Jim Hanvey, Detective

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  “You—you’re free, Cliff?”

  “Obviously.” The man was a poser; this was too perfect an opportunity to miss. He wished the girl at his side to be impressed with his own granite imperviousness to emotion. Phyllis shook her head; she loved him despite the fact that she knew his weakness.

  “They don’t suspect you?”

  “Certainly not. They couldn’t. I went in to the old man and told him the money was gone. I didn’t protect myself a bit. Suggested that he had better lock me up. And of course he didn’t.” He smiled grimly, pridefully. “The only danger point in the whole scheme has been passed, Phyllis. We’re safe.”

  “And I’m frightened.”

  “Of course. That’s natural.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Not at all.” He stopped the car as if to light a cigarette. “You put the money in the vault at the City Trust?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Immediately after I left the office for lunch.”

  “You went straight from the Third National to your office?”

  “Yes. And the cashier commented on how quickly I got back.”

  “Fine! Great! Sooner or later they’re bound to connect us in this matter, and when they do they’ll investigate your actions. It’ll disarm them to learn that you got back to the office in record time; that you couldn’t possibly have gone anywhere between the bank and your place of business. And now about the vault—you didn’t attract any particular attention there, did you?”

  “No-o. I’m sure I didn’t. There was a crowd there, and I am sure the old man didn’t notice me at all. I put the money in Harriet’s box, not mine.”

  He patted her hand reassuringly. “You were a trump, dear. And you’re not sorry?”

  “No-o—and yes. I know that it is wrong, yet—oh, well, we need the money. It means so much more to us than it ever could to that bank. If we’re only not caught.”

  “We won’t be.” His narrow, rather hard face was set. He argued as though to reassure himself. “The weakness in anything of this sort is preliminary planning. The average man who sets out to steal one hundred thousand dollars”—the girl winced—“makes plans so enormously elaborate that he cuts his own throat, minimizes his chances of getting away with it. For every detail that such a man plants he sows a possibility of detection. He isn’t content with the easy, the safe, the normal. In striving for perfection for absolute safety, he lays traps for himself. Remember this, Phyllis: a detective can make a thousand mistakes and, by doing one single thing correctly, land his man. The criminal cannot afford a single mistake. Understand?”

  “Yes.” And then the feminine side of the girl flooded to the surface. “Cliff dear, you’re so—so hard!”

  That pleased him. He wanted to be hard, cultivated a gelid13 philosophy.

  “Sentiment serves no man well, Phyllis. My hardness has made possible financial ease for us—and consequent contentment. I have no conscience. Neither has the average man. Conscience is the fear of being caught. We are all inherently immoral. It was not wrong for the primitive man to steal. He took what he could get away with. Right and wrong are products of legislation of artificial ethical culture. They are not part of us; we are inoculated with them. They are utterly foreign to us. In taking this money I have committed no natural crime. By statute only am I a criminal. I am not ashamed of what I have done. I would be ashamed of detection.”

  Silence fell between them. The girl shivered as though with a chill.

  “You are very convincing, dear. But I’m afraid that I’m terribly a victim to the morality of education. Of course you’ve convinced my intellect. But—since this afternoon—I’m afraid you can never convince my conscience.”

  He flashed her a sudden apprehensive glance. “You’re not getting cold feet?”

  “No.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s too late for that.”

  “But you’re afraid?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid.”

  “Then you’re silly. We’re safe now. The minute you walked through those revolving doors with that hundred thousand in your bag I knew that we were safe. The scheme is successful because of its very simplicity. We are to go ahead in our normal ways. There is to be no variation whatsoever in our way of living. In a year we will marry. A year from then I will get a position somewhere else. And then—and not until then—will we begin to make use of the money which we got today. We’re safe.”

  “From the law—yes. But not from ourselves.”

  “Harping on conscience again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pff! I have no conscience, no fear of the intangible.”

  She sighed. “I must agree with you, dear. I’ve gone too far not to. But I wonder—whether it’s worth the price.”

  He laughed harshly and the car leaped ahead as his finger caressed the gas lever.14

  “It’s fortunate, Phyllis, that I’m practical. The thing that counts in this world is what you have—not how you got it.”

  They returned to the girl’s boarding house at eleven o’clock, stood chatting for a while on the front porch. Cliff wondered whether the man who must be shadowing him was witness to the tableau. He knew that the man must have been bewildered and apprehensive when they went off for a ride together—and pleased by their return. He fancied he could discern the person lolling in the shadows of the big oak across the street. He swung down the steps, whistling jauntily.

  Phyllis slept not at all that night. Cliff, serene and untroubled, slumbered heavily. For two years he had planned this thing, had surveyed it from every angle. He had made an intensive personal study of the men with whom he would have to deal: Of Robert Warren, the president; of Garet Jenkins, the cashier; of each member of the board of directors. He had studied their mental processes, had deliberately built up their confidence in him and his integrity. He had known in advance that Warren would do just about as he had done and that his opinion would sway the board of directors. He knew that the matter would be hushed up and that the investigation would be conducted with the most rigid secrecy. He knew that detectives would appear the following morning, would remain there for some time—and that they would find nothing. He knew that eventually the conclusion would be reached that there had been, in fact, no robbery at all, but that the hundred thousand dollars had never reached the bank vaults.

  He would be watched carefully for one month, two, three. Then the matter would be filed away as an unsolved mystery. Above everything, the bank was not desirous of a scandal. In the absence of sufficient evidence to convict they’d permit him his freedom. And the perfect normalcy of his life would convince them speedily that he was free from guilt.

  He reached the bank the following morning at precisely his regular time, not a minute early or a minute late. He held a brief conference with the three assistant paying tellers and apportioned to each his quota of cash from the vault, which was a part of his individual cage. Then quite phlegmatically he answered a summons to the office of the president. And as he entered the door he recognized in the three strangers who faced him the detectives.

  Cliff was somewhat amused. He knew that the glances they bestowed upon him were surcharged with deep and dark suspicion. Money had disappeared from the cage of the chief paying teller; ergo, the chief paying teller had stolen it. They’d start out on that theory—and butt their heads against a stone wall. He realized that Robert Warren was talking, that he was being introduced.

  “The detectives; this is Mr. Peter Jamieson, representing the bonding company. And Mr. Carl Burton, of the Banker’s Protective Association.” He hesitated a moment as he turned toward the third stranger. Then: “This other gentleman is also here to represent the Bankers’ Protective Association. Mr. Wallace, Mr. Hanvey—Mr. James Hanvey.”

  Cliff started visibly. Jim Hanvey! He’d heard of the man—a detective with an enviable
reputation. But he had envisioned Jim Hanvey as a person tall and sinewy, and with a saturnine face and deep-set flashing eyes. This man——

  The hand which the great detective extended to him was limp and clammy, the man himself utterly negative. He was a large man, true; but his shoulders were rounded and from them the coat of his cheap ready-made tweed suit hung like a smoking jacket. Above a thick red neck rose the head—huge, fat, shapeless. Three floppy chins, an apoplectic expression, a wide, loose-lipped mouth. And eyes——

  Those eyes fascinated Wallace, not because they were marvelous eyes but because he could not reconcile himself to the fact that they were capable of seeing anything. They were large eyes, and round like a baby’s. In color they were a passive gray—fishlike. They rested on Wallace’s as their hands met, and then the lids closed slowly over them like a film, rising just as deliberately. It was more an ocular yawn than a blinking of eyes. Cliff felt within him a contempt for the man, instant and instinctive, then pulled himself together with a jerk. He knew that would never do. Jim Hanvey bore an international reputation, such a one as could not be attained through inefficiency.

  Jamieson was nearer Cliff’s conception of an efficient detective. Medium build, dapper, dynamic, with blazing eyes and a competent manner. He liked Jamieson, knew that he would know how to cope with him. Jamieson was a practical detective, and Jamieson was there in the rôle of a friend. It was most decidedly to the interest of the bonding company to establish his innocence. Burton, too, radiated efficiency. He was tall and broad and had deep-set brown eyes which looked out keenly from under heavy lashes. He was there to convict, but Cliff did not fear him. Burton, like Jamieson, was too normal a man to inspire apprehension. But Hanvey, Hanvey of the slow-blinking, fishy eyes—Hanvey was a disturbing quantity. Cliff didn’t like Hanvey.

  Hanvey was speaking. Cliff noted that the others deferred to the ponderous, uninspired-looking individual.

  “H’m! You’re the paying teller, Mr. Wallace?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Kind of funny—the hundred thousand gettin’ lost thataway, wasn’t it?”

  Cliff was annoyed. The man wasn’t even grammatical.

  “Rather peculiar—yes.”

  “Ain’t got any idea how it happened, have you?”

  “No.”

  “No chance of anyone sort of slippin’ an arm through the cage window and grabbin’ it, huh?”

  Bah! the man was an idiot.

  “Hardly that.”

  “Kinder makes us believe that it must have been done by somebody inside the cage. Ain’t that so?”

  “That is the obvious conclusion.”

  “Well, now—so it is. So it is.” Hanvey produced a golden toothpick, which he regarded fondly. “Awful funny thing how money gits to go thisaway. Awful funny. Ain’t it, Jamieson?”

  “Yes—yes indeed.” Cliff glanced curiously at the competent Jamieson. He fancied that Jamieson would appear annoyed by Hanvey’s cumbersomeness. But instead he saw the two other detectives hanging worshipfully upon Hanvey’s words.

  Peculiar—it was impossible that Hanvey possessed keen intelligence. And yet——

  Hanvey nodded heavily. “That’s all, Mr. Wallace. I reckon that’s about all I need from you.”

  All? It was nothing—less than nothing. One or two absurd, meaningless questions; a ridiculous voicing of the thought that some one might have stolen a hundred thousand dollars in currency from under his very eyes. And Jim Hanvey was reputed to be a great detective.

  Cliff Wallace was bothered. The very somnolent heaviness of Jim Hanvey begot apprehension. He had no idea how to cope with it. The man was too utterly guileless, too awkward of manner. His ponderous indifference must cloak a keen, perceptive brain. Jamieson and Burton—well, Cliff knew just what they were thinking. He’d always know what they were thinking. But Hanvey—never. He didn’t even know that Hanvey was thinking. He was an element which the paying teller had not foreseen. Frank suspicion was easy to combat. Through his head there flashed the shibboleth of the Bankers’ Protective Association: “We get a man if it takes a lifetime—even though he has stolen only a dollar. It’s the principle of the thing.”

  He shook off the thought of Jim Hanvey, but throughout the day watched the ponderous, big-jowled man lumber about the lobby and through the cages, those great fishy eyes blinking with a deliberation which reminded him of a man making physical effort to remain awake. Occasionally Cliff looked up to find the glassy eyes staring at him through the bars of his cage, the detective’s unpressed tweed suit against the marble shelf. His eyes would flash into those of the detective, then would come that interminably slow blinking, and Hanvey would move away apologetically. Once Wallace shivered.

  That was the beginning. Hanvey during the days that followed did absolutely nothing. Jamieson and Burton, on the other hand, worked busily and thoroughly. They pored over the list of customers for whom checks had been cashed on the day of the money’s disappearance. And finally they came to the pay-roll check of Sanford Jones & Co. They called Cliff into conference with them, Burton doing the questioning.

  “Who presented the Jones company check, Mr. Wallace?”

  Cliff steeled himself to impassivity. “Miss Phyllis Robinson.”

  “You are acquainted with her?”

  “Yes. We happen to be secretly engaged.”

  “Ah-h!” Cliff saw a meaningful look pass between the two detectives. “Your fiancée?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you personally cash her check that day?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are positive about that?”

  “Yes. I cash all of the pay-roll checks; and besides, I remember talking to her while she was at the window.”

  The detectives nodded at each other and Cliff was dismissed. Immediately Jamieson and Burton checked up the movements of Phyllis Robinson on that particular day. They learned that she had cashed the company’s pay-roll check as usual and that she had been absent from the office only a short time. Yes, the puzzled cashier was positive of that—he remembered noticing particularly that she’d hardly left the office before she was back with the money. In answer to their query as to whether she had time to stop somewhere en route to the office from the bank, the little man indignantly protested that he recalled every detail of the morning and that she couldn’t possibly have done so. “I never knew her to get back so quick before; and she never was one to loiter.”

  So much for that. The girl had undoubtedly gone straight from the bank to her office. The Jones cashier insisted that she delivered the satchel to him personally. Jamieson and Burton then visited the banks of the city and its suburbs. The Third National was the largest in the district and they went meticulously down the line in the order of importance. At the City Trust they were informed that Phyllis Robinson rented a safety-deposit box. An inspection of her card disclosed the fact that she had not visited the box in two months. Nor had she a box at any other bank. Neither had Cliff Wallace.

  News of the investigation, received from the puzzled cashier, via the frightened Phyllis, elated Cliff. He was delighted to know that the two detectives were at work, and supremely confident that they could discover nothing.

  But Hanvey did nothing. All day long he lounged about the lobby or sat in one of the cages with his feet propped upon a shelf, surrounding himself with a haze of rancid cigar smoke. And always those blank, stupid eyes were turned upon the cage of the chief paying teller—blinking, blinking.

  Wallace did not vary a hair’s breadth from the established routine of his daily life. He breakfasted at his usual place at the usual hour, snatched a lunch as he had always been in the habit of doing, dined at his favorite cafeteria, called upon Phyllis Robinson in the evenings and either walked with her or took her riding in his little car.

  On Thursday he drew his monthly pay check—two hundred and fi
fty dollars. One hundred dollars of it he immediately deposited to his own credit in a savings account. He had done this for years.

  On Friday he received a shock. It was a light pay-roll day—not more than a quarter million dollars had been set aside for the pay rolls. In the line was Phyllis, satchel in hand. He greeted her as usual, counted the packages of bills and rolls of silver. And then, as he unlocked the little window of his cage to return to her the satchel, he visioned the ponderous figure of Jim Hanvey lolling indifferently over the shelf; round idiotic eyes fixed unseeingly upon him. Fear flashed into Cliff’s heart and the color receded from his cheeks. What was the significance of that? Was it possible——With an almost hysterical gesture he slammed shut the window. Hanvey’s eyes blinked once, slowly; a second time, more slowly. Then he moved heavily away, playing with his gold toothpick.

  That night as Cliff was driving with Phyllis in the country—“That was Hanvey standing by the window today when I cashed your pay-roll check.”

  The girl shuddered. “Ugh! He’s horrid. Like a jellyfish.”

  “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 anyone. He just sits there and watches and watches—like—like a Buddha.”