Again the street is packed with emotional humanity. But what a different
scene is this, although in its essentials so similar. For every face is
flushed with excitement--joyful excitement. As once before, they press
eagerly on toward the bank entrance; but this morning the doors are
_open_. Almost every member of that crushed and crushing assembly holds
a copy of the morning paper. Every man and every woman in the crowd
knows that the missing financiers have declined, firmly, to afford any
information whatever respecting their strange adventure--that they have
refused, all four of them, point blank either to substantiate or to deny
the sensational story of Messrs. Macready and Murray. "The incident is
closed," Baron Hague is reported as declaring. But what care the
depositors of the Chancery Legal Incorporated? For is it not announced,
also, that this quartet of public benefactors, with a fifth
philanthropist (who modestly remains anonymous) have put up between them
no less a sum than three and a half million pounds to salve the wrecked
bank?
"By your leave. Make way here. Stand back, _if_ you please."
Someone starts a cheer, and it is feverishly taken up by the highly
wrought throng, as an escorted van pulls slowly through the crowd. It is
bullion from the Bank of England. Good red gold and crisp notes. It is
dead hopes raised from the dust; happiness reborn, like a ph[oe]nix from
the ashes of misery.
"Hip, hip, hip, hooray!"
Again and again, and yet again that joyous cheer awakes the echoes of
the ancient Inns.
It was as a final cheer died away that Haredale, on the rim of the
throng, felt himself tapped upon the shoulder.
He turned a flushed face and saw a tall man, irreproachably attired,
standing smiling at his elbow. The large eyes, with their compelling
light of command, held nothing now but a command to friendship.
"Severac Bablon!"
"Well, Haredale!" The musical voice made itself audible above all the
din. "These good people would rejoice to know the name of that anonymous
friend who, with four other disinterested philanthropists, has sought to
bring a little gladness into a grey world. Here am I. And there, on the
bank steps, are police. Make your decision. Either give me in charge or
give me your hand."
Haredale could not speak; but he took the outstretched hand of the most
surprising bandit the world ever has known, and wrung it hard.
CHAPTER XXII
THE TURKISH YATAGHAN
It was about a fortnight later that a City medical man, Dr. Simons, in
the dusk of a spring evening, might have been seen pressing his way
through the crowd of excited people who thronged the hall of Moorgate
Place, Moorgate Street.
Addressing himself to a portly, florid gentleman who exhibited signs of
having suffered a recent nervous shock, he said crisply.
"My name, sir, is Simons. You 'phoned me?"
The florid gentleman, mopping his forehead with a Cambridge-blue silk
handkerchief, replied rather pompously, if thickly:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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