"I wonder why he did that? He's never done it before."
"Did what?"
"Hung over the counter while I was cashing your pay-roll check. I
wonder if he suspects----"
"That man! He looks like an imbecile."
"Looks like, yes. But he is supposed to be a great detective."
"It's impossible."
"He's getting on my nerves, Phyllis. I can't help but believe that he
suspects something. At times I feel a contempt for his obtuseness.
Then I know that I'm wrong. He couldn't be what he is and be the
fool he looks. And he doesn't do anything. He's never questioned me.
He's never questioned any one. He just sits there and watches and
watches--like--like a Buddha."
Nor did the weeks which followed alter the situation. Jamieson reported
to the bank officials that in his opinion there had been no robbery.
Burton concurred. They had arrived at the definite conclusion that the
money had never reached the bank. In answer to Cliff's statement that
it had, they admitted that Cliff believed so--but was in error. Cliff
refused to be convinced, and thus established more firmly than ever in
their minds the fact that he was innocent of complicity in the crime.
It was the theory of Jamieson and Burton that in securing the unusually
large amount of cash from the District Federal Reserve Bank to meet
the heavy pay rolls of that particular day, a miscount had been made
at the sending source and the checking up at the Third National had
been faulty. True, the accounts of the Federal Reserve Bank showed no
surplus of one hundred thousand dollars, but both Jamieson and Burton
were optimistic that it would eventually come to light.
Cliff Wallace knew that he had been successful. No hint of suspicion
had fallen upon him. The worst that had been said against him was that
he had been careless in counting the money as it came into his vaults.
He was sorrowful about that--ostentatiously so, just as he would
normally have exhibited grief at any suggestion of inefficiency. The
bank officials did not blame him. Most of them had climbed the ladder
slowly and they were familiar with the nagging routine of the paying
teller's cage, the inevitable liability to error. Undoubtedly, they
thought, the money would appear eventually. It was absurd to doubt
Clifford Wallace. Two detectives had shadowed him meticulously. The
orderly existence of the chief paying teller was unaltered. He went his
way serenely.
To Wallace it seemed more than worth the trouble. Lying in the vaults
of the City Trust was one hundred thousand dollars in cash, an amount
sufficient to yield seven thousand income invested with moderate
acumen. That meant leisure and ease for himself and Phyllis through
life. He did not want anything more. He knew that he would never again
be tempted to crime; not that he was morally opposed to it, but because
it wasn't worth the danger.
One hundred thousand dollars was adequate to their needs. He had
planned this thing for two years. Now it had been worked successfully.
If it only wasn't for Jim Hanvey, those wide-staring eyes. He couldn't
get away from those eyes, from the insolent indolence of the man, his
apparent indifference to the mystery he was supposed to be solving.
All day he lounged around the bank; ignorant, bunglesome, awkward,
inactive. He inspected no books, asked no questions, exhibited no
suspicion of Cliff Wallace. Yet Cliff felt those inhuman eyes focused
upon him at all times. And that incident of Hanvey's presence at the
cage when he cashed Phyllis' pay-roll check--that was fraught with deep
significance.
"He suspects me," proclaimed the chief paying teller to his accomplice.
"He knows that I did it and is just trying to find out how."
She held his hand between both of hers. "I'm afraid, Cliff. Horribly
afraid."
"If he'd only say something! I wish he'd arrest me."
"Cliff!"
"I mean it. If he'd arrest me they'd prosecute, and they couldn't
possibly convict. They haven't a thing on me. I'd be acquitted in jig
time. Then he could go to the devil--Hanvey and those fish eyes of his.
I'd be safe then--even if they found out later that I had done it."
"You mean that you couldn't be tried twice for the same offense?"
"That's it."
"Then why not induce them to--to prosecute?"
He shook his head. "I can't. I've tried it, but old Warren and Garet
Jenkins are convinced that I'm innocent. Jamieson and Burton both
believe the money never got to the bank. And Hanvey just sits around
like a hoot owl at noon and does nothing. It's Hanvey I'm afraid of. He
knows! The only thing he doesn't know is how!"
Two more weeks passed. Wallace's hope that Hanvey would depart proved
ill-founded. The big, awkward man was there at eight o'clock every
morning, and there he remained until the books were closed at night.
He spoke to nobody save in the most casual way. Every other employe of
the bank came to take him for granted. They were interested in him at
first, but later accepted him as they accepted the marble pillars which
stubbed the lobby. He was big and lumbering and uncouth, and gradually
they forgot his reputation as a bank detective.
But Clifford Wallace did not forget. In his eyes there had been born
a hunted, haunted look. Hanvey's flabby, rather coarse face had a
hypnotic effect upon him. He found himself wondering what obliquitous
course this man was pursuing, what method there might be in his madness
of inactivity. He felt like an ill man who finds himself daily in the
room with a coffin. Hanvey's stolid demeanor generated an association
of ideas that was irresistibly horrible.
It was obvious that Hanvey suspected something, some one; equally plain
that he did not suspect any one else in that bank. It must be, then,
that he did suspect Cliff. And then he commenced visiting Cliff's cage.
He did it only a few times. His manner was friendly, almost apologetic.
But he had a mean insinuating way of appearing at the cage door and
rattling the knob. Cliff would whirl and find those dull inhuman eyes
blinking slowly at him.
"Can I come in, Mr. Wallace?" And then once inside the cage: "Jest
wanted to pass the time of day with you."
Invariably, then, the same formula. A browsing around the tiny cage.
A peeping into the money-stocked vault of the paying teller. "Gosh!
That's a heap of money."
"Yes." Cliff found himself on edge when Hanvey was in his cage.
"Never knew there was that much money in the world."
Damn the man! Always obvious in his speech.
"Didn't you?"
"Nope. Sure didn't."
Hanvey never mentioned the robbery. His indifference must be studied;
all part of a net-spreading process. Cliff was frightened. He recalled
the adage that a detective can err a thousand times and yet win; the
criminal cannot afford to slip once. He regulated his daily life
scrupulously. At the end of another month he again deposited his
regular amount of savings. He saw to it that Phyllis did the same. But
the strain was telling on him. His appetite had gone, dark circles
appeared under his eyes. He wished daily that he'd be summoned into
Warren's office to face the thing out with Jim Hanvey. He knew they
couldn't convict, that they didn't have a thing against him. Even the
box in which reposed their hundred thousand dollars stood in the name
of Mrs. Harriet Dare, Phyllis' dead sister. Before her death Phyllis
had been authorized in writing to be permitted to the box. Cliff had
taken care that the box remained in the name of the estimable and
defunct lady.
He became moody and depressed, obsessed with speculation as to what was
happening behind the bovinely expressionless face of the detective. The
man's countenance was blank, but Cliff was no fool--he knew that it
masked an alert mind. True, he'd seen no indication of that alertness,
but he knew that it must be so. And Hanvey's inactivity was telltale.
Hanvey knew that he had done it, and was waiting with oxlike patience
to discover how.
Sooner or later he'd learn. How, Cliff didn't know. But no scheme is
so perfect that it can stand the test of unflagging and unceasing
surveillance. And when he did learn--Cliff shuddered. He knew full well
what they did to crooked bank employees. Robert Warren would be hard in
such a situation--very hard, merciless.
Then came another big pay-roll day, and Phyllis' weekly visit with the
modest check from her firm. This time Hanvey fell into line behind
her. Cliff saw him coming, and his face blanched. Phyllis noticing his
pallor turned and stared into the expressionless countenance of the big
unkempt detective. The color receded from her cheeks, too, and her hand
trembled visibly as she shoved her satchel through the little window of
Cliff's cage.
His fingers were trembling as he counted the money. He chatted with
Phyllis, the effort being visible and unnatural.
The girl moved away and Hanvey looked after her trim blue-suited
figure. Then he turned his froglike eyes back to Cliff Wallace and
blinked in that maddening way of his.
"Durned pretty girl."
"Yes." He was short, nerves ajangle.
"Friend of yours?"
"Yes."
"Awful pretty girl."
Hanvey moved away. Cliff staring after his waddling figure restrained
with difficulty an impulse to scream. And when he left the bank that
day he did something he had seldom done before in his life--he took a
drink of whisky. Then he went to see Phyllis.
He was but a nervous shell of himself when he took her riding that
night. He was a victim to nerves. Insomnia had gripped him--insomnia
interrupted by a succession of nightmares in which he was hounded by a
pair of glassy eyes which blinked slowly, interminably.
"It's all off, Phyllis."
"What do you mean?"
"Hanvey knows I did it. Sooner or later he'll figure out how."
"I thought--to-day--when he hung over the counter----"
"I'm afraid he's about worked it out. We're near the ragged edge."