_Social Favorite—Makes Get-away_
The paper stated that Jasper Holt had been missing for four days, and
that the officers of the bank, after first denying that there was
anything wrong with his accounts, had admitted that he was short one
hundred thousand dollars—two hundred thousand, said one report. He had
purchased a ticket for Wakamin, this state, on Friday, and a trainman, a
customer of the bank, had noticed him on the train, but he had
apparently never arrived at Wakamin.
A woman asserted that on Friday afternoon she had seen Holt driving an
automobile between Vernon and St. Clair. This appearance near St. Clair
was supposed to be merely a blind, however. In fact our able chief of
police had proof that Holt was not headed north, in the direction of St.
Clair, but south, beyond Wanagoochie—probably for Des Moines or St.
Louis. It was definitely known that on the previous day Holt had left
his car at Wanagoochie, and with their customary thoroughness and
promptness the police were making search at Wanagoochie. The chief had
already communicated with the police in cities to the south, and the
capture of the man could confidently be expected at any moment. As long
as the chief appointed by our popular mayor was in power it went ill
with those who gave even the appearance of wrongdoing.
When asked his opinion of the theory that the alleged fugitive had gone
north the chief declared that of course Holt had started in that
direction, with the vain hope of throwing pursuers off the scent, but
that he had immediately turned south and picked up his car. Though he
would not say so definitely the chief let it be known that he was ready
to put his hands on the fellow who had hidden Holt’s car at Wanagoochie.
When asked if he thought Holt was crazy the chief laughed and said:
“Yes, he’s crazy two hundred thousand dollars’ worth. I’m not making any
slams, but there’s a lot of fellows among our gentlemanly political
opponents who would go a whole lot crazier for a whole lot less!”
The president of the bank, however, was greatly distressed, and strongly
declared his belief that Holt, who was a favorite in the most sumptuous
residences on the Boulevard, besides being well-known in local dramatic
circles, and who bore the best of reputations in the bank, was
temporarily out of his mind, as he had been distressed by pains in the
head for some time past. Meantime the bonding company, which had fully
covered the employees of the bank by a joint bond of two hundred
thousand dollars, had its detectives working with the police on the
case.
As soon as he had read the paper John took a trolley into Vernon and
called on the president of the bank. John’s face drooped with the sorrow
of the disgrace. The president received him. John staggered into the
room, groaning: “I have just learned in the newspaper of the terrible
news about my brother. I have come—”
“We hope it’s just a case of aphasia. We’re sure he’ll turn up all
right,” insisted the president.
“I wish I could believe it. But as I have told you, Jasper is not a good
man. He drinks and smokes and play-acts and makes a god of stylish
clothes—”
“Good Lord, that’s no reason for jumping to the conclusion that he’s an
embezzler!”
“I pray you may be right. But meanwhile I wish to give you any
assistance I can. I shall make it my sole duty to see that my brother is
brought to justice if it proves that he is guilty.”
“Good o’ you,” mumbled the president. Despite this example of John’s
rigid honor he could not get himself to like the man. John was standing
beside him, thrusting his stupid face into his.
The president pushed his chair a foot farther away and said
disagreeably: “As a matter of fact we were thinking of searching your
house. If I remember, you live in Rosebank?”
“Yes. And of course I shall be glad to have you search every inch of it.
Or anything else I can do. I feel that I share fully with my twin
brother in this unspeakable sin. I’ll turn over the key of my house to
you at once. There is also a shed at the back, where Jasper used to keep
his automobile when he came to see me.” He produced a large, rusty,
old-fashioned door key and held it out, adding: “The address is 27
Humbert Avenue, Rosebank.”
“Oh, it won’t be necessary, I guess,” said the president, somewhat
shamed, irritably waving off the key.
“But I just want to help somehow! What can I do? Who is—in the language
of the newspapers—who is the detective on the case? I’ll give him any
help—”
“Tell you what you do: Go see Mr. Scandling, of the Mercantile Trust and
Bonding Company, and tell him all you know.”
“I shall. I take my brother’s crime on my shoulders—otherwise I’d be
committing the sin of Cain. You are giving me a chance to try to expiate
our joint sin, and, as Brother Jeremiah Bodfish was wont to say, it is a
blessing to have an opportunity to expiate a sin, no matter how painful
the punishment may seem to be to the mere physical being. As I may have
told you I am an accepted member of the Soul Hope Fraternity, and though
we are free from cant and dogma it is our firm belief—”
Then for ten dreary minutes John Holt sermonized; quoted forgotten books
and quaint, ungenerous elders; twisted bitter pride and clumsy mysticism
into a fanatical spider web. The president was a churchgoer, an ardent
supporter of missionary funds, for forty years a pew-holder at St.
Simeon’s Church, but he was alternately bored to a chill shiver and
roused to wrath against this self-righteous zealot.
When he had rather rudely got rid of John Holt he complained to himself:
“Curse it, I oughtn’t to, but I must say I prefer Jasper the sinner to
John the saint. Uff! What a smell of damp cellars the fellow has! He
must spend all his time picking potatoes. Say! By thunder, I remember
that Jasper had the infernal nerve to tell me once that if he ever
robbed the bank I was to call John in. I know why, now! John is the kind
of egotistical fool that would muddle up any kind of a systematic
search. Well, Jasper, sorry, but I’m not going to have anything more to
do with John than I can help!”
John had gone to the Mercantile Trust and Bonding Company, had called on
Mr. Scandling, and was now wearying him by a detailed and useless
account of Jasper’s early years and recent vices. He was turned over to
the detective employed by the bonding company to find Jasper. The
detective was a hard, noisy man, who found John even more tedious. John
insisted on his coming out to examine the house in Rosebank, and the
detective did so—but sketchily, trying to escape. John spent at least
five minutes in showing him the shed where Jasper had sometimes kept his
car.
He also attempted to interest the detective in his precious but spotty
books. He unlocked one section of the case, dragged down a four-volume
set of sermons and started to read them aloud.
The detective interrupted: “Yuh, that’s great stuff, but I guess we
aren’t going to find your brother hiding behind those books!”
The detective got away as soon as possible, after insistently explaining
to John that if they could use his assistance they would let him know.
“If I can only expiate—”
“Yuh, sure, that’s all right!” wailed the detective, fairly running
toward the gate.
John made one more visit to Vernon that day. He called on the chief of
city police. He informed the chief that he had taken the bonding
company’s detective through his house; but wouldn’t the police consent
to search it also? He wanted to expiate— The chief patted John on the
back, advised him not to feel responsible for his brother’s guilt and
begged: “Skip along now—very busy.”
As John walked to the Soul Hope meeting that evening dozens of people
murmured that it was his brother who had robbed the Lumber National
Bank. His head was bowed with the shame. At the meeting he took Jasper’s
sin upon himself, and prayed that Jasper would be caught and receive the
blessed healing of punishment. The others begged John not to feel that
he was guilty—was he not one of the Soul Hope brethren who alone in this
wicked and perverse generation were assured of salvation?
On Thursday, on Saturday morning, on Tuesday and on Friday John went
into the city to call on the president of the bank and the detective.
Twice the president saw him, and was infinitely bored by his sermons.
The third time he sent word that he was out. The fourth time he saw
John, but curtly explained that if John wanted to help them the best
thing he could do was to stay away.
The detective was “out” all four times.
John smiled meekly and ceased to try to help them. Dust began to gather
on certain candy boxes on the lower shelf of his bookcase, save for one
of them, which he took out now and then. Always after he had taken it
out a man with faded brown hair and a wrinkled black suit, signing
himself R. J. Smith, would send a fair-sized money order from the post
office at South Vernon to John Holt, at Rosebank—as he had been doing
for more than six months. These money orders could not have amounted to
more than twenty-five dollars a week, but that was even more than an
ascetic like John Holt needed. By day John sometimes cashed these at the
Rosebank post office, but usually, as had been his custom, he cashed
them at his favorite grocery when he went out in the evening.
In conversation with the commuter neighbor who every evening walked
about and smoked an after-dinner cigar in the yard at the right John was
frank about the whole lamentable business of his brother’s defalcation.
He wondered, he said, if he had not shut himself up with his studies too
much, and neglected his brother. The neighbor ponderously advised John
to get out more. John let himself be persuaded, at least to the extent
of taking a short walk every afternoon and of letting his literary
solitude be disturbed by the delivery of milk, meat and groceries. He
also went to the public library, and in the reference room glanced at
books on Central and South America—as though he was planning to go
south, some day.
But he continued his religious studies. It may be doubted if previous to
the embezzlement John had worked very consistently on his book about
Revelation. All that the world had ever seen of it was a jumble of
quotations from theological authorities. Presumably the crime of his
brother shocked him into more concentrated study, more patient writing.
For during the year after his brother’s disappearance—a year in which
the bonding company gradually gave up the search and came to believe
that Jasper was dead—John became fanatically absorbed in somewhat
nebulous work. The days and nights drifted together in meditation in
which he lost sight of realities, and seemed through the clouds of the
flesh to see flashes from the towered cities of the spirit.
It has been asserted that when Jasper Holt acted a rôle he veritably
lived it. No one can ever determine how great an actor was lost in the
smug bank teller. To him were imperial triumphs denied, yet was he not
without material reward. For playing his most subtle part he received
ninety-seven thousand dollars. It may be that he earned it. Certainly
for the risk entailed it was but a fair payment. Jasper had meddled with
the mystery of personality, and was in peril of losing all consistent
purpose, of becoming a Wandering Jew of the spirit, a strangled body
walking.