self-defense he felt he must seize the jewels and literally fling them at their owner. Now, goaded, tricked, tantalized, defeated—everything was in a conspiracy against him! It was enough to drive a man insane. Burbeck felt himself very near the maniacal point. Again he was seeing things. One moment the street outside was full of patrol wagons, all ringing their gongs at once, while platoons of police were marching and surrounding the bank. Another moment he had decided to anticipate the police by rushing out to the corner by the plaza, tossing his hat high in the air, and shouting and shrieking until a crowd had gathered, when he would exhibit the diamonds and proclaim himself the thief.
But he was spared the possibility of this insane freak by the fact that he could not exhibit the diamonds. They were in the vault. Damn the vault! To hell with them! To hell with everything! To hell with himself! That was where he was going!
Suddenly he looked up, trembling. Mercer, the assistant cashier whose desk was next to his own, must have overheard him. But no, Mercer was calmly writing. He had heard nothing, because nothing had been spoken. Rollie had been thinking in shouts, not speaking. And yet he looked about him wonderingly, like a man coming out of a temporary aberration.
"I will be shouting it next," he said to himself. "I am getting dotty; I'll burst if I have to hold this much longer. I'll burst and give the whole thing away."
His hat had been pushed back from his brow; he drew it forward and down until it shaded his face, and then with his jaws set in the most determined mood he could muster, he walked out of the bank and piloted his steps, with knees that were sometimes stiff and sometimes tottering, in the direction of the Hotel St. Albans.
Without waiting to be announced, he went up and
