“Your father is everlastingly shinning up a moonbeam, and you know it,” declared Britt.

Starr shook his hand, pinching the disk between thumb and forefinger.  “Young woman, I’m interested only in this, if you have any information to give me in regard to it.”

Vaniman was displaying an interest of his own that was but little short of amazement.

“The information I have is this, sir!  My father said that Mr. Britt’s help had enabled him to start in manufacturing a patent door which requires the use of many washers with small holes, and he was saying at home that he’d be obliged to have them turned out by a blacksmith.  I happened to be making over something for mother and I had some coat weights on my table.  I showed them to my father and he said they were just the thing.  He found out where they were made and he ordered a quantity—­they came in little kegs and he stored them in the stable.  That’s all, Mr. Starr!”

“All?  Go ahead and tell me—­”

“I have told you all I know, sir!  That’s the stand I’m taking, whatever may come up.  If you expect me to tell you that these are the disks my father stored in the stable, I shall do no such thing.  The kegs and the disks may be there right now, for all I know.”  She faced the examiner with an intrepidity which made that gentleman blink.  It was plain enough that he wanted to say something—­but he did not venture to say it.

“And now I’ll go!  I think my father must be out there waiting for me.  If you care to stay here long enough, I’ll have him hurry back from our home and report whether the kegs are still in the stable.”

“We’ll wait, Miss Harnden!” Starr opened the door.

After she had gone, Britt closed the door of his vault and shot the bolts.

The three men kept off the dangerous topic except as they conferred on the pressing business in hand.  They helped Dorsey hurry the lingerers from the building.  Then they went into the bank, stored the books in the vault, and locked it.

Starr, especially intent on collecting all items of evidence, found in the vault, when he entered, a cloth that gave off the odor of chloroform.  On one corner of the cloth was a loop by which it could be suspended from a hook.

“Is this cloth anything that has been about the premises?” asked the official.

“It’s Vona’s dustcloth,” stated Britt.  He had watched the girl too closely o’ mornings not to know that cloth!

That information seemed to prick Starr’s memory on another point.  From his trousers pocket he dug the tape which he had cut from Vaniman’s wrists.  He glanced about the littered floor.  There was the remnant of a roll of tape on the floor.  Mr. Starr wrapped the fragment of tape in a sheet of paper along with the roll.

Then Mr. Harnden arrived.  The outer door had been left open for him.  He had run so fast that his breath came in whistles with the effect of a penny squawker.  As the movie scenarios put it, he “got over,” with gestures and breathless mouthings rather than stated in so many words, that the kegs of disks were gone—­all of them.