Mr. Nettlewick first seized the currency, and with a rapid, almost juggling motion, counted it by packages.  Then he spun the sponge cup toward him and verified the count by bills.  His thin, white fingers flew like some expert musician’s upon the keys of a piano.  He dumped the gold upon the counter with a crash, and the coins whined and sang as they skimmed across the marble slab from the tips of his nimble digits.  The air was full of fractional currency when he came to the halves and quarters.  He counted the last nickle and dime.  He had the scales brought, and he weighed every sack of silver in the vault.  He questioned Dorsey concerning each of the cash memoranda—­certain checks, charge slips, etc., carried over from the previous day’s work—­with unimpeachable courtesy, yet with something so mysteriously momentous in his frigid manner, that the teller was reduced to pink cheeks and a stammering tongue.

This newly-imported examiner was so different from Sam Turner.  It had been Sam’s way to enter the bank with a shout, pass the cigars, and tell the latest stories he had picked up on his rounds.  His customary greeting to Dorsey had been, “Hello, Perry!  Haven’t skipped out with the boodle yet, I see.”  Turner’s way of counting the cash had been different, too.  He would finger the packages of bills in a tired kind of way, and then go into the vault and kick over a few sacks of silver, and the thing was done.  Halves and quarters and dimes?  Not for Sam Turner.  “No chicken feed for me,” he would say when they were set before him.  “I’m not in the agricultural department.”  But, then, Turner was a Texan, an old friend of the bank’s president, and had known Dorsey since he was a baby.

While the examiner was counting the cash, Major Thomas B. Kingman—­known to every one as “Major Tom”—­the president of the First National, drove up to the side door with his old dun horse and buggy, and came inside.  He saw the examiner busy with the money, and, going into the little “pony corral,” as he called it, in which his desk was railed off, he began to look over his letters.

Earlier, a little incident had occurred that even the sharp eyes of the examiner had failed to notice.  When he had begun his work at the cash counter, Mr. Edlinger had winked significantly at Roy Wilson, the youthful bank messenger, and nodded his head slightly toward the front door.  Roy understood, got his hat, and walked leisurely out, with his collector’s book under his arm.  Once outside, he made a bee-line for the Stockmen’s National.  That bank was also getting ready to open.  No customers had, as yet, presented themselves.

“Say, you people!” cried Roy, with the familiarity of youth and long acquaintance, “you want to get a move on you.  There’s a new bank examiner over at the First, and he’s a stem-winder.  He’s counting nickles on Perry, and he’s got the whole outfit bluffed.  Mr. Edlinger gave me the tip to let you know.”