The Complete Crime Stories (37 page)

“I said it winked once. I don't think it was a signal. I think he bumped his shoulder against it, by accident. If he were signaling, he'd keep on winking it, wouldn't he?”

“How'd he get in there?”

“I don't know.”

“I think you do know.”

“I don't know, but the only way I can think of is that he slipped in there while we were all gathered around, looking at that spider.”

“That you conveniently on purpose brought in there.”

“Or that he did.”

“What's he doing in there?”

“I don't know.”

“Come on, come on, quit stalling me!”

She got up and began walking around. “Dave, it's easy to see you think I know all about this. That I know more than I'm telling. That Charles and I are in some kind of plot. I don't know anything I can say. I know a lot I could say if I wasn't—”

She stopped, came to life like some kind of a tiger, and began hammering her fists against the wall.

“—bought! That was what was wrong! I ought to have cut my heart out, suffered anything rather than let you give me that money! Why did I ever take it? Why didn't I tell you to—”

“Why didn't you do what I begged you to do? Come over here today and let him have it between the eyes—tell him the truth, that you were through, and this was the end of it?”

“Because, God help me, I wanted to be happy!”

“No! … Because, God help you, you knew he wasn't over here! Because you knew he was in that vault, and you were afraid I'd find it out!”

“It isn't true! How can you say that?”

“Do you know what I think? I think you took that money off me, day by day, and that not one penny of it ever found its way into your cash box. And then I think you and he decided on a little phoney hold-up, to cover that shortage, and that that's what he's doing in the vault. And if Helm hadn't got into it, and noticed that Brent didn't come out of the bank the second time he went in, I don't see anything that was to stop you from getting away with it. You knew I didn't dare open my trap about the dough
I
had put up. And if he came out of there masked, and made a quick getaway, I don't know who was going to swear it was him, if it hadn't been for Helm. Now it's in the soup. All right, Mrs. Brent, that vault that don't take any messages till eight-thirty, that works both ways. If he can't get any word to you, you can't get any word to him. Just let him start that little game that looked so good yesterday afternoon, and he's going to get the surprise of his life, and so are you. There'll be a reception committee waiting for him when he comes out of there, and maybe they'll include you in it too.”

She looked straight at me the whole time I was talking, and the lamplight caught her eyes, so they shot fire. There was something catlike about her shape anyway, and with her eyes blazing like that, she looked like something out of the jungle. But all of a sudden that woman was gone, and she was crumpled up in front of me, on the sofa, crying in a queer, jerky way. Then I hated myself for what I had said, and had to dig in with my fingernails to keep from crying too.

After a while the phone rang. From what she said, I could tell it was her father, and that he'd been trying to reach her all afternoon and all night. She listened a long time, and when she hung up she lay back and closed her eyes. “He's in there to put the money back.”

“… Where'd he get it?”

“He got it this morning. Yesterday morning. From my father.”

“Your father had that much—
ready?”

“He got it after I talked to him that night. Then when I told him I wouldn't need it, he kept it, in his safe deposit box—just in case. Charles went over there yesterday and said he had to have it—against the check-up on my cash. Papa went down to the Westwood bank with him, and got it out, and gave it to him. He was afraid to call me at the bank. He kept trying to reach me here. The maid left me a note, but it was so late when I got in I didn't call. … So, now I pay a price for not telling him. Charles, I mean. For letting him worry.”

“I was for telling him, you may remember.”

“Yes, I remember.”

It was quite a while after that before either of us said anything. All that time my mind was going around like a squirrel cage, trying to reconstruct for myself what was going on in that vault. She must have been doing the same thing, because pretty soon she said, “Dave?”

“Yes?”

“Suppose he
does
put the money back?”

“Then—we're sunk.”

“What, actually, will happen?”

“If I find him in there, the least I can do is hold him till I've checked every cent in that vault. I find nine thousand more cash than the books show. All right. What then?”

“You mean the whole thing comes out?”

“On what we've been doing, you can get away with it as long as nobody's got the least suspicion of it. Let a thing like this happen, let them really begin to check, and it'll come out so fast it'll make your head swim.”

“And there goes your job?”

“Suppose you were the home office, how would you like it?”

“… I've brought you nothing but misery, Dave.”

“I—asked for it.”

“I can understand why you feel bitter.”

“I said some things I didn't mean.”

“Dave.”

“Yes?”

“There's one chance, if you'll take it.”

“What's that?”

“Charles.”

“I don't get it.”

“It may be a blessing, after all, that I told him nothing. He can't be sure what I've done while he's been away—whether I carried his false entries right along, whether I corrected them, and left the cash short—and it does look as though he'd check, before he did anything. He's a wizard at books, you know. And every record he needs is in there. Do you know what I'm getting at, Dave?”

“Not quite.”

“You'll have to play dummy's hand, and let him lead.”

“I don't want anything to do with him.”

“I'd like to wring his neck. But if you just don't force things, if you just act natural, and let me have a few seconds with him, so we'll know just what he
has
done, then—maybe it'll all come out all right. He certainly would be a boob to put the money back when he finds out it's already been put back.”

“Has
it been?”

“Don't you know?”

I took her in my arms then, and for that long was able to forget what was staring us in the face, and I still felt close to her when I left.

VIII

For the second time that night I went home, and this time I turned out all the lights, and went upstairs, and took off my clothes, and went to bed. I tried to sleep, and couldn't. It was all running through my mind, and especially what I was going to do when I opened that vault at eight-thirty. How could I act natural about it? If I could guess he was in the vault, Helm must have guessed it. He'd be watching me, waiting for every move, and he'd be doing that even if he didn't have any suspicion of me, which by now he must have, on account of being out that late with Sheila. All that ran through my mind, and after a while I'd figured a way to cover it, by openly saying something to him, and telling him I was going to go along with it, just wait and see what Brent had to say for himself, in case he was really in there. Then I tried once more to go to sleep. But this time it wasn't the play at the vault that was bothering me, it was Sheila. I kept going over and over it, what was said between us, the dirty cracks I had made, how she had taken them, and all the rest of it. Just as day began to break I found myself sitting up in bed. How I knew it I don't know, what I had to go on I haven't any idea, but I knew perfectly well that she was holding out on me, that there was something back of it all that she wasn't telling.

I unhooked the phone and dialed. You don't stay around a bank very long before you know the number of your chief guard. I was calling Dyer, and in a minute or two he answered, pretty sour. “Hello?”

“Dyer?”

“Yeah, who is it?”

“Sorry to wake you up. This is Dave Bennett.”

“What do you want?”

“I want some help.”

“Well, what the hell is it?”

“I got reason to think there's a man in our vault. Out in the Anita Avenue branch in Glendale. What he's up to I don't know, but I want you out there when I open up. And I'd like you to bring a couple of men with you.”

Up to then he'd been just a sleepy guy that used to be a city detective. Now he snapped out of it like something had hit him. “What do you mean you got reason to think? Who is this guy?”

“I'll give you that part when I see you. Can you meet me by seven o'clock? Is that too early?”

“Whenever you say, Mr. Bennett.”

“Then be at my house at seven, and bring your men with you. I'll give you the dope, and I'll tell you how I want you to do it.”

He took the address, and I went back to bed.

I went to bed, and lay there trying to figure out what it was I wanted him to do anyway. After a while I had it straightened out. I wanted him close enough to protect the bank, and myself as well, in case Sheila was lying to me, and I wanted him far enough away for her to have those few seconds with Brent, in case she wasn't. I mean, if Brent was really up to something, I wanted him covered every way there was, and by guys that would shoot. But if he came out with a foolish look on his face, and pretended he'd been locked in by mistake, and she found out we could still cover up that book-doctoring, I wanted to leave that open too. I figured on it, and after a while I thought I had it doped out so it would work.

Around six o'clock I got up, bathed, shaved, and dressed. I routed out Sam and had him make me some coffee, and fix up some bacon and eggs. I told him to stand by in case the men that were coming hadn't had any breakfast. Then I went in the living room and began to march around it. It was cold. I lit the fire. My head kept spinning around.

Bight on the tick of seven the doorbell rang and there they were, Dyer and his two mugs. Dyer's a tall, thin man with a bony face and eyes like gimlets. I'd say he was around fifty. The other two were around my own age, somewhere over thirty, with big shoulders, thick necks, and red faces. They looked exactly like what they were: ex-cops that had got jobs as guards in a bank. One was named Halligan, the other Lewis. They all said yes on breakfast, so we went in the dining room and Sam made it pretty quick with the service.

I gave it to Dyer, as quick as I could, about Brent being off for a couple of months, with his operation, and how he'd come in yesterday to get his stuff, and Helm had seen him go in the bank a second time, and not come out, and how Sheila had gone out looking for him late at night, and thought she saw the red light flash. I had to tell him that much, to protect myself afterward, because God only knew what was going to come out, and I didn't even feel I was safe on Sheila's end of it. I didn't say anything about the shortage, or Sheila's father, or any of that part. I told what I had to tell, and made it short.

“Now what I figure is, Brent got in there somehow just before we closed it up, maybe just looking around, and that he got locked in there by accident. However, I can't be sure. Maybe—it doesn't seem very likely—he's up to something. So what I'd like you guys to do is to be outside, just be where you can see what's going on. If it's all quiet, I'll give you the word, and you can go on home, If anything happens, you're there. Of course, a man spends a night in a vault, he may not feel so good by morning. We may need an ambulance. If so, I'll let you know.”

I breathed a little easier. It had sounded all right, and Dyer kept on wolfing down his toast and eggs. When they were gone he put sugar and cream in his coffee, stirred it around, and lit a cigarette. “Well—that's how you got it figured out.”

“I imagine I'm not far off.”

“All I got to say, you got a trusting disposition.”

“What do you make of it?”

“This guy's a regular employee, you say?”

“He's been head teller.”

“Then he
couldn't
get locked in by mistake. He couldn't no more do that than a doctor could sew himself up in a man's belly by mistake. Furthermore, you couldn't lock him in by mistake. You take all the usual care, don't you, when you lock a vault?”

“I think so.”

“And you done it regular, yesterday?”

“As well as I can recall.”

“You looked around in there?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you didn't see nothing?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Then he's in there on purpose.”

The other two nodded, and looked at me like I must not be very bright.

Dyer went on: “It's possible for a man to hide hisself in a vault. I've thought of it, many a time, how it could be done. You think of a lot of things in my business. Once them trucks are wheeled in, with the records on them, if he once got in without being seen, he could stoop down behind them, and keep quiet, and when you come to close up you wouldn't see him. But not by accident. Never.”

I was feeling funny in the stomach. I had to take a tack I didn't like.

“Of course, there's a human element in it. There's nothing in this man's record that gives any ground whatever for thinking he'd pull anything. Fact of the matter, that's what I'm doing in the branch. I was sent out there to study his methods in the savings department. I've been so much impressed by his work that I'm going to write an article about it.”

“When did he get in there, do you think?”

“Well, we found a spider. A big one.”

“One of them bad dreams with fur all over them?”

“That's it. And we were all gathered around looking at it. And arguing about how to get it out of there. I imagine he was standing there looking at it too. We all went out to throw it in the street, and he must have gone in the vault. Perhaps just looking around. Perhaps to open his box, I don't know. And—was in there when I closed it up.”