The Complete Crime Stories

  His face got white, and he stood there beside me, his nostrils fanning and his little gray eyes drawn down to points. I broke his connection and dialed the home office. When they came in I asked for Lou Frazier. His title is vice president, same as mine, but he’s special assistant to the Old Man, and with the Old Man in Honolulu, he was in charge. His secretary said he wasn’t there, but then she said wait a minute, he’s just come in. She put him on.

  “Lou?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Dave Bennett, in Glendale.”

  “What is it, Dave?”

  “We’ve had some trouble. You better get out. And bring some money. There’ll be a run.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Stick-up. Guard killed. I think we’re cleaned.”

  “O.K.—how much do you need?”

  “Twenty thousand, to start. If we need more, you can send for it later. And step on it.”

  “On my way.”

  While I was talking, the sirens were screeching, and now the place was full of cops. Outside, an ambulance was pulling in, and about five hundred people standing around, with more coming by the second. When I hung up, a drop of blood ran off the end of my nose on the blotter, and then it began to patter down in a stream. I put my hand to my head. My hair was all sticky and wet, and when I looked, my fingers were full of blood. I tried to think what caused it, then remembered the truck falling on me.

  “Dyer?”

  “… Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Frazier is on his way out. He’s bringing money to meet all demands. You’re to stay here with Halligan and Lewis, and keep order, and hold yourself ready for anything he tells you. Let the police take care of Adler.”

  “They’re taking him out now.”

  I looked, and two of them, with the ambulance crew, were carrying him out. They were going the front way. Halligan had opened the door. Lewis and five or six cops were already outside, keeping the people back. They put him in the ambulance. Helm started out there, but I called him.

  “Get in the vault, check it up.”

  “We’ve been in. Snelling and I.”

  “What did he get?”

  “He got it all. Forty-four thousand, cash. And that’s not all. He got in the boxes. He left the little boxes alone. He went in the others with a chisel, the ones that had big valuables and securities in them, and he took it all from them, too. He knew which ones.”

  “Mr. Frazier is on his way out with cash for the depositors. As soon as that’s under way, make a list of all the rifled boxes, get the box holders on the phone if you can, send them wires otherwise, and get them in here.”

  “I’ll start on it now.”

  The ambulance crew came in, and started over toward me. I waved them away, and they went off with Adler. Sheila came over to me.

  “Mr. Kaiser wants to speak to you.”

  He was right behind her, Bunny Kaiser, the guy she had brought in for the $100,000 loan the afternoon I had found the shortage. I was just opening my mouth to tell him that all demands would be met, that he could take his turn with the other depositors as soon as we opened, when he motioned to the windows. Every window on one side was full of breaks and bullet holes, and the back window had the big hole in it where Brent had thrown his grip through it.

  “Mr. Bennett, I just wanted to say, I’ve got my glaziers at work now, they’re just starting on the plate glass windows for my building, they’ve got plenty of stock, and if you want, I’ll send them over and they can get you fixed up here. Them breaks don’t look so good.”

  “That would help, Mr. Kaiser.”

  “Right away.”

  “And—thanks.”

  I stuck out my left hand, the one that wasn’t covered with blood, and he took it. I must have been pretty wrung up. For just that long it seemed to me I loved him more than anybody on earth. At a time like that, what it means to you, one kind word.

  The glaziers were already ripping out the broken glass when Lou Frazier got there. He had a box of cash, four extra tellers, and one uniformed guard, all he could get into his car. He came over, and I gave it to him quick, what he needed to know. He stepped out on the sidewalk with his cash box, held it up, and made a speech:

  “All demands will be met. In five minutes the windows will open, all depositors kindly fall in line, the tellers will identify you, and positively nobody but depositors will be admitted!”

  He had Snelling with him, and Snelling began to pick depositors out of the crowd, and the cops and the new guard formed them in line, out on the sidewalk. He came in the bank again, and his tellers set the upset truck on its wheels again, and rolled the others out, and they and Helm started to get things ready to pay. Dyer was inside by now. Lou went over to him, and jerked his thumb toward me.

  “Get him out of here.”

  It was the first time it had dawned on me that I must be an awful-looking thing, sitting there at my desk in the front of the bank, with blood all over me. Dyer came over and called another ambulance. Sheila took her handkerchief and started to wipe off my face. It was full of blood in a second. She took my own handkerchief out of my pocket, and did the best she could with it. From the way Lou looked away every time his eye fell on me, I figured she only made it worse.

  Lou opened the doors, and forty or fifty depositors filed in. “Savings depositors on this side, please have your passbooks ready.”

  He split them up to four windows. There was a little wait, and then those at the head of the line began to get their money. Four or five went out, counting bills. Two or three that had been in line saw we were paying, and dropped out. A guy counting bills stopped, then fell in at the end of the line, to put his money back in.

  The run was over.

  My head began to go around, and I felt sick to my stomach. Next thing I knew, there was an ambulance siren, and then a doctor in a white coat was standing in front of me, with two orderlies beside him. “Think you can go, or you going to need a little help?”

  “Oh, I can go.”

  “Better lean on me.”

  I leaned on him, and I must have looked pretty terrible, because Sheila turned away from me, and started to cry. It was the first she had broken down since it happened, and she couldn’t fight it back. Her shoulders kept jerking and the doctor motioned to one of the orderlies.

  “Guess we better take her along too.”

  “Guess we better.”

  They rode us in together, she on one stretcher, me on the other, the doctor riding backwards, between us. As we went he worked on my cut. He kept swabbing at it, and I could feel the sting of the antiseptic. But I wasn’t thinking about that. Once out of the bank, Sheila broke down completely, and it was terrible to hear the sound in her voice, as the sobs came out of her. The doctors talked to her a little, but kept on working on me. It was a swell ride.

  X

  It was the same old hospital again, and they lifted her out, and wheeled her away somewhere, and then they took me out. They wheeled me in an elevator, and we went up, and they wheeled me out of the elevator to a room, and then two more doctors came and looked at me. One of them was an older man, and he didn’t seem to be an intern. “Well, Mr. Bennett, you’ve got a bad head.”

  “Sew it up, it’ll be all right.”

  “I’m putting you under an anesthetic, for that.”

  “No anesthetic, I’ve got things to do.”

  “Do you want to bear that scar the rest of your life?”

  “What are you talking about, scar?”

  “I’m telling you, you’ve got a bad head. Now if—”

  “O.K.—but get at it.”

  He went, and an orderly came in and started to undress me, but I stopped him and made him call my house. When he had Sam on the line I talked, and told him to drop everything and get in there with another suit of clothes, a clean
shirt, fresh necktie, and everything else clean. Then I slipped out of the rest of my clothes, and they put a hospital shirt on me, and a nurse came in and jabbed me with a hypodermic, and they took me up to the operating room. A doctor put a mask over my face and told me to breathe in a natural manner, and that was the last I knew for a while.

  When I came out of it I was back in the room again, and the nurse was sitting there, and my head was all wrapped in bandages. They hadn’t used ether, they had used some other stuff, so in about five minutes I was myself again, though I felt pretty sick. I asked for a paper. She had one on her lap, reading it, and handed it over. It was an early edition, and the robbery was smeared all over the front page, with Brent’s picture, and Adler’s picture, and my picture, one of my old football pictures. There was no trace of Brent yet, it said, but the preliminary estimate of what he got was put at $90,000. That included $44,000 from the bank, and around $46,000 taken from the private safe deposit boxes. The story made me the hero. I knew he was in the vault, it said, and although I brought guards with me, I insisted on being the first man in the vault, and suffered a serious head injury as a result. Adler got killed on the first exchange of shots, after I opened fire. He left a wife and one child, and the funeral would probably be held tomorrow.

  There was a description of Brent’s sedan, and the license number. Dyer had got that, as the car drove off, and it checked with the plates issued in Brent’s name. There was quite a lot about the fact that the car was moving when he jumped aboard, and how that proved he had accomplices. There was nothing about Sheila, except that she had been taken to the hospital for nervous collapse, and nothing about the shortage at all. The nurse got up and came over to feed me some ice. “Well, how does it feel to be a hero?”

  “Feels great.”

  “You had quite a time out there.”

  “Yeah, quite a time.”

  Pretty soon Sam got there with my clothes, and I told him to stand by. Then two detectives came in and began asking questions. I told them as little as I could, but I had to tell them about Helm, and Sheila seeing the red light, and how I’d gone against Dyer’s advice, and what happened at the bank. They dug in pretty hard, but I stalled as well as I could, and after a while they went.

  Sam went out and got a later edition of the afternoon paper. They had a bigger layout now on the pictures. Brent’s picture was still three columns, but my picture and Adler’s picture were smaller, and in an inset there was a picture of Sheila. It said police had a talk with her, at the hospital, and that she was unable to give any clue as to why Brent had committed the crime, or as to his whereabouts. Then, at the end, it said: “It was intimated, however, that Mrs. Brent will be questioned further.”

  At that I hopped out of bed. The nurse jumped up and tried to stop me, but I knew I had to get away from where cops could get at me, anyway, until the thing broke enough that I knew what I was going to do.

  “What are you doing, Mr. Bennett?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “But you can’t! You’re to stay until—”

  “I said I’m going home. Now if you want to stick around and watch me dress, that’s O.K. by me, but if you’re a nice girl, now is the time to beat it out in the hall.”

  While I was dressing they all tried to stop me, the nurse and the intern, and the head nurse, but I had Sam pitch the bloody clothes into the suitcase he had brought, and in about five minutes we were off. At the desk downstairs I wrote a check for my bill, and asked the woman how was Mrs. Brent.

  “Oh, she’ll be all right, but of course it was a terrible shock to her.”

  “She still here?”

  “Well, they’re questioning her, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “The police. … If you ask me, she’ll be held.”

  “You mean—arrested?”

  “Apparently she knows something.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Don’t say I told you.”

  “I won’t, of course.”

  Sam had a taxi by then, and we got in. I had the driver go out to Glendale, and pull up beside my car, where I had left it on Anita Avenue. I had Sam take the wheel, and told him to drive around and keep on driving. He took Foothill, and went on up past San Fernando somewhere, I didn’t pay any attention where.

  Going past the bank, I saw the glass was all in place, and a gold-leafer was inside, putting on the lettering. I couldn’t see who was in there. Late in the afternoon we came back through Los Angeles, and I bought a paper. My picture was gone now, and so was Adler’s, and Brent’s was smaller. Sheila’s was four columns wide, and in an inset was a picture of her father, Dr. Henry W. Rollinson, of U.C.L.A. The headline stretched clear across the page, and called it a “cover-up robbery.” I didn’t bother to read any more. If Dr. Rollinson had told his story, the whole thing was in the soup.

  Sam drove me home then, and fixed me something to eat. I went in the living room and lay down, expecting cops, and wondered what I was going to tell them.

  Around eight o’clock the doorbell rang, and I answered myself. But it wasn’t cops, it was Lou Frazier. He came in and I had Sam fix him a drink. He seemed to need it. I lay down on the sofa again, and held on to my head. It didn’t ache, and I felt all right, but I was getting ready. I wanted an excuse not to talk any more than I had to. After he got part of his drink down he started in.

  “You seen the afternoon papers?”

  “Just the headlines.”

  “The guy was short in his accounts.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “She was in on it.”

  “Who?”

  “The wife. That sexy-looking thing known as Sheila. She doctored the books for him. We just locked up a half hour ago. I’ve just come from there. Well boy, it’s a crime what that dame got away with. That system in the savings department, all that stuff you went out there to make a report on—that was nothing but a cover. The laugh’s on you, Bennett. Now you got a real article for the American Banker.”

  “I doubt if she was in on it.”

  “I know she was in on it.”

  “If she was, why did she let him go to her father for the dough to cover up the shortage? Looks to me like that was putting it on a little too thick.”

  “O.K.—it’s taken me all afternoon to figure that one out, and I had to question the father pretty sharp. He’s plenty bitter against Brent. All right, take it from their point of view, hers and Brent’s. They were short on the accounts, and they figured on a phoney hold-up that would cover their deficit, so nobody would even know there had been a shortage. The first thing to do was get the books in shape, and I’m telling you she made a slick job of that. She didn’t leave a trace, and if it wasn’t for her father, we’d never have known how much they were short. All right, she’s got to get those books in shape, and do it before you next check on her cash. That was the tough part, they were up against time, but she was equal to it, I’ll say that for her. All right, now she brings a spider in, and he slips in the vault and hides there. But they couldn’t be sure what was going to happen next morning, could they? He might get away with it clean, with that handkerchief over his face nobody could identify him, and then later she could call the old man up and say please don’t say anything, she’ll explain to him later, that Charles is horribly upset, and when the cops go to his house, sure enough he is. He’s in bed, still recovering from his operation, and all this and that—but no money anywhere around, and nothing to connect him with it.

  “But look: They figure maybe he don’t get away with it. Maybe he gets caught, and then what? All the money’s there, isn’t it? He’s got five doctors to swear he’s off his nut anyway, on account of illness—and he gets off light. With luck, he even gets a suspended sentence, and the only one that’s out is her old man. She shuts him up, and they’re not much worse off than they were before. Well, thanks to a
guy named Helm it all went sour. None of it broke like they expected—he got away, but everybody knew who he was, and Adler got killed. So now he’s wanted for murder—and robbery, and she’s held for the same.”

  “Is she held?”

  “You bet your sweet life she’s held. She doesn’t know it yet—she’s down at that hospital, with a little dope in her arm to quiet her after the awful experience she had, but there’s a cop outside the door right now, and tomorrow when she wakes up maybe she won’t look quite so sexy.”

  I lay there with my eyes shut, wondering what I was going to do, but by that time my head was numb, so I didn’t feel anything any more. After a while I heard myself speak to him, “Lou?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I knew about that shortage.”

  “… You mean you suspected it?”

  “I knew—”

  “You mean you suspected it!”

  He fairly screamed it at me. When I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets, his face all twisted and white. Lou is a pretty good-looking guy, big and thickset, with brown eyes and a golf tan all over him, but now he looked like some kind of a wild man.

  “If you knew about it, and didn’t report it, there goes our bond! Don’t you get it, Bennett? There goes our bond!”

  It was the first I had even thought of the bond. I could see it, though, the second he began to scream, that little line in fine type on the bond. We don’t make our people give individual bond. We carry a group bond on them, ourselves, and that line reads: “… The assured shall report to the Corporation any shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or theft on the part of any of their employees, within twenty-four hours of the time such shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or theft shall be known to them, or to their officers, and failure to report such shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or theft shall be deemed ground for the cancellation of this bond, and the release of the Corporation from liability for such shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or shortage.” I felt my lips go cold, and the sweat stand out on the palms of my hands, but I went on:

  “You’re accusing a woman of crimes I know damned well she didn’t commit, and bond or no bond, I’m telling you—”