ladies and gentlemen. This town is all right; it's the best little town in Indiana; sound as Sugar Creek bottom corn. This little sick infant panic we've had to-day will turn over and go to sleep pretty soon. As an old friend and neighbor of you all, I advise you to go home--with your money or without it, just as you like. It's all the same to me."

"How about the First National?" a voice demanded.

Amzi was relighting his cigar. There was a good deal of commotion in the room as many who had been pressing toward the windows withdrew, rea.s.sured by the banker's speech.

Amzi, with one foot on a chair, the other on the note-teller's counter, listened while the question about the First National was repeated.

"I'll say to you folks," said Amzi, his voice clearing and rising to a shrill pipe, "that in my judgment the First National Bank can pay all its claims. In fact--in fact, I'm dead sure of it!"

The crowd began to disperse. Most of those who had drawn their money waited to re-deposit it, and Amzi walked out upon the step to view the situation at the First National, to whose doors a great throng clung stubbornly. The marshal and a policeman were busily occupied in an effort to keep a way open for traffic. Observed by only a few idlers, Tom Kirkwood emerged from the First National's directors' room and walked across to where Amzi stood like a guardian angel before the door of Montgomery's Bank. The briefest colloquy followed between Kirkwood and his quondam brother-in-law.

"It's fixed, Amzi."

"Thunder, Tom; I didn't know you'd got back."

"Got in at one, and have been shut up with Holton ever since. He's seen the light, and we've adjusted his end of the Sycamore business; I'm taking part cash and notes with good collateral. The whole construction crowd have settled, except Charlie, and he'll come in--he's got to. The settlement makes the traction company good--it's only a matter now of spending the money we've got back in putting the property in shape."

"That's good, Tom." And Amzi looked toward the courthouse clock. "Bill say anything about me?"

"Yes; he most certainly did. He wants you to go over and take charge of his bank!"

"Thunder! It's sort o' funny, Tom, how things come round."

Kirkwood smiled at Amzi's calmness. He drew from his pocket a folded piece of paper.

"Here's your stock certificate, Amzi. Bill asked me to hand it to you.

It's in due form. He wanted me to ask you to be as easy on him as you could. I think what he meant was that he'd like it to look like a _bona-fide_, voluntary sale. Those ten shares give you the control, and the Sycamore claim wiped out the rest of his holdings. I'm afraid," he added, "there's going to be some trouble. Where's Phil?"

"Probably at the court-house hearing her Uncle Alec talk about the money devils. We ought to let a few banks bust, just to encourage Alec.

Thunder! Phil's all right!"

CHAPTER XXIII

PLEASANT TIMES IN MAIN STREET

Phil, on her way to a tea, reached Main Street shortly before three o'clock. Her forehandedness was due to the fact that her hostess (the wife of the college president) had asked her to perform divers and sundry preliminary offices pertaining to refreshments, and it had occurred to Phil that it would be as well to drop in at the Bartletts'

to see whether Rose had sent the cakes she had contracted to bake for the function, as the soph.o.m.ore who delivered Rose's creations was probably amusing himself at the try-out of baseball material on Mill's Field.

Shopkeepers restlessly pacing the sidewalk before the doors of their neglected stores informed Phil of the meeting at the court-room, and of the panicky rumors. No good reason occurred to Phil for absenting herself from a ma.s.s meeting at which her Uncle Alec was to speak. Phil liked meetings. From the crest of a stack of chicken crates near the freight depot she had heard Albert Jeremiah Beveridge speak when that statesman had vouchsafed ten minutes to the people of Montgomery the preceding autumn. She had heard such redoubtable orators as William Jennings Bryan, Charles Warren Fairbanks, and "Tom" Marshall, and when a Socialist had spoken from the court-house steps on a rainy evening, Phil, then in her last year in high school, had been the sole representative of her s.e.x in the audience.

Waterman was laboriously approaching his peroration when she reached the packed court-room. Men were wedged tightly into the s.p.a.ce reserved for the court officials and the bar, and a number stood on the clerk's desk.

She climbed upon a chair at the back of the room, the better to see and hear. There were other women and girls present--employees of the furniture factory--but it must be confessed that even without their support Phil would not have been embarra.s.sed.

Waterman was in fine fettle, and cheers and applause punctuated his discourse.

"I am not here to arouse cla.s.s hatred, or to set one man against another. We of Montgomery are all friends and neighbors. Many of you have lived here, just as I have, throughout your lives. It is for us to help each other in a neighborly spirit. Factories may close their doors, banks may fail, and credit be shaken, but so long as we may appeal to each other in the old terms of neighborliness and comradeship, nothing can seriously disturb our peace and prosperity.

"It grieves me, however, to be obliged to confess that there are men among us who have not felt the responsibility imposed upon them as trustees for the less fortunate. I have already touched on the immediate plight of those of you who are thrown out of employment, with your just labor claims unpaid. There are others--and some of them are perhaps in this room--who entrusted their savings to the Sycamore Traction Company, and who are now at the mercy of the malevolent powers that invariably control and manipulate such corporations. I shall not be personal; I have no feelings against any of those men. But I say to you, men and women of Montgomery, that when I heard this morning from the lips of an industrious and frugal German mechanic that a certain financier of this town had bought from him a traction bond that represented twenty years of savings--then my blood boiled with righteous indignation.

"My friends, a curious situation exists here. Why is it--why is it, I repeat, while one of our fellow-citizens pretends to be trying to safeguard by legal means all the local interests involved in that traction company, another person who stands close to him is buying the bonds of laborers and mechanics, widows and orphans, at little more than fifty per cent of their face value? My friends, when you find a corrupt lawyer and a rapacious banker in collusion, what chance have the people against them?"

Apparently the people had no chance whatever, in the opinion of the intent auditors. The applause at this point was long continued, and Waterman, feeling that he had struck the right chord, hurried on.

"Who are these men who have plundered their own people, thrust their hands into the pockets of their fellow-citizens, and filched from them the savings of years? Who are they, I say? My friends, in a community like this, where we are all so closely knit together,--where on the Sabbath day we meet in the church porch after rendering thanks unto G.o.d for his mercies,--where in the midweek prayer-meeting we renew and strengthen ourselves for the battle of life,--it is a serious matter to stand in a forum of the people before the tabernacle the law has given us for the defense of our liberties, and impugn the motives of our fellows. I shall not--"

"Name them!" chorused a dozen voices.

Waterman's histrionic sense responded to the demand. With arm uplifted, he deliberated, turning slowly from side to side. He was a master of the niceties of insinuation. Innuendo he had always found more effective than direct statement. He shook his head deprecatingly, reluctant to yield to the clamor for the names of the human vultures he had been arraigning.

"Name them! Tell who they are!"

He indulged these cries with a smile of resignation. They had a right to know; but it was left for him, in his superior wisdom, to pa.s.s upon their demands.

"Hit 'em, Alec! Go for 'em!" yelled a man in the front row.

"Why," the orator resumed, "why," he asked, "should I name names that are in every mind in this intelligent audience?" There was absolute quiet as they waited for the names, which he had not the slightest intention of giving.

"Why--"