MRS2 Madame Storey

by Hulbert Footner

  The crowd rushing out of the bank met a bigger crowd running from every direction in the streets to see what was the matter. In five minutes so dense a mob had collected that the Broadway traffic was held up, and it took the reserves from two precincts to start it going again. Before any one inside the building could take hold of the situation, a fresh crowd overran the banking-room, and police had to be introduced through the basement to clear it. Utter confusion prevailed. It was not until a quarter of an hour after the affair that a message from the house of H. Tannenbaum and Co., the big clothing manufacturers, informed the bank's officials that the firm's messenger had been robbed of the week's pay-roll as he left the paying teller's window. Then the reason of the affair became clear.

  Such was the story that I read in the afternoon papers. No one who was not in New York at the time can comprehend the shock of dismay it caused. We read with equanimity of the robbery of country banks, or even of the branches of city banks in outlying districts; that seems to be part of the natural order of things. But the National Forrest Bank!—whose long history is interwoven with that of the city itself; an institution only a little less sacred than the United States Treasury; such a thing had never been heard of before! It was evidently a single-handed crime, and that a lone individual had dared to commit such an outrage within the very temple of security almost passed the bounds of credibility. The whole financial world was shaken.

  One could not but feel sorry for the police. All the panic-stricken bankers and business men in town put it up to them naturally, and what could they do? The rush of the crowd back into the banking-room had obliterated whatever evidence might have been left there. They had to appear to be doing something, of course, and all sorts of theories were successively inflated and exploded. From edition to edition of the papers the police promised results, but reading between the lines it was only too clear that they were all at sea. The robber had vanished in his own smoke. In the press the story shrank from a full page to two columns, then to one, from sheer lack of new material. But before it got crowded off the front page altogether, one week later at almost precisely the same hour, another smoke bomb was dropped in the Manhattan National on Wall Street, which, as everyone knows, is the largest bank of them all. The first affair being fresh in everybody's mind, an even wilder panic resulted, of which the bandit took full advantage. His procedure was different this time. The smoke was released at a moment when one of the paying tellers' wickets was thrown up to permit the teller to pass out some package of bills to a customer. The customer was not robbed, but, as the teller fell against the back of his cage, an arm reached in through the open wicket, and gathered up bundle after bundle of bills from his desk. The haul was thirty-two thousand dollars. On the first occasion the robber only got seven thousand.

  Well, we thought the first robbery had exhausted the possibilities of sensation, but the second far exceeded it. A single robbery might be regarded as an accident, but two were certainly the result of a deeply planned campaign. Everybody felt that, since no method had been devised of meeting this danger, there was no reason why it should not go on indefinitely, whenever the bandit chose to strike. Every moneyed man in town wondered if he'd be next. A sickening feeling of helplessness filled the authorities.

  But the police had something to go on now. One of the detectives placed in the bank that morning had marked the very spot where the billowing fumes were released, and was armed with a description of the man who had stood nearest that spot. He had not been seen to throw or drop anything, and it was supposed that he had released the bomb through his pants-leg. A man of medium size, very well built, the detective reported, but with a face hollowed and greyed as from long illness. A thick grey moustache with ragged ends; a fringe of straggling black hair showing under his hat; dressed in worn but neatly brushed clothes. The detective had taken him for the respectable book-keeper of some business house. When the smoke puffed up the detective had sprung forward to seize him, but had only embraced the smoke.

  On the floor where the bomb had been dropped, they found some fragments of colored glass as thin as paper. These were evidently parts of a glass ball, such as are used to decorate Christmas trees. The shops were full of them at the time. The neck of the ball was found intact. It had been stopped with sealing-wax. From traces of powder adhering to the glass, the chemists were able to reconstruct the contents of the bomb. The formula was kept secret, for fear somebody else might try on the same scheme.

  After the second robbery the big banks adopted the most elaborate arrangements to protect themselves and their customers. The usual method was to rope off the interior of the banking-house so that the customers were obliged to pass through in single file, watched and protected every foot of the way by armed guards. Only one customer at a time was allowed to approach a paying teller's window, everybody else being held back at a safe distance until he got his money. When he got his money he was escorted to the door by a guard. All this entailed a considerable delay in the transaction of business, and was very expensive, to boot. But it was expected that the smoke bandit would be hard put to beat it.

  After the second robbery, the regular police not having produced any results, the Banking Association engaged our old acquaintance Walter A. Barron to act independently in running down the thief. He was given absolute carte blanche in the matter of operatives and expenses. Barron, you remember, was an ex-assistant district attorney who had set up his own detective bureau when the city administration changed. He was something more than a mere acquaintance of Mme. Storey, as my account of the Ashcomb Poor case revealed. To put it bluntly, he was a suitor to my mistress, with a bull-headed pertinacity that no amount of discouragement had been able to affect. He often came to our office. We did not see him for some days after he had been appointed to the case, and we had no means of following his activities, for at first he refused to talk for publication, thus showing better sense than I had credited him with.

  It was realised around town that Friday was an unlucky day to send to the bank for your pay-roll cash, and business firms quickly got in the habit of choosing any day but Friday. Six days after the Manhattan National robbery, that is to say, Thursday, the blow fell again. This time the bandit picked the big Cosmopolitan Trust on lower Broadway, and all the roped lines, armed guards, etc., troubled him not a whit. A sort of groan of rage went up from financial Manhattan. Some extremists demanded that martial law be established, without any clear notion of what good that would do.

  The Cosmopolitan owns a forty-storey office building over its banking premises. The banking-office opens on the same corridor that serves the elevators, and during business hours there is always a throng passing in and out. The thief did not enter the banking-room, but must have loitered in the corridor until he saw a pair of messengers come out of the bank with a heavy satchel. Then he dropped his bomb or bombs in the corridor, and, under cover of the impenetrable fumes, snatched the satchel, and made off with it.

  This happened only about ten paces from the doors to the street. The despoiled messengers were outside almost as soon as the robber. They saw their satchel making off down Broadway, and set up an immense hue and cry. In five seconds I suppose there were two hundred men in pursuit of the thief. A real old man they said, who ran with a limp. But he showed an astonishing spryness. Nevertheless, he would certainly have been caught, had it not been for his bombs. They saw him draw his hand from his pocket and immediately thereafter the familiar thick billows of smoke rolled up, filling the canyon between the skyscrapers from wall to wall. A roar of balked rage went up from the crowd.

  The bolder spirits ran right through the smoke, but found nothing on the other side. The thief had evidently darted into one of the office buildings on the left-hand side of the way. All these buildings had rear entrances on New Street. He made a clean get-away. His loot was not quite so big this time. Eleven thousand, if I remember aright.

  The following week it was the turn of the Textile National, another of the fi
rst-line banks. His reward was only a beggarly five thousand.

  These robberies in New York were the sensation of the entire country, but out-of-town papers reported them with a difference. They had no call to feel the strain of anxiety, the helpless anger that every responsible person in the metropolis shared. Indeed, since, as Voltaire or some other Frenchman has pointed out, there is something not exactly displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends, there was a good deal of quiet fun poked at the helplessness of the New York authorities. All this was abruptly changed when, three days after the Textile National affair, a smoke bomb was dropped in the Quaker National Bank, Philadelphia, and the bandit got away with sixteen thousand dollars.

  A wave of panic swept over the entire country. If Philadelphia, why not all the great cities, one after another? Moreover, since the composition of the bombs was said to be very simple, why should not a score of smoke bandits arise? No way had been found of meeting the menace, though the whole banking business bade fair to be disrupted by the magnitude of the precautions that were taken. The smaller banks simply couldn't stand the gaff in armed guards. But if they did not hire them, they lost what business they had. The price of armed guards doubled and quadrupled overnight, and the hard-boiled gentry reaped a harvest.

  There was a universal demand for the federal authorities to take action. I suppose the Department of Justice agents got busy, but, as they played no part in what followed, I need not refer to them.

  II

  So far, Mme. Storey and I knew no more about the smoke-bandit case than any other newspaper readers. Busy as we were with other matters, we often discussed it. One could not avoid it. It filled the minds of everybody in our part of the world. On one occasion Mme. Storey said frankly:

  "A hard nut to crack, my Bella. I'm glad it's not between our white teeth."

  One morning while I was taking dictation from her, I heard the buzzer that announced the entrance of somebody into my room outside. It was Barron, a big, red-faced man with an aggressive, cave-man manner. A man of coarse fibre, but with a crude strength of mind, and determined; egregiously vain in the masculine style. Most people cringed a little before him, but he didn't get it in our office. Maybe that was the attraction it had for him. I was no longer impressed by his manner, because I had learned that so far as Mme. Storey was concerned, it concealed a bad inferiority complex.

  I was surprised to see him, busy as he must have been; but the reason for his call soon became apparent. As chief of the search for the smoke bandit he had become the man of the hour; his slightest word was good for a box on the front page of all the newspapers. Up to this time he had had the wit to say very little, consequently he had become a man of mystery, as well. It was natural that he should wish to show himself off in this hour of glory before the woman who had always mocked at him.

  I followed him into Mme. Storey's room, since it was understood between my mistress and me that I was always to be present when he called. She used me as a buffer against his crude and tempestuous love-making. He scowled at me ferociously when he saw my purpose, but said nothing, since he had long ago discovered that it was useless to object to my presence. Sometimes it had happened that his feelings had carried him away to such an extent he even avowed his passion before me. He did not love me for having been a witness to his discomfiture.

  "Well, Walter!" Mme. Storey cried with delicate irony; "we are honoured that the great man could find time to come to see us!"

  "Oh, my lines are all out," he said carelessly; "at the moment I have nothing to do but await events."

  Mme. Storey's little black ape Giannino had conceived a violent aversion to Barron, which he was apt to express in a very disconcerting manner. I was obliged to carry him into the middle room, and put him in his house. There is no love lost between Giannino and me, but we were at one on this subject. "I sympathise with you, you little black devil," I whispered in his ear.

  When I came back Mme. Storey was helping herself to a cigarette. She pushed the big silver box in Barron's direction. He refused impatiently. A silence fell between them, a silence that was a sort of duel. Mme. Storey had no intention of helping him out, and he, on his part, was determined to make her betray some curiosity about his work. Foolish man! I felt like saying, you have about as much chance of mastering her as you have of—but I couldn't think of any adequate figure.

  He looked about him with a scowl. The long, tall room was as cool and beautiful and simple as an antique Italian villa. Whereas everybody else is going mad over early American furnishings, Mme. Storey, with a sure instinct, clings to the Italian Renaissance. She is herself a figure out of the Renaissance. Barron resented the rare and precious things with which she surrounded herself; he resented everything about her. That was the inferiority complex working. I had always felt sorry for him in a way, but what can a woman do with a man like that? He simply would not take his answer.

  At the moment he was better controlled than usual. But he had to speak first. "Well, Rose, a lot has happened since I saw you."

  "You appeared to be well pleased with it," she said.

  He shrugged massively. "That's your regular line."

  "Well, say then, that you are upheld by a secret feeling of confidence."

  "Maybe," he said sententiously.

  "You have caught your man?"

  "I will catch him."

  "Within twenty-four hours?" she asked wickedly. This had been the daily promise of the baffled police.

  "Oh, I don't have to perform in the newspapers," said Barron, undisturbed. "It may be twenty-four days, but I'll land him in the end."

  There was something quite impressive in the man's heavy assurance. Not to Mme. Storey, though. Her charming face was all lighted up with mockery.

  "How interesting! You are working on a theory, then?"

  "I am. Would you like to hear what it is?"

  "Oh, perhaps it wouldn't be right for you to talk about it."

  "I wouldn't object to discussing it with you but..." You can imagine the look he gave me.

  Mme. Storey appeared to lose interest in the subject. Half turning in her chair, she glanced out of the window at the nurse-maids and the lively children in Gramercy Park. "What a lovely mild day!" she drawled. "It's a sin to be working."

  She had him! He had come to talk to her about his case, and talk he had to. He gritted his teeth a little. "My theory is that we have a madman to deal with," he said.

  "Never!" said Mme. Storey, glancing at the lighted end of her cigarette.

  "Everything he has done proves it by his cunning," Barron said obstinately.

  "I've heard of the superior cunning of madmen," said Mme. Storey coolly. "It may be so, but I've never seen it demonstrated myself. In this case I should say that every act of the smoke bandit proclaimed a brain that was working very well indeed."

  "Time will tell," said Barron sententiously.

  "Surely, time will tell!" said Mme. Storey with a laugh.

  The conversation came to a stand again. Mme. Storey glanced suggestively at the pile of letters that was waiting to be answered.

  "Come out to lunch with me," Barron blurted out with the sullen air of a child demanding a favour that he knows beforehand will be refused.

  Mme. Storey shook her head. "Too busy. I must eat in, today."

  "When can I see you?"

  "I'm not making any engagements just now."

  He drew his breath painfully between his teeth, and there was another silence.

  "When I got out of the district attorney's office," he presently began, "you advised me against setting up my detective bureau."

  "What of it?" she asked.

  "You thought I wasn't smart enough."

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that!" she said teasingly.

  "I'm in a position to show you now. This is the biggest case I've ever had—the biggest case anybody ever had. It will establish me at the head of the profession."

  "If you catch your man," put in Mme. Storey softly.r />
  "Oh, I will catch him," he said confidently. "Make no mistake about that!"

  At this moment the buzzer sounded again, and I had to leave the room. Barron followed me out with a triumphant glance. I left the door open, according to instructions.

  It proved to be a messenger with a big bundle of documents that were required in a certain case. I had to check them up against a list before receipting for them. While I was engaged in this mechanical operation, I couldn't help but hear what was said in the next room. Mme. Storey took no care to lower her voice, and Barron had no dulcet tones in his.

  Barron said: "You'll have to hand it to me, Rose, when I win this case."

  "I shall be the first to congratulate you," she said lightly.

  "I wasn't referrin' to your congratulations," he said doggedly. "When I've won, I'll come and claim you!"

  "I don't exactly follow your reasoning," said Mme. Storey mildly.

  "Oh, you know what I mean, all right! I'll come for you!"

  "But how about my sentiments in the matter?"

  "All talk," said Barron roughly. "There's nothing in it. You can put it all over me with your talk. But I'm a man and you're a woman..."

  "Well, I never questioned that," said Mme. Storey dryly.

  "...And the great truths of nature are not changed by clever talk! A man is the natural master, and in her soul a woman knows it."

  "Oh dear!" said Mme. Storey a little wearily. "Where did you pick up that idea, Walter? It's the way prep schoolboys discuss women, isn't it? At the age of sixteen. And schoolgirls adore it. At least they used to. I've an idea that even schoolgirls require to be shown, nowadays...What you want is a woman with a schoolgirl mind, Walter. There are millions of them to choose from. Such a woman would look on you as a god. What perversity is it in your nature that forces you to expose your most sacred feelings to a mocking devil like me? I'm a disillusioned woman, Walter, and I have a lot of work to do."