All that kind of hit me in the face at once, because it was the last thing I was expecting. I took her coat, and followed her into the living room. She sat down in front of the fire, picked up a cigarette and tapped it on her nail, and began looking around. When her eye lit on the highball tray she was already lighting her cigarette, but she nodded with the smoke curling up in one eye, “Yes, I think I will.”
I laughed, and poured her a drink. It was all that had been said, and yet it got us better acquainted than an hour of talk could have done. She asked me a few questions about myself, mainly if I wasn’t the same Dave Bennett that used to play halfback for U.S.C., and when I told her I was, she figured out my age. She said she was twelve years old at the time she saw me go down for a touchdown on an intercepted pass, which put her around twenty-five, what I took her for. She sipped her drink. I put a log of wood on the fire. I wasn’t quite so hot about the Legion fights.
When she’d finished her drink she put the glass down, motioned me away when I started to fix her another, and said: “Well.”
“Yeah, that awful word.”
“I’m afraid I have bad news.”
“Which is?”
“Charles is sick.”
“He certainly doesn’t look well.”
“He needs an operation.”
“What’s the matter with him—if it’s mentionable?”
“It’s mentionable, even if it’s pretty annoying. He has a duodenal ulcer, and he’s abused himself so much, or at least his stomach, with this intense way he goes about his work, and refusing to go out to lunch, and everything else that he shouldn’t do, that it’s got to that point. I mean, it’s serious. If he had taken better care of himself, it’s something that needn’t have amounted to much at all. But he’s let it go, and now I’m afraid if something isn’t done—well, it’s going to be very serious. I might as well say it. I got the report today, on the examination he had. It says if he’s not operated on at once, he’s going to be dead within a month. He’s—verging on a perforation.”
“And?”
“This part isn’t so easy.”
“… How much?”
“Oh, it isn’t a question of money. That’s all taken care of. He has a policy, one of these clinical hook-ups that entitles him to everything. It’s Charles.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“I can’t seem to get it through his head that this has to be done. I suppose I could, if I showed him what I’ve just got from the doctors, but I don’t want to frighten him any more than I can help. But he’s so wrapped up in his work, he’s such a fanatic about it, that he positively refuses to leave it. He has some idea that these people, these workers, are all going to ruin if he isn’t there to boss them around, and make them save their money, and pay up their installments on their houses, and I don’t know what all. I guess it sounds silly to you. It does to me. But—he won’t quit.”
“You want me to talk to him?”
“Yes, but that’s not quite all. I think, if Charles knew that his work was being done the way he wants it done, and that his job would be there waiting for him when he came out of the hospital, that he’d submit without a great deal of fuss. This is what I’ve been trying to get around to. Will you let me come in and do Charles’s work while he’s gone?”
“… Well—it’s pretty complicated work.”
“Oh no, it’s not. At least not to me. You see, I know every detail of it, as well as he does. I not only know the people, from going around with him while he badgered them into being thrifty, but I used to work in the bank. That’s where I met him. And—I’ll do it beautifully, really. That is, if you don’t object to making it a kind of family affair.”
I thought it over a few minutes, or tried to. I went over in my mind the reasons against it, and didn’t see any that amounted to anything. In fact, it suited me just as well to have her come in, if Brent really had to go to the hospital, because it would peg the job while he was gone, and I wouldn’t have to have a general shake-up, with the other three in the branch moving up a notch, and getting all excited about promotions that probably wouldn’t last very long anyway. But I may as well tell the truth. All that went through my mind, but another thing that went through my mind was her. It wasn’t going to be a bit unpleasant to have her around for the next few weeks. I liked this dame from the start, and for me anyway, she was plenty easy to look at.
“Why—I think that’s all right.”
“You mean I get the job?”
“Yeah—sure.”
“What a relief. I hate to ask for jobs.”
“How about another drink?”
“No, thanks. Well—just a little one.”
I fixed her another drink, and we talked about her husband a little more, and I told her how his work had attracted the attention of the home office, and it seemed to please her. But then all of a sudden I popped out: “Who are you, anyway?”
“Why—I thought I told you.”
“Yeah, but I want to know more.”
“Oh, I’m nobody at all, I’m sorry to say. Let’s see, who am I? Born, Princeton, New Jersey, and not named for a while on account of an argument among relatives. Then when they thought my hair was going to be red they named me Sheila, because it had an Irish sound to it. Then—at the age of ten, taken to California. My father got appointed to the history department of U.C.L.A.”
“And who is your father?”
“Henry W. Rollinson—”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him.”
“Ph.D. to you, just Hank to me. And—let’s see. High school, valedictorian of the class, tagged for college, wouldn’t go. Went out and got myself a job instead. In our little bank. Answered an ad in the paper. Said I was eighteen when I was only sixteen, worked there three years, got a one-dollar raise every year. Then—Charles got interested, and I married him.”
“And, would you kindly explain that?”
“It happens, doesn’t it?”
“Well, it’s none of my business. Skip it.”
“You mean we’re oddly assorted?”
“Slightly.”
“It seems so long ago. Did I mention I was nineteen? At that age you’re very susceptible to—what would you call it? Idealism?”
“… Are you still?”
I didn’t know I was going to say that, and my voice sounded shady. She drained her glass and got up.
“Then, let’s see. What else is there in my little biography? I have two children, one five, the other three, both girls, and both beautiful. And—I sing alto in the Eurydice Women’s Chorus. … That’s all, and now I have to be going.”
“Where’d you put your car?”
“I don’t drive. I came by bus.”
“Then—may I drive you home?”
“I’d certainly be grateful if you would. … By the way, Charles would kill me if he knew I’d come to you. About him, I mean. I’m supposed to be at a picture show. So tomorrow, don’t get absent-minded and give me away.”
“It’s between you and me,”
“It sounds underhanded, but he’s very peculiar.”
I live on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, and she lived on Mountain Drive, in Glendale. It’s about twenty minutes, but when we got in front of her house, instead of stopping, I drove on. “I just happened to think; it’s awful early for a picture show to let out.”
“So it is, isn’t it?”
We drove up in the hills. Up to then we had been plenty gabby, but for the rest of the drive we both felt self-conscious and didn’t have much to say. When I swung down through Glendale again the Alexander Theatre was just letting out. I set her down on the corner, a little way from her house. She shook hands. “Thanks ever so much.”
“Just sell him the idea, and the job’s all set.”
“… I feel terribly g
uilty, but—”
“Yes?”
“I’ve had a grand time.”
II
She sold me the idea, but she couldn’t sell Brent, not that easy, that is. He squawked, and refused to go to the hospital, or do anything about his ailment at all, except take pills for it. She called me up three or four times about it, and those calls seemed to get longer every night. But one day, when he toppled over at the window, and I had to send him home in a private ambulance, there didn’t seem to be much more he could say. They hauled him off to the hospital, and she came in next day to take his place, and things went along just about the way she said they would, with her doing the work fine and the depositors plunking down their money just like they had before.
The first night he was in the hospital I went down there with a basket of fruit, more as an official gift from the bank than on my own account, and she was there, and of course after we left him I offered to take her home. So I took her. It turned out she had arranged that the maid should spend her nights at the house, on account of the children, while he was in the hospital, so we took a ride. Next night I took her down, and waited for her outside, and we took another ride. After they got through taking X-rays they operated, and it went off all right, and by that time she and I had got the habit. I found a newsreel right near the hospital, and while she was with him, I’d go in and look at the sports, and then we’d go for a little ride.
I didn’t make any passes, she didn’t tell me I was different from other guys she’d known, there was nothing like that. We talked about her kids, and the books we’d read, and sometimes she’d remember about my old football days, and some of the things she’d seen me do out there. But mostly we’d just ride along and say nothing, and I couldn’t help feeling glad when she’d say the doctors wanted Brent to stay there until he was all healed up. He could have stayed there till Christmas, and I wouldn’t have been sore.
The Anita Avenue branch, I think I told you, is the smallest one we’ve got, just a little bank building on a corner, with an alley running alongside and a drugstore across the street. It employs six people, the cashier, the head teller, two other tellers, a girl bookkeeper, and a guard. George Mason had been cashier, but they transferred him and sent me out there, so I was acting cashier. Sheila was taking Brent’s place as head teller. Snelling and Helm were the other two tellers, Miss Church was the bookkeeper, and Adler the guard. Miss Church went in for a lot of apple-polishing with me, or anyway what I took to be apple-polishing. They had to stagger their lunch hours, and she was always insisting that I go out for a full hour at lunch, that she could relieve at any of the windows, that there was no need to hurry back, and more of the same. But I wanted to pull my oar with the rest, so I took a half hour like the rest of them took, and relieved at whatever window needed me, and for a couple of hours I wasn’t at my desk at all.
One day Sheila was out, and the others got back a little early, so I went out. They all ate in a little cafe down the street, so I ate there too, and when I got there she was alone at a table. I would have sat down with her, but she didn’t look up, and I took a seat a couple of tables away. She was looking out the window, smoking, and pretty soon she doused her cigarette and came over where I was. “You’re a little standoffish today, Mrs. Brent.”
“I’ve been doing a little quiet listening.”
“Oh—the two guys in the corner?”
“Do you know who the fat one is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“That’s Bunny Kaiser, the leading furniture man of Glendale. ‘She Buys ’Er Stuff from Kaiser.’”
“Isn’t he putting up a building or something? Seems to me we had a deal on, to handle his bonds.”
“He wouldn’t sell bonds. It’s his building, with his own name chiseled over the door, and he wanted to swing the whole thing himself. But he can’t quite make it. The building is up to the first floor now, and he has to make a payment to the contractor. He needs a hundred thousand bucks. Suppose a bright girl got that business for you, would she get a raise?”
“And how would she get that business?”
“Sex appeal! Do you think I haven’t got it?”
“I didn’t say you haven’t got it.”
“You’d better not.”
“Then that’s settled.”
“And—?”
“When’s this payment on the first floor due?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Ouch! That doesn’t give us much time to work.”
“You let me work it, and I’ll put it over.”
“All right, you land that loan, it’s a two-dollar raise.”
“Two-fifty.”
“O.K.—two-fifty.”
“I’ll be late. At the bank, I mean.”
“I’ll take your window.”
So I went back and took her window. About two o’clock a truck driver came in, cashed a pay check with Helm, then came over to me to make a $10 deposit on savings. I took his book, entered the amount, set the $10 so she could put it with her cash when she came in. You understand: They all have cash boxes, and lock them when they go out, and that cash is checked once a month. But when I took out the card in our own file, the total it showed was $150 less than the amount showing in the passbook.
In a bank, you never let the depositor notice anything. You’ve got that smile on your face, and everything’s jake, and that’s fair enough, from his end of it, because the bank is responsible, and what his book shows is what he’s got, so he can’t lose no matter how you play it. Just the same, under that pasted grin, my lips felt a little cold. I picked up his book again, like there was something else I had to do to it, and blobbed a big smear of ink over it. “Well, that’s nice, isn’t it.”
“You sure decorated it.”
“I tell you what, I’m a little busy just now—will you leave that with me? Next time you come in, I’ll have a new one ready for you.”
“Anything you say, Cap.”
“This one’s kind of shopworn, anyway.”
“Yeah, getting greasy.”
By that time I had a receipt ready for the book, and copied the amount down in his presence, and passed it out to him. He went and I set the book aside. It had taken a little time, and three more depositors were in line behind him. The first two books corresponded with the cards, but the last one showed a $200 difference, more on his book than we had on our card. I hated to do what he had seen me do with the other guy, but I had to have that book. I started to enter the deposit, and once more a big blob of ink went on that page.
“Say, what you need is a new pen.”
“What they need is a new teller. To tell you the truth, I’m a little green on this job, just filling in till Mrs. Brent gets back, and I’m hurrying it. If you’ll just leave me this book, now—”
“Sure, that’s all right.”
I wrote the receipt, and signed it, and he went, and I put that book aside. By that time I had a little breathing spell, with nobody at the window, and I checked those books against the cards. Both accounts, on our records, showed withdrawals, running from $25 to $50, that didn’t show on the passbooks. Well, brother, it had to show on the passbooks. If a depositor wants to withdraw, he can’t do it without his book, because that book’s his contract, and we’re bound by it, and he can’t draw any dough unless we write it right down there, what he took out. I began to feel a little sick at my stomach. I began to think of the shifty way Brent had talked when he explained about working the departments up on a personal basis. I began to think about how he refused to go to the hospital, when any sane man would have been begging for the chance. I began to think of that night call Sheila made on me, and all that talk about Brent’s taking things so seriously, and that application she made, to take things over while he was gone.
All that went through my head, but I was still thumbing the cards. My head must have
been swimming a little when I first checked them over, but the second time I ran my eye over those two cards I noticed little light pencil checks beside each one of those withdrawals. It flashed through my mind that maybe that was his code. He had to have a code, if he was trying to get away with anything. If a depositor didn’t have his book, and asked for his balance, he had to be able to tell him. I flipped all the cards over. There were light pencil checks on at least half of them, every one against a withdrawal, none of them against a deposit. I wanted to run those checked amounts off on the adding machine, but I didn’t. I was afraid Miss Church would start her apple-polishing again, and offer to do it for me. I flipped the cards over one at a time, slow, and added the amounts in my head. If I was accurate I didn’t know. I’ve got an adding machine mind, and I can do some of those vaudeville stunts without much trouble, but I was too excited to be sure. That didn’t matter, that day. I wouldn’t be far off. And those little pencil checks, by the time I had turned every card, added up to a little more than $8,500.
Just before closing time, around three o’clock, Sheila came in with the fat guy, Bunny Kaiser. I found out why sex appeal had worked, where all our contact men, trying to make a deal for bonds a few months before, had flopped. It was the first time he had ever borrowed a dollar in his life, and he not only hated it, he was so ashamed of it he couldn’t even look at me. Her way of making him feel better was not to argue about it at all, but to pat him on the hand, and it was pathetic the way he ate it up. After a while she gave me the sign to beat it, so I went back and got the vault closed, and chased the rest of them out of there as fast as I could. Then we fixed the thing up, I called the main office for O.K.’s, and around four-thirty he left. She stuck out her hand, pretty excited, and I took it. She began trucking around the floor, snapping her fingers and singing some tune while she danced. All of a sudden she stopped, and made motions like she was brushing herself off.
“Well—is there something on me?”