"No?"
"Even if my door had been open, Mr. Warren, I don't believe they would
have had a chance to take that much money."
"But--but, Wallace--there are only four men in this bank who could have
taken it--provided it was taken; yourself and your three assistant
paying tellers."
"I realize that."
"And you say that you don't believe they could?"
"Yes, sir."
"H'm! Do you realize the inevitable conclusion?"
"That if they didn't, I did?"
"Exactly."
"Yes, sir, I realize that."
"Yet you say that you did not."
"Of course."
Robert Warren showed a flash of irritation. "You seem damned
unexcited."
"I don't believe this is any time for me to become excited, sir."
Robert Warren rose. "Come with me, young man. We'll lock the doors
of the bank and check every cent of cash we have. There must be some
mistake."
"I sincerely hope so, sir."
A careful check-up showed plainly that there was no mistake. One
hundred thousand dollars had disappeared from the bank during the
course of the day's business. It was gone. The three assistant paying
tellers were nervous and excited. The cashier, a nervous, wiry little
man, rushed around the bank like a chicken suddenly bereft of its head.
The bank's private detective, a portly, unimaginative individual,
strutted around the empty lobby trying to look important and succeeding
not at all. He believed it incumbent upon him to detect something or
somebody, felt that the weight of the world suddenly had descended upon
his shoulders. But his brain worked in a single unfortunate channel.
His attempts at deduction led invariably into the _cul-de-sac_ of "It
just couldn't happen."
That was the reaction expressed by every bank employe who knew what
had occurred. The thing was impossible. The paying tellers, who had
worked in team preparing for the rush of the day, were all reasonably
certain that the cash had been correct at the beginning of the day--as
certain as they were that it was not now correct. Through it all
Clifford Wallace worked with them. Tiny lines of worry corrugated his
forehead. And when, at seven o'clock, it became evident that the money
was positively gone and had disappeared probably during the course of
the day's business, the president, the cashier and Clifford Wallace
retired to Warren's office. The president and cashier were smoking.
Cliff declined their proffered cigar.
"I never smoke, you know."
"The point now is," spoke Warren, checking off that particular point on
his thumb, "that the money has disappeared and we must do something.
The question is, what?" He turned his gaze upon Wallace. Cliff met the
stare steadily and answered in a matter-of-fact voice:
"The obvious thing is to place me under arrest, Mr. Warren."
"Obvious, of course."
"But Mr. Warren"--it was the nervous little cashier--"you don't believe
Cliff stole that money, do you?"
"Certainly not, Mr. Jenkins. Of course I don't. And equally of course I
am not going to have Mr. Wallace placed under arrest."
A flicker of triumph crossed Clifford Wallace's face, to be followed
instantly by his habitual stoniness of expression.
"I am perfectly willing, Mr. Warren----"
"It isn't a case of willingness, Wallace. If I thought for a moment
you were guilty--or even could be guilty--I wouldn't hesitate. Not
if you were my brother. But the thing is impossible. You've been
negligent--probably; I'm not even sure of that. I understand banks
well enough to know that a certain laxity of routine is naturally and
excusably developed. It is my personal opinion that the money did not
disappear from the bank. It either never was here or it is still here."
"Yes, sir." Cliff was calmly attentive.
"I am going to search every employe as he or she leaves the bank. That
will insure its remaining here to-night. By to-morrow morning the
bonding-company detectives and the representatives of the Bankers'
Protective Association will be here. Whatever action they care to
take, Wallace, will be strictly up to them. Personally, I wish to
take occasion to assure you of my confidence in your integrity and to
express the belief that this is an explainable mistake of some sort,
which will be set right to-morrow."
"And you are not even going to keep me under surveillance to-night?"
"No."
"Pardon me, sir, but I believe you are making a mistake. You will be
criticized----"
"They can criticize and be damned to them."
Wallace returned to his cage, where he busied himself arranging the
shelves for the following morning. Then quite as usual he closed
his vault doors, set the time lock, visited the washroom, and left
the building after undergoing a thorough search. Once outside, his
shoulders went back unconsciously. He knew that he had won. The very
simplicity of his crime had caused it to be crowned with success.
But he did not allow his elation to strangle caution. Every move in the
game had been thought out meticulously in advance. He did not deviate a
hair's breath from his regular evening routine. He went to a cafeteria
and ate a hearty meal, although the food almost choked him. At the desk
he telephoned Phyllis Robinson.
"May I come to see you this evening, Phyllis?" He did that four or five
evenings a week; they were secretly engaged.
"Yes."
There was a distinct nuance of tremulous inquiry in her voice. It
annoyed Clifford. They had threshed out every detail of this sort. She
must keep a stiff upper lip, had promised not to betray any untoward
interest in his comings and goings immediately following the robbery.
But that was just like a woman, making plain in the tone of her voice
the vast relief she felt at knowing that he was free. Wallace didn't
like that. It was an indication of weakness, and weakness had no place
in his elaborate scheme. Besides, he knew well that Robert Warren was
no fool, realized that for all Warren's protestations of belief in
his integrity, the bank president already had a detective shadowing
him. He had anticipated that and a good deal more. He had expected
to spend this night in jail, and perhaps several others. Certainly
under observation. This freedom caused elation, but brought about no
lessening of caution.
At 7:45 he presented himself at the garage where he kept his modest
little roadster, filled the tank with gas and drove down the street.
This was a nightly ritual. Straight to the home of Phyllis Robinson
he went; it was a rambling two-story structure set well back of a
high-terraced front yard, its wide veranda blanketed cozily with
honeysuckle--a modest place, one which had seen decidedly better days.
Phyllis, an orphan, lived there with an aunt. The place was a boarding
house. All very discreet and proper.
She greeted him in the hallway. He was irritated by the patent effort
of her casualness. He directed their conversation, they chatted about
innocuous nothings until they were safely out of the house and in his
little car, headed into the country. This, too, was a not uncommon
procedure. Cliff was well satisfied with himself. The most suspicious
watcher could have found no food for speculation this night. His
actions had been the normal actions of an innocent man. He was acting
just as he would have acted had he been innocent of the theft of one
hundred thousand dollars.
They mounted a gentle acclivity. The broad smooth highway dipped from
the crest through a small woods. Overhead the full moon shone benignly
over the valley, behind them the city, ringed about by furnaces and
steel mills, gems of fire in the setting of silvered night. A red glow
in the sky. The man at the steering wheel, calm and self-possessed,
eyes focused on the ribbon of road ahead, thoughts busy with the
epochal events of the day. Nor did he mention the subject uppermost in
his mind until the girl spoke, spoke with a quaver in her voice as her
hand closed tremulously about his.
"You--you're free, Cliff?"
"Obviously." The man was a poser; this was too perfect an opportunity
to miss. He wished the girl at his side to be impressed with his own
granite imperviousness to emotion. Phyllis shook her head; she loved
him despite the fact that she knew his weakness.
"They don't suspect you?"
"Certainly not. They couldn't. I went in to the old man and told him
the money was gone. I didn't protect myself a bit. Suggested that he
had better lock me up. And of course he didn't." He smiled grimly,
pridefully. "The only danger point in the whole scheme has been passed,
Phyllis. We're safe."
"And I'm frightened."
"Of course. That's natural."
"Aren't you?"
"Not at all." He stopped the car as if to light a cigarette. "You put
the money in the vault at the City Trust?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Immediately after I left the office for lunch."
"You went straight from the Third National to your office?"
"Yes. And the cashier commented on how quickly I got back."
"Fine! Great! Sooner or later they're bound to connect us in this
matter, and when they do they'll investigate your actions. It'll disarm
them to learn that you got back to the office in record time; that you
couldn't possibly have gone anywhere between the bank and your place of
business. And now about the vault--you didn't attract any particular
attention there, did you?"
"No-o. I'm sure I didn't. There was a crowd there, and I am sure the
old man didn't notice me at all. I put the money in Harriet's box, not
mine."
He patted her hand reassuringly. "You were a trump, dear. And you're
not sorry?"
"No-o--and yes. I know that it is wrong, yet--oh, well, we need the
money. It means so much more to us than it ever could to that bank. If
we're only not caught."
"We won't be." His narrow, rather hard face was set. He argued as
though to reassure himself. "The weakness in anything of this sort
is preliminary planning. The average man who sets out to steal one
hundred thousand dollars"--the girl winced--"makes plans so enormously
elaborate that he cuts his own throat, minimizes his chances of getting
away with it. For every detail that such a man plants he sows a
possibility of detection. He isn't content with the easy, the safe, the
normal. In striving for perfection, for absolute safety, he lays traps
for himself. Remember this, Phyllis: a detective can make a thousand
mistakes and, by doing one single thing correctly, land his man. The
criminal cannot afford a single mistake. Understand?"
"Yes." And then the feminine side of the girl flooded to the surface.
"Cliff dear, you're so--so hard!"
That pleased him. He wanted to be hard, cultivated a gelid philosophy.
"Sentiment serves no man well, Phyllis. My hardness has made possible
financial ease for us--and consequent contentment. I have no
conscience. Neither has the average man. Conscience is the fear of
being caught. We are all inherently immoral. It was not wrong for the
primitive man to steal. He took what he could get away with. Right
and wrong are products of legislation, of artificial ethical culture.
They are not part of us; we are inoculated with them. They are utterly
foreign to us. In taking this money I have committed no natural crime.
By statute only am I a criminal. I am not ashamed of what I have done.
I would be ashamed of detection."
Silence fell between them. The girl shivered as though with a chill.
"You are very convincing, dear. But I'm afraid that I'm terribly a
victim to the morality of education. Of course you've convinced my
intellect. But--since this afternoon--I'm afraid you can never convince
my conscience."
He flashed her a sudden apprehensive glance. "You're not getting cold
feet?"
"No." She shook her head sadly. "It's too late for that."
"But you're afraid?"
"Yes. I'm afraid."
"Then you're silly. We're safe now. The minute you walked through those
revolving doors with that hundred thousand in your bag I knew that we
were safe. The scheme is successful because of its very simplicity.
We are to go ahead in our normal ways. There is to be no variation
whatsoever in our way of living. In a year we will marry. A year from
then I will get a position somewhere else. And then--and not until
then--will we begin to make use of the money which we got to-day. We're
safe."
"From the law--yes. But not from ourselves."
"Harping on conscience again?"
"Yes."
"Pff! I have no conscience, no fear of the intangible."
She sighed. "I must agree with you, dear. I've gone too far not to. But
I wonder--whether it's worth the price."
He laughed harshly and the car leaped ahead as his finger caressed the
gas lever.
"It's fortunate, Phyllis, that I'm practical. The thing that counts in
this world is what you have--not how you got it."
They returned to the girl's boarding house at eleven o'clock, stood
chatting for a while on the front porch. Cliff wondered whether the man
who must be shadowing him was witness to the tableau. He knew that the
man must have been bewildered and apprehensive when they went off for a
ride together--and pleased by their return. He fancied he could discern
the person lolling in the shadows of the big oak across the street. He
swung down the steps, whistling jauntily.
Phyllis slept not at all that night. Cliff, serene and untroubled,
slumbered heavily. For two years he had planned this thing, had
surveyed it from every angle. He had made an intensive personal study
of the men with whom he would have to deal: Of Robert Warren, the
president; of Garet Jenkins, the cashier; of each member of the board
of directors. He had studied their mental processes, had deliberately
built up their confidence in him and his integrity. He had known in
advance that Warren would do just about as he had done and that his
opinion would sway the board of directors. He knew that the matter
would be hushed up and that the investigation would be conducted with
the most rigid secrecy. He knew that detectives would appear the
following morning, would remain there for some time--and that they
would find nothing. He knew that eventually the conclusion would be
reached that there had been, in fact, no robbery at all, but that the
hundred thousand dollars had never reached the bank vaults.
He would be watched carefully for one month, two, three. Then the
matter would be filed away as an unsolved mystery. Above everything,
the bank was not desirous of a scandal. In the absence of sufficient
evidence to convict they'd permit him his freedom. And the perfect
normalcy of his life would convince them speedily that he was free from
guilt.
He reached the bank the following morning at precisely his regular
time, not a minute early or a minute late. He held a brief conference
with the three assistant paying tellers and apportioned to each his
quota of cash from the vault, which was a part of his individual cage.
Then quite phlegmatically he answered a summons to the office of the
president. And as he entered the door he recognized in the three
strangers who faced him the detectives.
Cliff was somewhat amused. He knew that the glances they bestowed upon
him were surcharged with deep and dark suspicion. Money had disappeared
from the cage of the chief paying teller; ergo, the chief paying teller
had stolen it. They'd start out on that theory--and butt their heads
against a stone wall. He realized that Robert Warren was talking, that
he was being introduced.
"The detectives; this is Mr. Peter Jamieson, representing the Bonding
company. And Mr. Carl Burton, of the Bankers' Protective Association."
He hesitated a moment as he turned toward the third stranger. Then:
"This other gentleman is also here to represent the Bankers' Protective
Association. Mr. Wallace, Mr. Hanvey--Mr. James Hanvey."
Cliff started visibly. Jim Hanvey! He'd heard of the man--a detective
with an enviable reputation. But he had envisioned Jim Hanvey as a
person tall and sinewy, and with a saturnine face and deep-set flashing
eyes. This man----
The hand which the great detective extended to him was limp and clammy,
the man himself utterly negative. He was a large man, true; but his
shoulders were rounded and from them the coat of his cheap ready-made
tweed suit hung like a smoking jacket. Above a thick red neck rose
the head--huge, fat, shapeless. Three floppy chins, an apoplectic
expression, a wide, loose-lipped mouth. And eyes----
Those eyes fascinated Wallace, not because they were marvelous eyes
but because he could not reconcile himself to the fact that they were
capable of seeing anything. They were large eyes, and round like a
baby's. In color they were a passive gray--fishlike. They rested on
Wallace's as their hands met, and then the lids closed slowly over them
like a film, rising just as deliberately. It was more an ocular yawn
than a blinking of eyes. Cliff felt within him a contempt for the man,
instant and instinctive, then pulled himself together with a jerk. He
knew that would never do. Jim Hanvey bore an international reputation,
such a one as could not be attained through inefficiency.
Jamieson was nearer Cliff's conception of an efficient detective.
Medium build, dapper, dynamic, with blazing eyes and a competent
manner. He liked Jamieson, knew that he would know how to cope with
him. Jamieson was a practical detective, and Jamieson was there in
the rôle of a friend. It was most decidedly to the interest of the
bonding company to establish his innocence. Burton, too, radiated
efficiency. He was tall and broad and had deep-set brown eyes which
looked out keenly from under heavy lashes. He was there to convict, but
Cliff did not fear him. Burton, like Jamieson, was too normal a man to
inspire apprehension. But Hanvey, Hanvey of the slow-blinking, fishy
eyes--Hanvey was a disturbing quantity. Cliff didn't like Hanvey.
Hanvey was speaking. Cliff noted that the others deferred to the
ponderous, uninspired-looking individual.
"H'm! You're the paying teller, Mr. Wallace?"
"Yes, sir."
"Kind of funny--the hundred thousand gettin' lost thataway, wasn't it?"
Cliff was annoyed. The man wasn't even grammatical.
"Rather peculiar--yes."
"Ain't got any idea how it happened, have you?"
"No."
"No chance of any one sort of slippin' an arm through the cage window
and grabbin' it, huh?"
Bah! the man was an idiot.
"Hardly that."
"Kinder makes us believe that it must have been done by somebody inside
the cage. Ain't that so?"
"That is the obvious conclusion."
"Well, now--so it is. So it is." Hanvey produced a golden toothpick,
which he regarded fondly. "Awful funny thing how money gits to go
thisaway. Awful funny. Ain't it, Jamieson?"
"Yes--yes indeed." Cliff glanced curiously at the competent
Jamieson. He fancied that Jamieson would appear annoyed by Hanvey's
cumbersomeness. But instead he saw the two other detectives hanging
worshipfully upon Hanvey's words.
Peculiar--it was impossible that Hanvey possessed keen intelligence.
And yet----
Hanvey nodded heavily. "That's all, Mr. Wallace. I reckon that's about
all I need from you."
All? It was nothing--less than nothing. One or two absurd, meaningless
questions; a ridiculous voicing of the thought that some one might have
stolen a hundred thousand dollars in currency from under his very eyes.
And Jim Hanvey was reputed to be a great detective.
Cliff Wallace was bothered. The very somnolent heaviness of Jim Hanvey
begot apprehension. He had no idea how to cope with it. The man was too
utterly guileless, too awkward of manner. His ponderous indifference
must cloak a keen, perceptive brain. Jamieson and Burton--well, Cliff
knew just what they were thinking. He'd always know what they were
thinking. But Hanvey--never. He didn't even know that Hanvey was
thinking. He was an element which the paying teller had not foreseen.
Frank suspicion was easy to combat. Through his head there flashed the
shibboleth of the Bankers' Protective Association: "We get a man if
it takes a lifetime--even though he has stolen only a dollar. It's the
principle of the thing."
He shook off the thought of Jim Hanvey, but throughout the day watched
the ponderous, big-jowled man lumber about the lobby and through
the cages, those great fishy eyes blinking with a deliberation
which reminded him of a man making physical effort to remain awake.
Occasionally Cliff looked up to find the glassy eyes staring at him
through the bars of his cage, the detective's unpressed tweed suit
against the marble shelf. His eyes would flash into those of the
detective, then would come that interminably slow blinking, and Hanvey
would move away apologetically. Once Wallace shivered.
That was the beginning. Hanvey during the days that followed did
absolutely nothing. Jamieson and Burton, on the other hand, worked
busily and thoroughly. They pored over the list of customers for whom
checks had been cashed on the day of the money's disappearance. And
finally they came to the pay-roll check of Sanford Jones & Co. They
called Cliff into conference with them, Burton doing the questioning.
"Who presented the Jones company check, Mr. Wallace?"