“Here, you!” said Robert Gordon, harshly, as Trant laid his hand on the cover of the old machine, “that’s not the typewriter you want to look at. This is the one.” And he pointed to the newer of the two.
“It’s the old one I want to see,” answered Trant.
The boy paled suddenly, leaped forward and seized Trant by the wrist. “Say! Who are you, anyway? What do you want to see that machine for?” he demanded, hotly. “You shall not see it, if I can help it!”
“What!” Trant faced him in obvious astonishment. “You! You in that! That alters matters!”
William Gordon had appeared suddenly in the doorway, his face as white as his son’s. Robert’s hand fell from Trant’s wrist. The dazed old man stood watching Trant, who slowly uncovered and studied the keyboard of the old writing machine.
“What does this mean, Mr. Trant?” Gordon faltered, holding to the door frame for support.
“It means, Mr. Gordon”—Trant straightened, his eyes flashing in full comprehension and triumph—“that you must keep your son in to-night, at whatever cost, Mr. Gordon! And bring him with you tomorrow morning when you come to the bank. Do not misunderstand me.” He caught the old man as he tottered. “We are in time to prevent the robbery you feared at the bank. And I hope—I still hope—to be able to prove that your son had nothing to do with the loss of the money for which he was dismissed.” With that he left the house.
Half an hour before the bank of Howell & Son opened the next morning, Trant and the acting-president stepped from the president’s private office into the main banking room.
“You have not asked me,” said Howell, “whether there was any attempt on the bank last night. I had a special man on watch, as you advised, but no attempt was made.”
“After seeing young Gordon last night,” Trant answered, “I expected none.”
The banker looked perplexed; then he glanced quickly about and saw his dozen clerks and tellers in their places, dispatching preliminary business and preparing their accounts. The cashier alone had not yet arrived. The acting-president called them all to places at the desks.
“This gentleman,” he explained, “is Mr. Trant, a psychologist. He has just asked me, and I am going to ask you, to cooperate with him in carrying out a very interesting psychological test which he wants to make on you as men working in the bank.”
“As you all probably have seen in newspapers and magazine articles,” Trant himself took up the explanation, as the banker hesitated, “psychologists, and many other investigators, are much interested just now in following the influences which employments, or business of various kinds, have upon mental characteristics. I want to test this morning the normal ‘first things’ which you think of as a class constantly associated with money and banking operations during most of your conscious hours. To establish your way of thinking as a class, I have asked Mr. Howell’s permission to read you a short list of words; and I ask you to write down, on hearing each of these words, the first thing that connects itself with that word in your minds. Each of you please take a piece of paper, sign it, and number it along one edge to correspond with the numbers of the words on my list.”
There was a rustling of paper as the men, nodding, prepared for the test. Trant took his list from his pocket.
“I am interested chiefly, of course,” he continued, “in following psychologically the influence of your constant association with money. For you work surrounded by money. Every click of the Remington typewriters about you refers to money, and their shift keys are pushed most often to make the dollar mark. The bundles of money around you are not marked in secret writing or symbols, but plainly with the amount, five hundred dollars or ten thousand dollars written on the wrapper. Behind the combination of the safe lies a fortune always. Yet money must of necessity become to you—psychologically—a mere commodity; and the majority of the acts which its transfer and safekeeping demand must grow to be almost mechanical with you; for the mechanical serves you in two ways: First, in the routine of your business, as, for instance, with a promissory note, which to you means a definite interval—perhaps sixty days—so that you know automatically without looking at your calendars that such a note drawn on September 29th would be due to-day. And second, by enabling you to run through these piles of bills with no more emotion than if you were looking for scraps in a waste-basket, it protects you from temptation, and is the reason why an institution such as this can run for forty years without ever finding it necessary to arrest a thief. I need not tell you that both these mental attitudes are of keen interest to psychologists. Now, if you will write—”
Watch in hand, Trant read slowly, at regular intervals, the words on his list:
1—reship
2—ethics
3—Remington
A stifled exclamation made him lift his eyes, and he saw Howell, who before had appeared merely curious about the test, looking at him in astonishment. Trant smiled, and continued:
4—shift key
5—secret writing
6—combination
7—waste-basket
8—ten thousand
9—five hundred
10—September 29th
11—promissory note
12—arrest
“That finishes it! Thank you all!” Trant looked at Howell, who nodded to one of the clerks to take up the papers. The banker swiftly preceded Trant back to his private office, and when the door was closed turned on him abruptly.
“Who told you the combination of the safe?” he demanded. “You had our word for this week and the word for the week before. That couldn’t be chance. Did Gordon tell you last night?”
“You mean the words ‘reship’ and ‘ethics’?” Trant replied. “No; he didn’t tell me. And it was not chance, Mr. Howell.” He sat down and spread out rapidly his dozen papers. “What—‘rifles’!” he exclaimed at the third word in one of the first papers he picked up. “And way off on ‘waste-basket’ and ‘shift key,’ too!” He glanced over all the list rapidly and laid it aside. “What’s this?” Something caught him quickly again after he had sifted the next half dozen sheets. “‘Waste-basket’ gave him trouble, too?” Trant stared, thoughtfully. “And think of ten thousand ‘windows’ and five hundred ‘doors’!” He put that paper aside also, glanced through the rest and arose.
“I asked Mr. Gordon to bring his son to the bank with him this morning, Mr. Howell,” he said to his client, seriously. “If he is there now please have him come in. And, also, please send for,” he glanced again at the name on the first paper he had put aside, “Byron Ford!”
Gordon had not yet come; but the door opened a moment later and a young man of about twenty-five, dapper and prematurely slightly bald, stood on the threshold. “Ah, Ford!” said Howell, “Mr. Trant asked to see you.”
“Shut the door, please, Mr. Ford,” Trant commanded, “and then come here; for I want to ask you,” he continued without warning as Ford complied, “how you came to be preparing to enter Mr. Howell’s safe?”
“What does he mean, Mr. Howell?” the clerk appealed to his employer, with admirable surprise.
“For the past month, Ford,” Trant replied, directly, “you have been trying to get the combination of the safe. Several times you probably actually got it, but couldn’t make it out, till you got it again this week and at last you guessed the key to the cipher and young Gordon gave you the means of reading it! Why were you going to that trouble to get the combination if you were not going to rob the bank?”
“Rob the bank! I was not going to rob the bank!” the clerk cried, hotly.
“Isn’t young Gordon out there now, Mr. Howell?” Trant turned to the wondering banker quickly. “Thank you! Gordon,” he said to the cashier’s son who came in, reluctantly, “I have just been questioning Ford, as perhaps you may guess, as to why you and he have gone to so much trouble to learn the combinat
ion of the safe. He declares that it was not with an intention to rob. However, I think, Mr. Howell,” Trant swung away from the boy to the young banker, suggestively, “that if we turn Ford over to the police—”
“No, you shan’t!” the boy burst in. “He wasn’t going to rob the safe! And you shan’t arrest him or disgrace him as you disgraced me! For he was only—only—”
“Only getting the combination for you?” Trant put in quickly, “so you could rob the bank yourself!”
“Rob the bank?” the boy shouted, less in control of himself than before as he faced Howell with clenched fists and flushed face. “Rob nothing! He was only helping me so I could take back from this——bank what it stole from my father—the ten thousand dollars it stole from him, for the money I never lost. I was going to take ten thousand dollars—not a cent more or less! And Ford knew it, and thought I was right!”
Trant interrupted, quietly: “I am sure you are telling the truth, Gordon!”
“You mean you are sure they meant only to take the ten thousand?” the banker asked, dazed.
“Yes; and also that young Gordon did not steal the ten thousand dollars which was made up by his father,” Trant assured.
“How can you be sure of that?” Howell charged.
“Send for Carl Shaffer, please!” Trant requested, glancing quickly at the second sheet he had put aside.
“What! Shaffer?” Howell questioned, as he complied.
“Yes; for he can tell us, I think—you can tell, can’t you, Shaffer,” Trant corrected, as, at Howell’s order, a short, stout, and overdressed clerk came in and the door shut behind him, “what really happened to the twenty five-hundred-dollar bills which disappeared from the bank on September 29th? You did not know, when you found them in Gordon’s waste-basket, that they were missed or—if they were—that they had brought anyone into trouble. You have never known, have you,” Trant went on, mercilessly, watching the eyes which could no longer meet his, “that old Gordon, the cashier, thought he had surely locked them into the dispatch bag for his son, and that when the boy was dismissed a little later he was in disgrace and charged as a thief for stealing those bills? You have not known, have you, that a black, bitter shadow has come over the old cashier since then from that disgrace, and that he has had to mortgage his home and give all his savings to make up those twenty little slips of green paper you ‘found’ in his room that morning! But you’ve counted the days, almost the hours, since then, haven’t you? You’ve counted the days till you could feel yourself safe and be sure that no one would call for them? Well, we call for them now! Where are they, Shaffer? You haven’t spent or lost them?”
The clerk stood with eyes fixed on Trant, as if fascinated, and could make no reply. Twice, and then again as Trant waited, he wet his lips and opened them.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he faltered at last.
“Yes you do, Shaffer,” Trant rejoined quickly. “For I’m talking of those twenty five-hundred-dollar bills which you ‘found’ in Gordon’s waste-basket on September 29th—sixty days ago, Shaffer! And, through me, Mr. Howell is giving you a chance to return the money and have the bank present at your trial the extenuating circumstances,” he glanced at Howell, who nodded, “or to refuse and have the bank prosecute you, to the extent of its ability, as a thief!”
“I am not a thief!” the clerk cried, bitterly. “I found the money! If you saw me take it, if you have known all these sixty days that I had it,” he swung in his desperation toward the banker, “you are worse than I am! Why did you let me keep it? Why didn’t you ask me for it?”
“We are asking you for it now, Shaffer,” said Trant, catching the clerk by the arm, “if you still have it.”
The clerk looked at his employer, standing speechless before him, and his head sank suddenly.
“Of course I have it,” he said, sullenly. “You know I have it!”
Howell stepped to the door and called in the bank’s special police officer.
“You will go with Mr. Shaffer,” he said to the burly man, “who will bring back to me here ten thousand dollars in bills. You must be sure that he does not get away from you, and—say nothing about it.”
When the door had closed upon them he turned to the others. “As to you, Ford—”
“Ford has not yet told us,” Trant interrupted, “how he came to be in the game with Gordon.”
“I got him in!” young Gordon answered, boldly. “He—he comes to see—he wants to marry my sister. I told him how they had taken our house from us and were sending my sister to work and—and I got him to help me.”
“But your sister knew nothing of this?” Trant asked.
It brought a flush to both their cheeks. “No; of course not!” the boy answered.
Howell opened the door to the next office. “Go in there, and wait for me,” he commanded. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his hands as he faced Trant alone. “So that was what happened to the money! And what Gordon knew, and was hiding from me, was that his son meant to rob the bank!”
“No, Howell,” Trant denied. “Gordon did not know that.”
“Then what was he trying to hide? Is there another secret in this amazing affair?”
“Yes; William Gordon’s secret; the fact that your cashier is no longer efficient; that he is getting old, and his memory has left him so that he cannot remember during the week, even for a day, the single combination word to open the safe.”
“What do you mean?” Howell demanded.
“I will tell you all. It seemed to me,” Trant explained, “when first you told me of the case, that the cause of the troubles to the cashier was the effort of some one to get at some secret personal paper which the cashier carried, but the existence of which, for some reason, Gordon could not confess to you. It was clear, of course, from the consistent search made of the cashier’s coat, pocketbook, and private papers that the person who was trying to get it believed that Gordon carried it about with him. It was clear, too, from his taking the blotters and pads, that the paper—probably a memorandum of some sort—was often made out by Gordon at the office; for if Gordon wrote in pencil upon a pad and tore off the first sheet, the other man could hope to get an impression from the next in the pad, and if Gordon wrote in ink, he might get an obverse from the blotters. But besides this, from the fact that the waste-baskets were searched, it was clear that the fellow believed that the paper would become valueless to Gordon after a time and he would throw it away.
“So much I could make out when you told me the outlines of the case at my office. But I could make absolutely nothing, then, of the reason for the attempt to get into the typewriter desk. You also told me then of young Gordon’s trouble; and I commented at once upon the coincidence of one trouble coming so soon after the other, though I was obviously unable to even guess at the connection. But even then I was not convinced at all that the mere fact that Gordon and you all thought he had locked twenty-four thousand dollars into the bag he gave his son made it certain—in view of the fact that the seal was unbroken when it was opened with but fourteen thousand dollars in it at the branch bank. When I asked you about that, you replied that old Gordon was unquestionably honest and that he put all the money into the satchel; that is, he thought he did or intended to, but you never questioned at all whether he was able to.”
“Able to, Trant?” Howell repeated.
“Yes; able to,” Trant reaffirmed. “I mean in the sense of whether his condition made it a certainty that he did what he was sure he was doing. I saw, of course, that you, as a banker, could recognize but two conditions in your employee; either he was honest and the money was put in, or he was dishonest and the money was withheld. But, as a psychologist, I could appreciate that a man might very well be honest and yet not put in the money, though he was sure he did.
“I went to your office then, already fairly
sure that Gordon was making some sort of a memorandum there which he carried about for a while and then threw away; that, for some reason, he could not tell you of this; but that some one else was extremely anxious to possess it. I also wished to investigate what I may call the psychological possibility of Gordon’s not having put in the ten thousand dollars as he thought he did; and with this was the typewriter-desk episode, of which I could make nothing at all.
“You told me that Gordon had warned you that trouble threatened the safe; and when I saw that it was a simple combination safe with a six-letter word combination intrusted to the cashier, it came to me convincingly at once that Gordon’s memorandum might well be the combination of the safe. If he had been carrying the weekly word in his head for twenty years, and now, mentally weakened by the disgrace of his son, found himself unable to remember it, I could appreciate how, with his savings gone, his home mortgaged, untrained in any business but banking, he would desperately conceal his condition from you for fear of losing his position.
“Obviously he would make a memorandum of the combination each week at the office and throw away the old one. This explained clearly why some one was after it; but why that one should be after the old memorandum, and what the breaking open of the typewriter desk could have had to do with it, I could not see at first, even after we surprised him with his scraps of paper. But I made three short tests of him. The first, a simple test of the psychologists for memory, made by exhibiting to him a half dozen figures formed by different combinations of the same three lines, proved to me, as he could not reproduce one of these figures correctly, that he had need of a memorandum of the combination of the safe. The other two tests—which are tests for attention—showed that, besides having a failing memory, his condition as regards attention was even worse. Gordon lost the watch ticks, which I asked him to mark with his finger, twice within forty-five seconds. And, whereas any person with normal ‘attention’ can write correctly from one to thirty while counting aloud from one to fifty, Gordon was incapable of keeping correctly to his set of figures under my very slight distraction.
The Mystery & Suspense Novella Page 28