ASSAULT AND BATTERY
Dick has never been able satisfactorily to explain why, as soon as
she had finished her breakfast that morning, she went to the bank.
Just before starting she told Alice that John had run off without his
eye-glasses, and that she was going to take them down to him, which
was true, but not entirely adequate. She told herself that since Mrs.
Sponley’s fever had abated, she was sure to want to know all about the
happenings of the day before, and that telling her might have serious
consequences. Alice would not be able to give her any information
about it, and the morning paper containing the interview that had so
badly frightened Curtin had been stuffed, as soon as Dick had read it,
into John’s pocket, and was now on its way down town. So that if Dick
herself was well out of the way, Mrs. Sponley might have whatever poor
happiness ignorance affords, for a while longer. That was an excellent
reason. A year later Jack Dorlin told her that she came to the bank on
Thursday morning simply because he had not come to see her Wednesday
evening, which was a piece of impudence Dick could well afford to
answer merely with an infinitely scornful smile.
They met at the corner, half a square away from the bank.
“What on earth has brought you down here?” he exclaimed, as he came up
with her. “Has anything gone wrong?”
She waived the question. “Hello, Jack,” was all she said. There was
small matter in the words to blush over; but the color sprang into her
face, for something in the inflection of them had been almost a caress,
and the fact that she had not offered him her hand and that she had
barely glanced at him lent an emphasis to it that he would be sure to
understand.
They walked a score of paces in silence. The mere sense of nearness
that came to them in the crowd was good enough without seeking to
better it by talking. But the words that hung in Jack’s throat had to
come out at last.
“There’s something I must tell you--”
Not there on that crowded sidewalk, with bank clerks and messenger
boys, lawyers and merchants, rich men, poor men, beggar men,--all
hurrying and jostling past,--to slip between them, and make an
interruption at every three words. No, certainly not there, if Dick
could help it. So Jack, who for all he knew of his surroundings at that
moment might have been walking down a grassy lane, between hawthorn
hedges that breathed softly into the moonlight; Jack, who knew only
that it was Dick’s hand that brushed lightly by his own; poor, stupid
Jack must needs again be interrupted.
“There are a lot of things you must tell me,” she said. “All I know
about what happened yesterday is what I saw in this morning’s paper.
John was so thoroughly tired out when he came home that, as soon as he
could get rid of the reporters, he went to bed, and--”
She was talking aimlessly, for she saw how he was misunderstanding her,
how her words must be hurting him, and she could think of nothing but
that. Why, oh, why had he made her do it!
Though he mistook the reason, he saw that the situation was painful to
her, and he came quickly to the rescue.
“You haven’t told me why you’ve come down here at this time in the
morning,” he said easily. “There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Bagsbury, I
hope.”
His consideration for her, even at such a moment, touched her. The
tremulous brightness of her eyes would have told him something if he
had looked up at them. She herself had forgotten by that time where
they were standing.
“It’s nothing--I mean nothing important. I want to see John for a
minute.”
“It’s pretty early for him yet, isn’t it?” asked Jack. Still he would
not look at her. They were standing just before the entrance to the
bank, but she did not move to go in. Hillsmead came bustling up, and,
as he passed them, lifted his hat in his latest and most impressive
manner; but they looked at him with unseeing eyes. He would have had
the same sort of reception had he been a six-gun field battery, or a
circus parade with caged animals.
“Is it?” she asked listlessly. “He started before I did--oh, of course;
he walks. I forgot that.”
Then her tone changed quickly. “I think I’ll go in and wait for him.
It’ll be all right for me to stay in his office till he comes, won’t
it?”
He nodded assent, and led the way into the bank. They passed Hillsmead
as they turned in behind the rail, and Jack wondered why he wore that
peculiar expression. But he did not think of Hillsmead for more than a
fraction of a second.
He ushered Dick into the private office, raised a window, and placed a
chair for her near by where she could feel the breeze. “I don’t believe
it will be very long before he comes,” he said.
Then with an effort he added: “I can’t stay here. I--I have my work,
you see--”
He turned toward the door, but before he reached it she spoke his name.
“Don’t go away, Jack. I want--tell me what you started to tell me out
there.”
She had not taken the chair he had placed for her, but was standing
close by the window. He could not see her face.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “You had answered me already.
It was wrong in me to try to compel you to do it more directly. I
presumed on your liking me, and wanting to be kind to me.”
He dropped down in John’s big desk chair, and, bending forward, pressed
his clasped hands together between his knees.
“It is just what I tried to tell you a week ago last night in the
Bagsburys’ library,” he went on, speaking slowly and precisely;
“nothing but just this: that I know what it really means now to love
you, Dick. I didn’t know those other times when I told you. You were
right about that. Now that I really understand, I can see how little I
understood before. And until that night, I hoped that you knew I really
understood, and that you--”
If he had looked at her, he would have stopped there, but his eyes were
still averted, and he labored painfully on through a bog of words,
until at last, mercifully, she interrupted him.
“That wasn’t what you told me the other night. You only told me
that you had found out that I was right when I said you didn’t--you
didn’t--know. John came in then, and I--”
But then the words she had meant to say suddenly refused to be said.
For the first time she realized that they were not true. He did not
change his position, but she heard his breath coming quicker. He was
holding himself hard.
“I suppose I did commit such a piece of idiocy as that. It’s just
what I’d be likely to do. I’m getting tired of being such an
utterly--hopeless--”
It was her hand, laid lightly on his lips, that checked him there. “You
mustn’t say such things about yourself any more,” she said. She took
her hand away, but remained standing close beside him.
Still he did not raise his eyes.
“You are stupid this morning, though,” she said, and her voice was
quivering. “Jack--Jack, are you--going to make me--”
Then, at last, he rose swiftly to his feet; and he looked at her as
though to make up in that first moment for a six months’ blindness. He
caught her hands timidly, as though he expected that they would resist;
but they lay quite contentedly in his and he gripped them tighter.
“Do they mean what they’re telling me?” he asked breathlessly. “Do you
know what they’re telling me?” But he needed no other answer than what
he saw in her face, and though he let go her hands, it was that he
might hold her close in the circle of his arms.
“You didn’t believe what I said that night, did you, Dick? You knew
what I was trying to say.”
A tremulous little sigh of complete happiness was all her answer at
first, but afterward she said:--
“Yes, I knew, of course, all the time. I told myself that you meant
that you had found out you didn’t care, and I tried to make myself
believe it. But if I’d been afraid that I really should believe it--”
He interrupted her, but not by speaking.
There are occasions when arbitrary divisions of time, such as minutes,
cease to have any particular significance, and we can but guess from
collateral evidence how much later it was when Dick, after a glance
into the street below, said with a laugh,--
“There comes John, now.”
“Let him come. He’s a malevolent sort of wretch. He laid his plans,
you see, to come down and interrupt us again, just at a--a critical
moment; but for once he’s too late. We foiled him.”
“We?” she questioned demurely. “He’d have been here in plenty of time
if--”
But she should not have expected to be allowed to finish a sentence
like that.
“Jack! Let me go. Please let me go. Oh, he’s coming!”
“It will be such a fine surprise for Mr. Bagsbury,” he answered
placidly.
But John was not to have his surprise just then. Before he reached the
outer office he was stopped by Mr. Peters.
“There’s a good one on us, Mr. Bagsbury. We can’t get into either of
the big vaults. The time-locks are still going. They ought to have come
open a quarter of an hour ago. Curtin says he set them just as usual,
but I suppose he must have wound them a little too far. That would be
easy enough to do. They’re likely to come open any minute now.”
“Where is Curtin?” John asked.
“He’s somewhere about. Oh, I guess he’s in the telephone box.”
There was, after all, a fundamental error in Melville Sponley’s
calculations which would probably have beaten him even if luck had
turned things differently; if, for instance, Curtin had not chosen that
particular moment for his telephoning. The Bear had never in the course
of the fight, and particularly not in this last turn of it, reckoned
upon the quickness of John’s intuitions. Most men would have taken
the obvious explanation instead of the far more remote one, and until
it was too late would have waited for the vaults to open themselves.
John would have been too late had he been obliged to wait for the
laborious processes of reason to guide him; but thanks to insight, or
imagination, or genius, or whatever you may be pleased to call it, he
moved swiftly. Before Peters had finished speaking, John understood the
whole trick, and, what is more to the purpose, he had no doubt of his
understanding.
He looked about thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said to Peters:--
“Don’t interfere in what’s going to happen. I know exactly what I’m
going to do.”
With that he walked rapidly toward the open door of the telephone box.
He had no intention of stealing up and taking Curtin unawares, but
chance brought it about. The rubber matting deadened his footfalls,
and as he drew nearer, a movement by one of the clerks attracted
Curtin’s attention in the other direction. Even at that, had it not
been for the intoxication induced by the whiskey and by the excitement
of the moment, Curtin must have perceived John’s presence before the
Banker had come within a single pace of him. But as it happened, John
was not an arm’s length away when Curtin said, “They think it’ll come
open in a minute.”
It was not, as Sponley thought, discretion that stopped him then, but
a big, lean forearm which came under his chin, bending his head back
suddenly so that every muscle in his body turned limp as rags and the
terrible grip of the inner crook of an elbow which throttled him. As
his hands involuntarily flew to release his throat, John caught the
receiver away from him and clapped it to his own ear. He heard Sponley
say,--
“Locked it up till twelve, didn’t you?”
Then he rang off, and tightening his grip on Curtin, backed out of
the cabinet. Every man in the bank, save the one who remained deep in
oblivion in the inner private office, came running to the spot, but
they did not need John’s quick admonition not to interfere.
Curtin had ceased even to appear to struggle. He simply hung, so much
dead weight, from John Bagsbury’s rigid elbow.
“I don’t know whether I’ve broken your neck or not. I hope not. Come
into my office. There are some things I’d like to have you tell me.”
He let his arm relax, and Curtin tumbled in a heap on the floor.
With an exclamation of impatience John lifted him, and half dragged,
half led him down the aisle. The door of the outer office was open.
When he reached the inner one, he kicked it open and thrust Curtin
forward. The man went staggering across the room, until he stumbled and
fell upon the cracked old leather sofa which groaned under his sudden
impact.
Jack Dorlin had taken Dick by the shoulders and gently pulled her out
of Curtin’s zigzag course; then they stood quite still watching him as
he lay there, with one hand fumbling at his throat.
Dick knew that John Bagsbury was standing in the doorway. She could
hear his loud, slow breathing, but she did not turn to look at him,
for she guessed that the expression in his face was one that she
would rather not be able to remember. He was looking at her and at
Jack in a puzzled way, as though he suspected them of being merely a
hallucination. Dick was the first to speak:--
“I think he is fainting. Will you get some water, Jack?”
The sound of her voice brought John Bagsbury to himself again. “I did
not know you were in here,” he said simply. Then, as Jack Dorlin left
the room, he added: “I’m glad you were. I was pretty mad. I was--I was
all right until I felt him in my hands, but that was too much for me.”
Without reply she moved toward the sofa.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“To loosen his collar,” she replied laconically. “Somebody’s got to do
it.”
“I will,” he said, and with shaking hands he did.
Curtin revived quickly when Jack Dorlin dashed the water in his face,
and he sat up feebly and looked about the room. Dick turned away to the
window, and in a moment Jack stepped to her side.
“Why are all those people waiting out there?” she asked in an undertone.
He glanced down into the street. There was, as on yesterday, a little
knot of people standing about the door.
“Come here and look, Mr. Bagsbury,” said Jack, quietly.
It was not the angry man of five minutes ago, nor the John Bagsbury who
had just been talking to Dick, nothing but the Banker who spoke to Jack
Dorlin, after a glance out of the window.
“I have some business to talk over with Mr. Curtin,” he said swiftly;
“but I’ve no time for that just now. Will you look after him, Dorlin,
until I’m at liberty again?”
Without waiting for Jack to reply, he strode out of the office and shut
the door behind him.
“I suppose I’d better go,” said Dick.
Jack was very close to her, standing between her and Curtin, and he
spoke almost in a whisper: “I suppose so. I wish you were my prisoner
instead of--”
There is your chance, Curtin. You know it is less than a ten-foot drop
from that open window to the sidewalk. Once out there, you are safe
enough. It will hardly be worth while trying to prove anything against
you in a court of law; all you are afraid of is John Bagsbury. If you
will be quick, he will not be able to get his hands on you again.
He thought of all that. If he could have had one good drink of whiskey,
he would have tried it; but as it was, he only took a hesitating step
toward the window, and Dick saw.
“Be careful, Jack!” she said.
He turned quickly about and understood. “Do you feel that breeze too
much, Mr. Curtin? Don’t move. I’ll close the window.”
When he had closed and locked it, Dick was gone.
“Thank you,” said Curtin.
The narrowness of his escape from such a blunder made Jack
uncomfortable, but exceedingly alert. He sat in John’s chair, and for
what seemed to him half the morning his eyes at least never wandered
from the man on the sofa.
It was really a little less than half an hour before John Bagsbury came
back into the room. He was still only the Banker, quick of speech and
placid of mind.
“Now, I’m ready to talk with you, Mr. Curtin. No--don’t go, Dorlin. We
have arranged for what currency we need for the present, and there’ll
be some experts here in a few minutes now, to see if they can do
anything with the vaults.”
“Are they going to run us again to-day?” asked Jack.
“I don’t think so,” said the Banker, smiling. “Those people we saw were
bringing their money back. They didn’t want it for more than one night.”
He turned to Curtin. “Mr. Sponley is doing a good morning’s work,” he
said. “He’s on the floor himself, and from the way it looks now he will
beat Pickering inside of two hours. If he does that, of course they may
run us again.”
The Banker looked thoughtfully out of the window for a moment, then he
continued: “You have done a good many questionable things, Mr. Curtin,
since you came here six months ago, and you have done one or two
things in the last day or two that are unquestionable. I am inclined
to think that I can have you committed to prison for a considerable
term of years. I think there is enough in what you told Hauxton
Tuesday afternoon, and in your manipulating the time-locks yesterday,
to accomplish that. But I’m not sure that I want to. I should gain
nothing, not even the personal satisfaction for an injury. You’ve been
acting on instructions, I suppose. I have still another hand to play
with the man who gave you those instructions.”
“He’ll beat you,” said Curtin, sullenly.
“And I want you to act in my interest while I play it,” John went on
evenly. “That course can’t be less to your advantage than the one
you’ve been following. I want you now to answer some questions. When
will those vaults come open?”
“I don’t--”
“The truth!” thundered John, moving forward, and Curtin went white.
“Tell me the truth, Mr. Curtin.”
“At twelve o’clock.”
“That _is_ true,” said John, “I know. Now please tell me just how you
came to do it.”
“Oh, damn you!” said Curtin, brokenly. “Damn both of you! You’ll tear
me to pieces between you. He made me do it.”
“I know he did. I want you to tell me how.”
Sullenly, brazenly, fearfully, shiftily, and with many intervals of
feeble blasphemous ravings against the two strong men who had ground
him between them, Curtin told the long story, and John listened with
half his mind, while the other half was making plans. But at last
something caught his whole attention.
“Say that again,” he commanded. “You tell me that Sponley laid violent
hands on you, yesterday afternoon, in the bar-room of the Eagle Café?
Was there a witness present?”
“The barkeeper.”
John sprang to his feet. “That’s what I want,” he said exultantly, and
his jaws came together with a snap. “Dorlin, will you order a carriage,
quick? We’ll have to cut it fine.”
Then his strong lips bent in an ironical smile.
“You’ll come with me, Mr. Curtin, to the nearest justice and swear out
a warrant for Sponley’s arrest on a charge of assault and battery.”