so impersonal and uncompromising about this man that his very
presence seemed an accusation. He looked to be a man who would never
make nor overlook an error.

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