I
Mr. Webster G. Burgess, president of the White River National Bank,
started slightly as he looked up from the letter he had been reading
and found Hill, the Government detective, standing at the rail. Burgess
dropped the letter into a drawer and said briskly:
“Hello, Hill--looking for me?”
“No; not yet!”
This was an established form of salutation between them and they both
grinned. Burgess rose and leaned against the rail, while the detective
summarized his latest counterfeiting adventure, which had to do with a
clew furnished by a bad bill that had several weeks earlier got by one
of the White River National tellers. Hill had bagged the maker of the
bill, and he had just been satisfying himself that the teller would be
ready to testify the next day before the Federal grand jury.
Hill visited the bank frequently and Burgess knew him well. The
secret-service man was a veteran hunter of offenders against the
peace and dignity of the United States, and, moreover, a capital
story-teller. Burgess often asked him into his private office for an
hour’s talk. He had once given a dinner in Hill’s honor, inviting a
select coterie of friends who knew a good tale when they heard it and
appreciated a shrewd, resourceful man when they saw him.
The White River National was one of the largest and strongest banks in
the state, and Burgess was one of the richest men in his native city of
Indianapolis; but these facts did not interfere with enjoyment of life
according to his lights, which were not unluminous. Having been born on
top, he was not without his sympathetic interest in the unfortunates
whose lot is cast near the burnt bottom crust, and his generous
impulses sometimes betrayed him into doing things that carping critics
thought not wholly in keeping with his responsibilities and station in
life.
These further facts may be noted: Burgess was the best-dressed man in
Indianapolis--he always wore a pink carnation; and on occasions when
he motored home for luncheon he changed his necktie--a fact that did
not go unremarked in the bank cages. He belonged to hunting and fishing
clubs in Canada, Maine and North Carolina, and visited them at proper
seasons. There was a drop of adventurous blood in him that made banking
the least bit onerous at times; and when he felt the need of air he
disappeared to catch salmon or tarpon, or to hunt grouse or moose.
Before his father had unkindly died and left him the bank and other
profitable embarrassments, he had been obsessed with a passion for
mixing in a South American revolution; he had chafed when the Spanish
War most deplorably synchronized with the year of his marriage, and
he could think of no valid excuse for leaving the newly kindled fire
on his domestic altar to pose for Spanish bullets. Twice since his
marriage he had looked death in the eye: once when he tumbled off a
crag of the Canadian Rockies--he was looking for a mountain sheep; and
again when he had been whistled down the Virginia capes in a hurricane
while yachting with a Boston friend. Every one admitted that he was
a good banker. If he got stung occasionally he did not whimper; and
every one knew that the White River National could stand a good deal of
stinging without being obliged to hang crape on its front door.
Burgess had always felt that some day something would happen to relieve
the monotony of his existence as the chief pilot of an institution
which panics always passed by on the other side. His wife cultivated
bishops, men of letters and highbrows generally; and he was always
stumbling over them in his home, sometimes to his discomfiture. With
that perversity of human nature that makes us all pine for what is not,
he grew restive under the iron grip of convention and felt that he
would like to disappear--either into the wilderness to play at being a
savage, or into the shadowy underworld to taste danger and share the
experiences of men who fight on the farther side of the barricade.
“You always seem to get ’em, Tom,” he remarked to the detective in a
familiar tone, bred of long acquaintance. “Just knowing you has made
a better man of me. I’m bound to be good as long as you’re on the job
here; but don’t you ever get tired of the game?”
“Well, when you’re up against a real proposition and are fencing with
a man who’s as smart as you are, or smarter, it’s some fun; but most
of my cases lately have been too tame. The sport isn’t what it was
when I started. All the crooks are catalogued and photographed and
dictagraphed these days; and when you go after ’em you merely send in
your card and call a motor to joy-ride ’em to jail. It’s been a long
time since I was shot at--not since those bill-raisers down in the
Orange County hills soaked me with buckshot. When they turn a man loose
at Leavenworth we know just about where he will bring up and who’s at
home to welcome him; and you can usually calculate pretty well just
when he will begin manufacturing and floating the queer again.”
“You hang on to the petrified idea that once a crook, always a
crook--no patience with the eminent thinkers who believe that ‘while
the lamp holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return?’”
“Yep--return to jail! Well, I don’t say reform is impossible; and
I’ve let a few get by who did keep straight. But it’s my business to
watch and wait. My best catches have been through luck as much as good
management--but don’t tell that on me; it would spoil my reputation.”
He turned away, glanced across the room and swung round into his former
position with his arm resting on the railing by Burgess’s desk. He
continued talking as before, but the banker saw that something had
interested him.
“See that young woman at the paying-teller’s cage--halfway down the
line--slight, trim, with a red feather in her hat? Take a look.”
It was nearing the closing hour and long lines had formed at all the
windows. Burgess marked the red feather without difficulty. As the
women patrons of the bank were accommodated at a window on the farther
side of the lobby he surmised that the young woman was an office clerk
on an errand for her employer. She was neatly dressed; there was
nothing in her appearance to set her apart from a hundred office girls
who visited the bank daily and stood--just as this young woman was
standing--in the line of bookkeepers and messengers.
“Well,” said the banker, “what about her?”
While looking at the girl the detective drew out a telegram which he
scanned and thrust back into his pocket.
“Her mother runs a boarding house, and her father, Julius Murdock, is a
crook--an old yegg--a little crippled by rheumatism now and out of the
running. But some of the naughty boys passing this way stop there to
rest. The place is--let me see--787 Vevay Street.”
Burgess thoughtfully brushed a speck from his coat-sleeve, then looked
up indifferently.
“So? Hardly a fashionable neighborhood! Is that what is called a fence?”
“Well, I believe the police did rip up the boarding house a while back,
but there was nothing doing. Murdock’s able to make a front without
visible means of support--may have planted enough stuff to retire on.
He’s a sort of financial agent and scout for other crooks. They’ve
been in town only a few months. The old man must feel pretty safe or
he wouldn’t keep his money in a bank. Nellie, out there, is Murdock’s
daughter, and she’s stenographer for the Brooks Lumber Company, over
near where they live. When I came in she was at the receiving teller’s
window with the lumber company’s deposit. She’s probably waiting to
draw a little money now for her daddy. He’s one of the few fellows in
his line of business who never goes quite broke. Just for fun, suppose
you see what he has on the books. If I’m wrong I’ll decline that
cigar you’re going to offer me from the box in your third left-hand
drawer.” The banker scribbled the name on a piece of paper and sent
a boy with it to the head bookkeeper. “And I’d be amused to know how
much Nellie is drawing for Julius, too, while you’re about it,” added
the detective, who thereupon sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs
inside the railing and became absorbed in a newspaper.
Burgess strolled across the lobby, stopping to speak to acquaintances
waiting before the several windows--a common practice of his at the
busy hour. Just behind the girl in the red hat stood a man he knew
well; and he shook hands and continued talking to him, keeping pace
with his friend’s progress toward the window. The girl turned round
once and looked at him. He had a very good view of her face, and she
was beyond question a very pretty girl, with strikingly fine gray eyes
and the fresh color of youth. The banker’s friend had been recounting
an amusing story and Burgess was aware that the girl turned her head
slightly to listen; he even caught a gleam of humor in her eyes. She
wore a plain jacket, a year or two out of fashion, and the red feather
in her cloth hat was not so crisp as it appeared at a distance. She
held a check in her hand ready for presentation; her gloves showed
signs of wear. There was nothing to suggest that she was other than
a respectable young woman, and the banker resented the detective’s
implication that she was the daughter of a crook and lived in a house
that harbored criminals. When she reached the window Burgess, still
talking to the man behind her, heard her ask for ten-dollar bills.
She took the money and thrust it quickly into a leathern reticule that
swung from her arm. The banker read the name of the Brooks Lumber
Company on the passbook she held in her hand.
“Pardon me,” said Burgess as she stepped away from the cage----“those
are badly worn bills. Let me exchange them for you.”
“Oh, thank you; but it doesn’t matter,” she said.
Without parleying he stepped to the exchange window, which was free
at the moment, and spoke to one of the clerks. The girl opened her
reticule and when he turned round she handed him the bills. While
the clerk went for the new currency Burgess spoke of the weather and
remarked upon the menace of worn bills to public health. They always
meant to give women fresh bills, he said; and he wished she would
insist upon having them. He was a master of the art of being agreeable,
and in his view it was nothing against a woman that she had fine eyes
and an engaging smile. Her voice was pleasant to hear and her cheeks
dimpled charmingly when she smiled.
“All money looks good to me,” she said, thrusting the new bills into
her satchel; “but new money is certainly nicer. It always seems like
more!”
“But you ought to count that,” Burgess protested, not averse to
prolonging the conversation. “There’s always the possibility of a
mistake.”
“Well, if there is I’ll come back. You’d remember----”
“Oh, yes! I’d remember,” replied Burgess with a smile, and then he
added hastily: “In a bank it’s our business to remember faces!”
“Oh!” said the girl, looking down at her reticule.
Her “oh!” had in it the faintest, the obscurest hint of irony.
He wondered whether she resented the idea that he would remember
her merely because it was a bank’s business to remember faces.
Possibly--but no! As she smiled and dimpled he put from him the thought
that she wished to give a flirtatious turn to this slight chance
interview there in the open lobby of his own bank. Reassured by the
smite, supported by the dimples, he said:
“I’m Mr. Burgess; I work here.”
“Yes, of course--you’re the president. My name is Nellie Murdock.”
“You live in Vevay Street?” He dropped his voice. “I can’t talk to you
here, but I’ve been asked to see a young man named Drake at your house.
Please tell him I’ll be there at five-thirty today. You understand?”
“Yes, thank you. He hasn’t come yet; but he expected to get in at
five.” Her lips quivered; she gave him a quick, searching glance, then
nodded and walked rapidly out.
Burgess spoke to another customer in the line, with his eyes toward
the street, so that he saw the red feather flash past the window
and vanish; then he strolled back to where the detective sat. On
the banker’s desk, face down, lay the memorandum he had sent to the
bookkeeper. He turned this up, glanced at it and handed it to Hill.
“Balance $178.18; Julius Murdock,” Hill read. “How much did Nellie
draw?”
“An even hundred. I stopped to speak to her a moment. Nice girl!”
“Gray eyes, fine teeth, nose slightly snub; laughs easily and
shows dimples. Wears usually a gold chain with a gold heart-shaped
locket--small diamond in center,” said Hill, as though quoting.
“Locket--yes; I did notice the locket,” frowned Burgess.
“And you didn’t overlook the dimples,” remarked the detective--“you
can’t exactly. By-the-way, you didn’t change any money for her
yourself?”
“What do you mean?” asked Burgess with a scowl. “Wait!” he added as the
detective’s meaning dawned upon him.
He went back into the cages. The clerk who had brought the new bills
from the women’s department found the old ones where they had been
tossed aside by the teller. Burgess carried them to Hill without
looking at them. He did not believe what he knew the detective
suspected, that the girl was bold enough to try to palm off counterfeit
money on a bank--on the president of a bank. He was surprised to find
that he was really deeply annoyed by the detective’s manner of speaking
of Nellie Murdock. He threw the bills down on his desk a little
spitefully.
“There you are! That girl took those identical bills out of her satchel
and gave them to me to change for new ones. She had plenty of time to
slip in a bad bill if she wanted to.”
Hill turned round to the light, went over the bills quickly and handed
them back to the banker with a grin.
“Good as wheat! I apologize. And I want you to know that I never
said she wasn’t a pretty girl. And the prettiest ones are often the
smartest. It does happen that way sometimes.”
“You make me tired, Hill. Everybody you see is crooked. With a man like
you there’s no such thing as presumption of innocence. ’Way down inside
of you you probably think I’m a bit off color too.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say just that!” said the detective, laughing and taking
the cigar Burgess offered him from a box he produced from his desk. “I
must be running along. You don’t seem quite as cheerful as usual this
morning. I’ll come back tomorrow and see if I can’t bring in a new
story.”
Burgess disposed of several people who were waiting to see him, and
then took from his drawer the letter he had been reading when the
detective interrupted him. It was from Ralph Gordon, a Chicago lawyer,
who was widely known as an authority on penology. Burgess had several
times contributed to the funds of a society of which Gordon was
president, whose function it was to meet criminals on their discharge
from prison and give them a helping hand upward.
The banker had been somewhat irritated today by Hill’s manner of
speaking of the criminals against whom he was pitted; and doubtless
Hill’s attitude toward the young woman he had pointed out as the
daughter of a crook added to the sympathetic fading with which Burgess
took up his friend’s letter for another reading. The letter ran:
Dear Old Man: You said last fall that you wished I’d put you in
the way of knowing one of the poor fellows I constantly meet in
the work of our society. I’m just now a good deal interested in
a young fellow--Robert Drake by name--whose plight appeals to me
particularly. He is the black sheep of a fine family I know slightly
in New England. Drink was his undoing, and after an ugly scrape in
college he went down fast--_facilis descensus_; the familiar story.
The doors at home were closed to him, and after a year or two he
fell in with one of the worst gangs of yeggs in the country. He was
sent up for cracking a safe in a Southern Illinois post office. The
agent of our society at Leavenworth has had an eye on him; when he
was discharged he came straight to me and I took him into my house
until we could plan something for him. I appealed to his family and
they’ve sent me money for his use. He wants to go to the Argentine
Republic--thinks he can make a clean start down there. But there are
difficulties. Unfortunately there’s just now an epidemic of yegging
in the Middle West and all suspects are being gathered in. Of course
Drake isn’t safe, having just done time for a similar offense. I’ve
arranged with Saxby--Big Billy, the football half-back--you remember
him--to ship Drake south on one of the Southern Cross steamers.
Saxby is, as you know, manager of the company at New Orleans. I
wanted to send Drake down direct--but here’s the rub: there’s a girl
in Indianapolis he wants to marry and take along with him. He got
acquainted with her in the underworld, and her people, he confesses,
are a shady lot. He insists that she is straight, and it’s for her he
wants to take a fresh grip and begin over again. So tomorrow--that’s
January twenty-third--he will be at her house in your city, 787 Vevay
Street; and he means to marry her. It’s better for him not to look
you up; and will you, as the good fellow you are, go to see him and
give him cash for the draft for five hundred dollars I’m inclosing?
Another five hundred--all this from his father--I’m sending to Saxby
to give him in gold aboard the steamer. Drake believes that in a new
country, with the girl to help him, he can make good.
Hoping this isn’t taking advantage of an old and valued friendship, I
am always, dear old man--
Burgess put the letter in his pocket, signed his mail, entertained
in the directors’ room a committee of the Civic League, subscribed
a thousand dollars to a hospital, said yes or no to a number of
propositions, and then his wife called him on the telephone, with an
intimation that their regular dinner hour was seven. She reminded him
of this almost daily, as Burgess sometimes forgot to tell her when he
was to dine downtown.
“Anybody for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, Web,” she answered in the meek tone she reserved for such moments
as this. “Do I have to tell you again that this is the day Bishop
Gladding is to be here? He said not to try to meet him, as he didn’t
know what train he’d take from Louisville, but he’d show up in time
for dinner. He wrote he was coming a week ago, and you said not to ask
anybody for dinner, as you liked to have him to yourself. You don’t
mean to tell me----”
“No, Gertie; I’ll be there!” and then, remembering that his too-ready
acquiescence might establish a precedent that would rise up and smite
him later, he added: “But these are busy days; if I should be late
don’t wait for me. That’s the rule, you know.”
“I should think, Web, when the bishop is an old friend, and saved your
life that time you and Ralph Gordon were hunting Rocky Mountain sheep
with him, and the bishop nearly died carrying you back to a doctor--I
should think----”
“Oh, I’ll be there,” said Burgess; “but there’s a friend of Gordon’s in
town I’ll have to look up after a little. No; he hasn’t time to come to
the house. You know how it is, Gertie----”
She said she knew how it was. These telephonic colloquies were not
infrequent between the Burgesses, and Mrs. Burgess was not without her
provocation. He resolved to hurry and get through with Gordon’s man,
Drake, the newly freed convict seeking a better life, that he might not
be late to dinner in his own house, which was to be enlivened by the
presence of the young, vigorous missionary bishop, who was, moreover,
a sportsman and in every sense a man’s man.
He put on his ulster, made sure of the five hundred dollars he had
obtained on Gordon’s draft, and at five-thirty went out to his car,
which had waited an hour.