“The driver could have been a woman. I saw a flash of long blond hair.”
“I saw it, too,” Mary confirmed, and I realized she had followed me into the bank. “But I didn’t see any of their faces. They went by too fast.”
“You should wait outside, Miss,” Sheriff Lens suggested, trying to block her view of the body as it was placed on the stretcher.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m a nurse.”
“You are?“ My face must have registered my surprise. “I’ve been advertising for a nurse to work in my office.”
She gave me a smile. “I already have a job waiting for me in Springfield.”
“What will your address be there, Miss—?” the sheriff asked.
“Best. I don’t have a place to live yet, but you can reach me through Springfield General Hospital.” She turned back to me. “I gather you’re a doctor. You pronounced him dead.”
“Forgive me for not introducing myself. I’m Dr. Sam Hawthorne. I’ve had a private practice here for thirteen years.”
“You must have started when you were a child.”
“Almost.” I smiled, basking in her compliment.
The telephone rang and Greenleaf, the assistant manager, answered it. “The state police want you, Sheriff,” he said, handing over the phone.
“Sheriff Lens,” the sheriff said. Then, “What? —Hell, they must have gone somewhere!”
“No sign of them?” I asked when he’d hung up.
“Not a trace. They had all four crossroads covered within minutes of my call and no car of that description went through.”
“That just means they’re still in the township. There are still plenty of back roads and farmers’ barns where they could be hiding.”
“It also means that we’ve got ’em trapped,” Sheriff Lens said with a determined smile. “It’s only a matter of time.”
The agent in charge of the F.B.I. office for our region was named Clint Walling. He was a tall, slim man about my age, wearing a suit and a soft grey fedora that stood out in a town like Northmont. He arrived about midafternoon and drove directly to the bank, where Sheriff Lens was just winding up his investigation. I’d gone off to check on a patient at the hospital but had returned in time to meet him. “What have we here?” he asked after shaking hands. “Bank robbery and murder?”
He stared at the bloodstain on the floor. “You put out an alarm, of course.”
“The state police had the roads blocked within minutes, but there’s been no sign of the car. Either they managed to slip through or they’re still around town.”
“Did they leave behind any physical evidence?” Walling asked, producing a pipe which he began filling with tobacco.
“Only those handcuffs on the counter.”
The F.B.I. agent grunted as he studied them. “The sort police use, but they can be bought almost anywhere.”
“One of my keys unlocked them,” the sheriff told him.
“Let’s take a look at that back room.” Walling followed Sheriff Lens into the storeroom and I tagged along. The back door was metal and bolted top and bottom. He asked the sheriff where it led.
“To Maple Street. It runs behind the bank.”
“So they could have gotten out this way.”
“The tellers couldn’t. They were handcuffed together, and one was cuffed to a leg of this desk. The robbers left by the front door—they had a car waitin’. Doc and I seen it drive up as they came runnin’ out.”
Walling took a long drag on his pipe. “How much money did they get?”
“The head teller says almost forty thousand dollars.”
“Nice haul for a few minutes’ work.” He made some notes. “I’ll have another agent joining me in the morning. We usually work in teams. I’ll want to interview the employees and any other witnesses.”
“You can begin with us,” I suggested. “The sheriff and I saw the getaway.” I ran through the story.
“What about this woman in the other car?”
“She’s been waiting at the lunch counter across the street,” the sheriff told him, “along with the bank employees. Doc, go get them for us, will you?”
I found them clustered around a table, talking over the robbery and killing with Simpkins, the tailor. Old Seth never worried about business when something exciting happened, and I knew without looking that I’d find an Out To Lunch sign on his shop door. “The F.B.I. man is over there,” I announced. “He wants to see you all.”
We trooped back across the street, with Seth tagging along. When Mary Best and the bank employees had been introduced to Clint Walling, Simpkins chimed in, “I was the first one on the scene after the holdup. I saw the whole thing from my tailor shop. I came across the street after Sheriff Lens and Doc Hawthorne took off after them, but I was afraid to come in the bank. I thought maybe they were all dead.”
Walling turned back to Sheriff Lens. “How many shots were fired in all?”
“Mr. Cartright was killed by a single bullet,” Greenleaf interrupted. “That was the only shot fired in the bank. But after we were locked up, we heard more shots from the street.”
“The one with the pistol fired at me and I shot back,” Sheriff Lens explained. “We both missed. Before I could get off another shot, this gal cut in front of us.”
Walling shifted his attention once again, after setting his pipe down in the ashtray. “Miss Best?”
“I was driving to Springfield to take a job as a nurse. I detoured this way to see a little of the countryside. Somehow I was on that back street—Maple Street—approaching the intersection when this black roadster came screeching around the corner with three people in the front seat. It came toward my side of the street, then it swerved away.”
“Could you describe any of the men?”
“No. I don’t even remember if they were still masked or not. They might have been. One had long blond hair and could have been a woman.”
“The driver?”
“No, not the driver—the passenger on the right-hand side.”
“That’s correct,” I said. “He—or she—slid over from behind the wheel so the other two could get in. The one with the pistol was last in and took the wheel.”
Walling nodded wearily. “I want to get straight in my mind exactly what happened inside the bank. Can one of you take the part of the dead man and show me where he was standing? I’ll need two more for the robbers.”
Greenleaf, the assistant manager, stepped forward. “I saw the whole thing. Ryder, you be the first bandit and come in the door as if you’re holding a shotgun.”
Embarrassed, the young teller followed instructions. Magneson, the head teller, was recruited for the part of the manager, moving out of his office behind the first bandit as if to grab him. Then Greenleaf, playing the second bank robber, came through the doorway and pantomimed shooting the manager in the back.
The F.B.I. had them go through the handcuffing and locking in the back room. “There were no other customers in all this time?” he asked.
“Our big rush comes at noon,” the head teller explained. “This was about ten minutes before twelve. But the one with the shotgun kept the door covered all the time.”
“That’s the right time,” I confirmed. “When we got back here and I pronounced Cartright dead, it was eight minutes after twelve. We’d already been here a few minutes. The robbery had to have happened between quarter and ten to twelve.”
“Where was the money taken from?” Walling asked the assistant manager.
“These cash drawers were all open, as well as the drawers in this little storage safe. If they got just that, it’s forty thousand. Of course, we’ll have to check further to see if anything else is missing.”
“Sounds like one of them midwestern bank robbin’ gangs, don’t it?” Sheriff Lens asked the federal man.
“Most of them are dead now,” Clint Walling pointed out. “Just last year Bonnie and Clyde were killed by a posse in Louisiana, and the F.B.I.
shot Dillinger outside a theater in Chicago—”
“Some say it wasn’t Dillinger at all,” Seth Simpkins interrupted.
Walling ignored him. “We got Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson last fall. That’s pretty much the end of the big-time bank robbers, we think.”
“There are always people ready to imitate them,” I observed.
Walling nodded. “It seems they knew the bank would probably be empty just before noon. Have you noticed any stranger hanging around lately, Mr. Greenleaf?”
“No.”
“A man came in yesterday to change a fifty-dollar bill,” Ryder volunteered. “I don’t remember seeing him before.”
“Could he have been one of the men today?”
The teller looked at the F.B.I. man, alarmed. “Could have been, I suppose.”
“Do you need me any longer?” Mary Best asked. “I really must be on my way to Springfield.”
Walling eyed her for a moment and then said, “I’d like you to stay around a while longer, Miss.”
“What for?”
“You’re a possible material witness.”
“But I saw nothing!”
I sensed her rising anger. “Let’s go outside,” I suggested.
Outside the bank, she said, “He suspects me, doesn’t he?”
“Of what?”
“Of being in league with the bank robbers. He thinks I was stationed at that intersection to block off any pursuing cars. That’s what I did with you and the sheriff!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but I couldn’t be sure what Clint Walling might be thinking.
A fancy yellow convertible pulled up and I recognized Hank Foxe, Lydia Cartright’s brother, behind the wheel. “How’s Lydia taking it?” I asked him as he peered at the bank, the motor of the car still running.
“Not good,” he said. “I’m on my way to Brewster’s to make the funeral arrangements now. The family’s with her.”
I remembered Mary at my side. “This is Mary Best, one of the witnesses. Hank’s sister is the wife of the man who was killed.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” she told him.
“Had your brother-in-law mentioned anything about strangers hanging around the bank?” I asked Hank.
“Not that I know of. Confidentially, Doc, they may not have been strangers.”
“What do you mean?”
Hank Foxe, with his know-it-all attitude I’d always disliked, pressed on. “You know how bankers make enemies. I saw that tailor—Simpkins—hanging around in there. He had a little house and garage around the corner on Maple Street the bank foreclosed on last month. Now the house is standing empty and Simpkins has to live with his daughter. He was cursing Brewster every chance he got.”
The notion was so bizarre I had to laugh. “If you think Seth Simpkins is in league with bank robbers, you need to have your head examined, Hank. The man’s a tailor, not a thief.”
“This here Depression’s making thieves of us all, Doc. People will do most anything to put a decent meal on the table.”
“You seem to be doing all right.” I patted the fender of the yellow convertible. “This another new car?”
My question seemed to embarrass him. “I got it off the lot,” he mumbled. “It’s good publicity to drive ’em around town, show people what we got to offer.”
He started to pull away and then paused to back up. “Doc, if you get a chance you might take a ride out and see my sister. I think she could use something to calm her nerves and help her get a good night’s sleep.”
“I’ll do that,” I assured him.
We watched him drive away and went back inside the bank. Sheriff Lens had just completed another call to the state police. “Still no sign of the black roadster,” he told us. “They’ve got a man on his way here with a report.”
Sergeant Mullens, a trooper I knew slightly, was a ruddy-faced young man who seemed nervous in the presence of an F.B.I. agent. “We’ve gone over every mile of road in the county,” he told the sheriff. “There’s no sign of that roadster.”
“Nothing went through your roadblocks?”
“Nothing of that description. The closest thing to it was a red roadster with some college kids.”
“How about a large truck of some kind—a moving van?” I asked.
The sheriff’s face brightened. “You think they drove the car inside it?”
“It’s worth considering.”
Mullens gave us a slightly superior smile. “We learned that trick back in Prohibition days. We check the inside of all trucks in a roadblock.”
Walling wasn’t impressed. “There are still plenty of places to hide a car. And there’s always the possibility they got through a checkpoint before your roadblock was in place.”
“I doubt that, sir,” Mullens answered.
Greenleaf and the tellers were growing restless after nearly four hours of questioning. “Can we go home to our families now?” he asked.
Walling nodded. “I suppose so. Do you have any better idea about how much was stolen?”
The head teller looked up from his books. “Our first estimate was pretty close. It looks like forty-two thousand, more or less.”
“All right. When my partner gets here in the morning we’ll want individual statements from each of you. That’s all for now.”
“Will we be able to reopen the bank in the morning?” Greenleaf asked.
“That will be up to your directors. We have no objection.”
Outside again, I led Mary to my car. “Wait a minute, Dr. Hawthorne—I’m on my way to Springfield, remember?”
“I thought you might come with me to visit Mrs. Cartright. She might need the comfort of another woman.”
“I’m hours late already!”
“Then another hour won’t matter,” I suggested with a grin.
She smiled wearily and climbed into the front seat of my Mercedes. “Why am I doing this?”
“Because you’re a good person, and a good nurse.”
“With a good job waiting in Springfield.”
I circled the block as the bank robbers had done, turning onto Maple Street. Except for the tailor’s empty house, there were mainly the back ends of buildings fronting on Main Street, across from vacant lots where the town hoped one day to build a new school. I turned right at the next intersection, following the route the escaping bank robbers must have taken. Now I was on Boston Street, and before long I came to the auto dealership where Hank Foxe worked. I glanced over the lot for the yellow convertible he’d been driving, but there was no sign of it. Perhaps he’d gone back to his sister’s house.
“Weren’t you able to get the license number of the getaway car?” Mary asked.
“Sheriff Lens got the beginning of it—8M5—but there was some convenient mud over the rest. The car was probably stolen, anyway.”
“The sheriff sounded as if you’ve helped him before.”
“A few times,” I admitted.
I pulled in before the large white house where Brewster Cartright had lived. There was no sign of Hank Foxe, but Lydia Cartright met us at the door. She’d changed to a black dress with a single strand of pearls, and her eyes were puffy from crying. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Sam.”
“It’s no trouble. Let me leave you a powder to help you sleep.”
“That will be a blessing.” She stared at Mary as if trying to place her.
“Mary’s a nurse who’s helping me out,” I said.
“Have the police caught the killers yet?”
“No, but it’s only a matter of time,” I assured her.
“I won’t rest until they’re behind bars. Could they still be in the area?”
“It’s a possibility,” I told her. I comforted her as best I could, and Mary’s soothing words helped her, I could tell.
When we finally left, it was nearly five o’clock. “Is there still time for you to get to Springfield?” I asked her.
“I’ve
probably lost the job already. Is there a place in town where I could stay overnight? Then I can phone them and see where I stand.”
I drove her to the Northmont Inn, which was as good a place as any. Then I went over to see Sheriff Lens at his office. Groups of people were still clustered in the street near the bank, discussing the day’s tragedy in grim and hushed voices. Some worried about their money on deposit at the bank, others speculated that the bandits had been masterminded by an undead John Dillinger.
The sheriff was depressed by the whole thing. “Damn it, Doc, that F.B.I. guy as much as called me incompetent. He says that’s why there are so many small-town bank robberies these days—because the small-town lawmen are incompetent. Do I have to take that from him?”
“Calm down, Sheriff. He won’t think you’re so incompetent when you solve this case.”
“How’m I gonna do that?”
“I’ve got an idea where that black roadster might be hidden. It would explain why it never left town.”
“What are you talkin’ about, Doc?”
“Come with me. But first I want to stop at the inn and pick up that nurse, Mary Best. She saw the car head-on—she may be able to help identify it.”
The sheriff grinned at me. “You sure that’s not just an excuse to see her, Doc? I think you’re a little sweet on her.”
“Come on, you old rascal,” I said, “or I’ll leave you at the mercy of the G-men.”
After she joined us in the car, I told Mary, “This may be the climax of the investigation. I thought you’d want to see it, and maybe help identify the roadster.”
“You mean you’ve found it?”
“Not exactly, but I think I know where it is.”
“Tell me!” she begged, her clear hazel eyes turned toward us both.
“You’ll see in a few minutes.” I steered the car around the town square, the three of us crowded into the wide front seat. “In one of Chesterton’s stories, he has Father Brown ask the question, ‘Where does a wise man hide a pebble?’ The answer is on the beach. ‘Where does a wise man hide a leaf?’ Father Brown asks, too, and this time the answer is in the forest.”
Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne Page 18