A Rock in the Baltic

by Robert Barr, 1906
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CHAPTER I

THE INCIDENT AT THE BANK

IN the public room of the Sixth National Bank at Bar Harbor in Maine,
Lieutenant Alan Drummond, H.M.S. "Consternation," stood aside to give
precedence to a lady. The Lieutenant had visited the bank for the
purpose of changing several crisp white Bank of England notes into the
currency of the country he was then visiting. The lady did not appear
to notice either his courtesy or his presence, and this was the more
remarkable since Drummond was a young man sufficiently conspicuous
even in a crowd, and he and she were, at that moment, the only
customers in the bank. He was tall, well-knit and stalwart, blond as a
Scandinavian, with dark blue eyes which he sometimes said jocularly
were the colors of his university. He had been slowly approaching the
cashier's window with the easy movement of a man never in a hurry,
when the girl appeared at the door, and advanced rapidly to the bank
counter with its brass wire screen surrounding the arched aperture
behind which stood the cashier. Although very plainly attired, her
gown nevertheless possessed a charm of simplicity that almost
suggested complex Paris, and she wore it with that air of distinction
the secret of which is supposed to be the exclusive property of French
and American women.

The young man saw nothing of this, and although he appreciated the