As we hurried down to Wall Street, Kennedy took occasion to remark, “Science seems to have safeguarded banks and other institutions pretty well against outside robbery.  But protection against employees who can manipulate books and records does not seem to have advanced as rapidly.  Sometimes I think it may have lessened.  Greater temptations assail the cashier or clerk with greater opportunity for speculation, and the banks, as many authorities will agree, have not made enough use of the machinery available to put a stop to embezzlement.  This case is evidently one of the results.  The careless fellows at the top, like this man Carroll whom we are going to see, generally put forward as excuse the statement that the science of banking and of business is so complex that a rascal with ingenuity enough to falsify the books is almost impossible of detection.  Yet when the cat is out of the bag as in several recent cases the methods used are often of the baldest and most transparent sort, fictitious names, dummies, and all sorts of juggling and kiting of checks.  But I hardly think this is going to prove one of those simple cases.”

John Carroll was a haggard and unkempt sort of man.  He looked to me as if the defalcations had preyed on his mind until they had become a veritable obsession.  It was literally true that they were all that he could talk about, all that he was thinking about.  He was paying now a heavy penalty for having been a dummy and honorary officer.

“This thing has become a matter of life and death with me,” he began eagerly, scarcely waiting for us to introduce ourselves, as he fixed his unnaturally bright eyes on us anxiously.  “I’ve simply got to find the man who has so nearly wrecked the By-Products Bank and Company.  Find him or not, I suppose I am a ruined man, myself, but I hope I may still prove myself honest.”

He sighed and his eyes wandered vacantly out of the window as if he were seeking rest and could not find it.

“I understand that the cashier, Bolton Brown, has been arrested,” prompted Kennedy.

“Yes, Bolton Brown, arrested,” he repeated slowly, “and since he has been out on bail he, too, seems to have disappeared.  Now let me tell you about what I think of that, Kennedy.  I know it looks bad for Brown.  Perhaps he’s the man.  The Surety Company says so, anyway.  But we must look at this thing calmly.”

He was himself quite excited, as he went on, “You understand, I suppose, just how much Brown must have been reasonably responsible for passing the checks through the bank?  He saw personally about as many of them as—­as I did, which was none until the exposure came.  They were deposited in other banks by people whom we can’t identify but who must have opened accounts for the purpose of finally putting through a few bad checks.  Then they came back to our bank in the regular channels and were accepted.  By various kinds of juggling they were covered up.  Why, some of them looked so good that they were even certified by our bank before they were deposited in the other banks.  Now, as Brown claims, he never saw checks unless there was something special about them and there seemed at the time to be nothing wrong about these.