“I don’t understand what you mean,” returned Britt, stiffly.

“I’ll put it so that you can’t help understanding, sir.  You rigged a plan to have me sleep in the bank nights.”

“That was your own suggestion.  You asked to be allowed to sleep here.”

“You intend to say that in your testimony, do you?”

Britt took a firm hold on the poker.  “I most certainly do.”

“You cooked up an excuse to send me off on a wild-goose chase in the night.”

“I know nothing about your going anywhere in the night—­except that Files’s hostler is saying that you hired a hitch for some purpose.”

Vaniman knew that appeal and protest would be futile—­realizing the full extent of Britt’s effrontery.  However, in his amazement he began to rail at the president.

Britt broke in on the anathema.  “I was not nigh the bank that night.  I was asleep in my own house.  You’d better not try any such ridiculous story in court—­it will spoil any defense Hexter may manage to put up for you.  Vaniman, it’s plain enough why you hired that hitch!  Why don’t you tell where you hauled that money?”

“I’m not going to do to you what I ought to do, Britt.  I’m into the hole deep enough as it is!  But let me ask you if any jury is going to believe that I was lunatic enough to hire a livery hitch, if I was hauling away loot?”

“It’s my idea, Vaniman, that you were trying to work a hold-up game on the bank, knowing that you were done here,” stated Britt, coolly.  “But something went wrong before you had a chance to offer a compromise.  Naturally, you thought we’d do ’most anything to keep our little bank from failing.”

The young man beat his fist upon his breast.  “Have you the damnation cheek, Britt, to use me, the victim, to rehearse your lies on?”

“I’m giving you a little glimpse of the evidence.  If the hint is of any use to you, you’re welcome.”

“Britt, have you turned into a demon?” Vaniman demanded.  He stared at the usurer with honest incredulity.

“I’ve had enough setbacks, in recent days, to craze ’most any man, I’ll admit.  But I’m keeping along in my usual course, doing the right thing as I see it.”

“Britt, I have never done you an injury.  Are you going to ruin me because a good girl loves me?”

“I have too much respect for that young lady to allow her name to be dragged into a mess of this sort,” stated the amazing Britt.  “And I think that she’ll wake up after she has come to a realizing sense of what a narrow escape she has had.”

Vaniman stood there, his hands closing and unclosing, his palms itching to feel the contact of Britt’s cheeks.  There was venom in Britt’s eyes.  This outrageous baiting was satisfying the older man’s rancor—­the ugly grudge that clawed and tore his soul when he sat alone in his chamber and gazed on the girl’s pictured beauty.  Every night, after he puffed out his light, he muttered the same speech—­it had become the talisman of his ponderings.  “Whilst I’m staying alone here he’ll be alone in a cell in state prison.”