“Well, we won’t chew on that pill, now. The game’s a winner, anyhow. And honesty don’t drag too hard, either, after a while,” he added. He could see his wife, now, only as a kind of vague shadow at the front door. “It’s not too bad, after you get your second wind. It gets to be kind of a habit, after a while.”
“Like coke,” she laughed, “or the needle. Only the pipe-dreams, this way, are the real bundle.”
“Yes,” said he. “It’s a kind of a habit.”
“And they get to calling you ‘Honest Pete.’ After they start that ‘Honest Pete’ stuff, it’s all over but the fade.”
Peter Brodbine, banker—alias Tony the Scratcher—nodded, and opened the front door. The November rain gusted raw against his face. It was pitch-black, outside; an ugly night, just the kind they needed. Not a soul would be out, in this straggling suburb. Probably even downtown, they would meet nobody. Brodbine had never done any bank-work, in the old days; but he had dropped phony paper for a good many “box-men,” and he knew their technique. Because of such knowledge he had chosen this night of all nights—a rainy, stormy, Saturday night.
“It looks pretty good to me!” judged Lillian, who once on a time had been Delia the Dip. She too came out. The banker shivered, and buttoned up his ulster under his chin.
“It gets to be kind of a habit—like dope,” he repeated.
He closed the front door. The slight, hollow sound of that closing reverberated in the man’s heart. It seemed like the shutting-up of life. Eleven years in a little town like Rockville, where you know everybody, is a long time.
“Come on!” bade Peter, and led the way toward the garage.
They slid back the door, and got into the machine. Their suitcases already lay in the limousine body. These cases held all they meant to salvage from home. Passengers from a sinking ship take only their best valuables, if anything at all. The Brodbines were taking only theirs—a little clothing, a few toilet-articles, a trinket or two. On a trek like this, planned to carry them half round the world without a stop and to end there in complete disappearance, impedimenta are unwelcome.
Brodbine switched on the lights, stepped on the self-starter and let in the clutch. The car cradled out of the garage and down the graveled way to the street. For a second, the lights touched the rear of the big, comfortable old house, illuminating the summer-kitchen. Above it, the woman caught a glimpse of her bedroom windows—the room now abandoned for unknown adventurings. Brodbine saw, too, and frowned a little, but the woman laughed.
“So long, shack!” she gibed. Brodbine realized her callousness, and shivered. He swung the car south, toward town, toward the bank he was president of. Save for the stab of the headlights, night had everything its own way. The blue light the streetlamps were making against rain and wind seemed only to intensify the blackness. Nobody was stirring. This community was still so old-fashioned that people slept there, o’ nights. Oh, yes, the town had a couple of constables, beside Gilkey, the fat Chief of Police who occupied quarters in the basement under the Post Office, where the lockup was. But the Brodbines, who in their day had outplayed some of the keenest “dicks” in the country, didn’t give the local Law much heed.
“Looks like a cinch, all right,” smiled Lillian. “It’s like taking candy from a kid.”
“Candy is right,” assented the banker. “From—a kid.”
They exchanged nothing more, as the car took them into town. There was really nothing much to say. Everything had been planned, rehearsed, lived over, for weeks. And the whole thing was so childishly easy! Certainly Rockville was not to be feared. Rockville was not expecting or dreading any coup. One doesn’t suspect one’s watchdog of intending to steal the leg of mutton from the icebox.
A watchdog. The watchdog of Rockville. That, in a word, was what “Honest Pete” had become. Eleven years of hard, impeccable work had landed him securely in the watchdog role. Nothing could have been worked up with greater skill, or could promise to be more advantageous.
In the beginning, after the successful getaway from that Albany job, Brodbine had faded out of his old name and haunts; and had emerged, another man, in this remote place. He had found a little employment as telegraph-operator at the depot. After that, he had become stationmaster. Any port in a storm, you know; and beside, he still had a few thousand salted. This work had served only as a convenient blind.
By the time he had got pretty well liked by the business men of the town, for his efficiency re freight-shipments and the handling of express, he had conceived the idea of “going straight” for some years and then of gutting the place. All this time he had kept in touch, by letter, with his “moll.” She had approved the plan. He had, at her advice, made a play for a petty job in the Rockville National Bank, and had got it. Then he had realized he needed her as a partner; though he had ceased to love her, he had gone to the woman, and had married her. A wife is a prime requisite in working a small town. He had brought Delia the Dip back with him, as Lillian Brodbine. And she had proved a helpmeet, indeed. A smooth woman. Very. She had been enthusiastic about church activities, and all that. Before long, no Ladies’ Aid fair, no lawn-supper, had been successful without Mrs. Brodbine. The Brodbines had entertained a little, too, and gradually had become popular.
Brodbine’s efficiency, silence, sobriety, and honesty had got him a dead man’s shoes, and he had become teller at the bank. In less than two years more he was looking through the cashier’s window. The bank had profited. Brodbine had introduced up-to-date methods and machinery; new systems, all kinds of improvements. Bank and town had prospered alike. Then had come that forgery, presented by a Cleveland traveling-man. It had got by all the others at the bank. Even old Dowling, president, had been gulled. Brodbine’s professional skill had spotted the fine scratch-work and had saved the institution ninety thousand. That had been a tremendous feather for Brodbine. Dowling had been quietly “let out”; and bank and town alike had rejoiced to make new rosewood furniture for the newly-finished office of President Honest Pete.
“There’s McElroy’s!” Lil nudged her husband, as the car loped past a wide lawn fenced with ornamental wire. A streetlight vaguely outlined a cast-iron stag. Rockville still clung to wire fences, iron animals and fountains with iron children holding umbrellas. “The Macs’ll sit up and take notice, after this smash, eh? Mrs. Mac won’t hand out any more of her D. A. R. wallops to the little stranger in our midst—not very quick again, will she?”
“Mac’s a good fellow, though,” said the banker.
The woman laughed, evilly, in the gloom.
“They won’t be living in that big house, much longer,” she opined. “There’s lots of others that’ll take a tumble, too!”
Brodbine only grunted.
“The poor fish!” gibed Lillian. “The mutts!”
Her husband did not answer.
II.
It was easy enough for Brodbine to enter the bank. From his car, which he left in the safe seclusion of an alley off Congress Street, he and Lillian had only to walk one square, turn into Hanover Place, and thus come to the side door of the bank building. Here, under the doorway of the Commercial Insurance Company, he left the woman. There was nobody at all on the dark, rain-swept streets; but still his old-time caution dictated his posting her as a sentinel.
His bunch of keys held everything requisite for him to reach the bank vault and the safe. Of late there had been some talk about putting a time-lock on the vault. Brodbine had apparently fallen in with this plan, but had managed to postpone it. That, of course, would have ruined everything. Now, his keys and the combination made matters simple indeed. He had the combination as firmly in his mind as his own name—or names.
“Cinch is no word for it,” thought the bank-president. “Anybody could open this ‘gopher’ with a jackknife, if it came to that.” He unlocked the side door, and entered the building, snapping back the catch but closing the door behind him.
As he reached the interior, he paused, listened keenly. His cau
tion, his flair for any possible danger—an instinct dormant for years—had returned, as a tame wolf’s hunting-instinct surges back, when the beast is set free in the wilderness. Brodbine waited a moment, peering, hearkening.
Till now, he felt, all had been safe. Nobody, so far as he knew, had seen him stop his car in that alley where he had left it with extinguished lights and softly-singing engine. Nobody had seen him enter the bank. Of that he was positive.
And now? Yes, everything still seemed quite safe. Old Joe Spracklin, the night watchman—what danger lay in him? And there was nothing else to fear. Spracklin, the banker knew, had literary habits; he did a lot of reading in the little upstairs room where he spent most of his time. Only yesterday, Brodbine had given him a set of ten volumes of “The World’s Masterpieces of Crime.” That would keep Spracklin busy, all right. True, the old man had to come downstairs once an hour, to punch the watchman’s register. But fully forty minutes remained, before he was due to come again. And fifteen minutes would more than suffice for the job Brodbine had in hand.
Still, Brodbine—alias Tony the Scratcher—was taking no chances. His return to the underworld life spread his nostrils to the scent of danger. He had not intended to bear firearms, to run any risks of killing, on this job. But now he discovered that he felt empty, lonesome, without a “canister.”
“Well, there’s one handy,” he realized. “I’ll cop it, just in case!”
He walked noiselessly into his own private office. His rubber soles made no sound. He slid open his desk drawer and took out the revolver he always kept there. It was just the same kind of gun that certain other bank-employees had, among them Spracklin, Thirty-two caliber guns, of considerable penetrative power.
The “gat” in Brodbine’s pocket gave him more assurance. He looked toward the vault, ready for business.
“Damn that light!” he growled.
The single incandescent hanging before the vault constituted, in effect, his chief danger. He had long foreseen this danger, but had never thought out any way to dispense with that light. From the street, a barred window gave full view of the vault door. Any passerby might look in. Still, the chances were against anybody being abroad, such a night. If Brodbine had had to think of only outsiders, he would have extinguished the light and chanced anybody’s noticing it was out and kicking up trouble. But he knew the light shone dimly into the corridor, against the wall. Old Spracklin, from his room, could see that vague reflection. In case the watchman should notice it no longer shining, he would come downstairs at once, to investigate.
The incandescent would have to be left burning. Other dangers, however, were few. The two constables were probably safe at home, and Gilkey was doubtless sleeping. Also, Lillian was serving as “lighthouse” outside. One whistle from her, and Brodbine would vanish into his dark office till the danger should be past.
“Cinch!” he mentally echoed Lillian’s comment. Already a metamorphosis was upon him, like a chemical reaction, an experiment in transmutation of soul-stuff. His mentality seemed slipping back into the sly darkness of the old days. His instincts were retrograding. Honest Pete Brodbine was fading out, growing unreal; and Tony the Scratcher was once more taking shape. Yes, the test tube was boiling nicely now.
“Cinch!” chuckled the man who was now something of both these men, yet who was fully neither one.
Though it was time to be at work, he felt no haste. He desired to stretch himself in this new warmth of lawlessness. To think it all over; to exult. The kill was certain. He wanted to toy with it, a few minutes.
The whole “plant,” from the beginning, had been easy enough for a man with brains and energy. Brodbine had possessed both. He had given them freely to make the Rockville National the sturdiest bank in the county. His bank had become Rockville’s leading institution, just as he himself had grown to be its foremost citizen. His going, annexing close to a million would mean the total derailing of a lot of people.
Brodbine knew this. Somehow, he wasn’t quite enjoying it, now, as he had expected to when he had savored the exploit on the tongue of anticipation. He was thinking about his wife. About how little—outside of this scheme—they really had in common. About how malicious she had become toward Rockville respectability. Men who rob banks should work hard and fast; but Brodbine still kept thinking. He felt so very much at home, in the bank. It all seemed his, in a way.
Wasn’t it his? When he had entered its employ, its capitalization had been only $50,000 and its surplus $65,000. Now it held something like $1,125,000 of Rockville’s and of the county’s money, private and public. Under his administration it had moved from a wooden building on Porter Street, a rented building, to its own three-story brick block, facing Constitution Square. This was the only three-story building in town, and everybody was proud of it and of Brodbine.
He was proud of it, himself. Proud of the way he had boomed the bank. He had absorbed nearly all the town trade, already, and what he didn’t have, was coming. Farmers and traders drove in, these days, from even the far ends of the county, to park their flivvers in Constitution Square, or else to hitch their horses at the iron railings in front of the bank and to do business there. Brodbine had fitted up a room for out-of-towners, where they could trade and gossip. That had brought business to his net. He had got acquainted with everybody. His system had been to know everybody. No funeral or wedding had for a long time been really complete, without Brodbine. Lots of young married couples owed their start in life to him, looked upon him as a kind of godfather. Ever since he had been bank-president, he had always sent a dollar to every newborn child in the county, to start an account with. That scheme had pulled like a porous-plaster. Though not much of a churchgoer—for he knew piety might be dangerous—he had always been “there” when any of the three churches had needed a new organ, repairs to the steeple, or a boost for the Southeast Mozambique Improvement Fund.
As Brodbine had farmed the town into renewed growth, he had likewise made the bank grow. That had made his prospects fatten. All his work had been for himself, in the long run. He had nursed and incubated the county like a hen on eggs. And always, everywhere, he had been just, upright, honest. Not even his political enemies had been able to say otherwise. Some had objected to his having two fingers in every Rockville pie, and to his directorships in so many enterprises; but all had been forced to admit that everything Brodbine touched, flourished.
He had made Rockville flourish. He, too, had flourished. He smiled, as he realized what Rockville would do and say, tomorrow.
Lillian’s voice seemed speaking:
“There’s lots of ’em won’t be living in big houses. Lots of ’em will take a tumble!”
Brodbine brought himself to action, with an effort. How long had he been musing? He could not tell. He only knew he had been hugely enjoying himself. He liked that office, just as he liked his home. The way the desk sat, with the light just so, and the view of the Square, and the swivel-chair with the leather cushion—Comfortable. Safe. Box of cigars always in the drawer, too; and people coming in to confer with him, and people asking loans or advice. Handshakes, and a good deal of publicity in the Rockville Telegram. And then, that talk of him for mayor, next year. And friends. Lots of friends. And that house, that library, up there in North Rockville. Disconnected, disjointed impressions—
Wind, rain and, night, like frightened fugitives, skittered and gusted against the windows. The barred windows. Brodbine shivered.
Brodbine sat down in his swivel-chair, in the black shadow of his office, to think. To ponder, again.
“I hope,” said he to himself, “I’m not going to make a damn fool of myself, one way or the other. Whatever I do, guess I will be a damn fool. Go through, or quit, I’ll always think I was. Which way will be the damndest?”
III.
The man, who was partly two men and wholly neither one, became aware of a presence in the bank. A draught of raw air struck him. A sound, as of quiet feet, tensed his muscles. His hand s
lid into his pocket, fingered the gun there.
Then he heard a swish-swish of skirts. A very slight sound that was, but Brodbine understood.
He got up, and in silence went to meet the woman who now was Lillian Brodbine, his wife, and who had been Delia the Dip.
She saw him, vaguely; came toward him. Not even the dim light could mask her anger.
“Got the stuff?” she demanded, whispering.
He shook his head.
“What’s the idea? What’s the matter with you, anyhow, you mutt?” she breathed. “You’ve been in here fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve been in here, in this bank, nearly ten years,” he answered. “It’s a good place to stay in, when you think it over!”
She did not understand, but plucked him by the sleeve.
“Long enough to ha’ done it twice over,” she added. “Get busy, Tony!”
“Lil,” he whispered. “Come, let’s go!”
“Well, grab the kale, then, and—”
“I don’t mean that, Lil. Let’s go—home.”
“Home?”
He nodded. The woman stared at him, not understanding.
“It’s not so bad, at that, Lil. And this job, here—”
“Tony!”
“And then, wrecking the town, and all—”
Had she dared, she would have screamed out against him, struck him, reviled him. But fear kept her voice to a rasp and a rattle. Snake-like—that was how it seemed.
“Home! You—you—! Gone straight on me, have you? Cold feet, an’ double-crossed me an’ gone straight?”
“Call it that. It’s just a matter of commonsense. You see—”
“You won’t, though!” For all her whispering, her tones made Brodbine’s heart sick. This was not Lillian’s voice, but Delia’s. It came to him, from the black past, like cold winds blowing out of a nightmare-tempest. “You ain’t goin’ to get away with that, Tony! Not by a damn sight!”
“I’m going to stay here in Rockville,” he answered evenly. “When it comes to being trailed all over creation, for a little rake-off—or a big one—as against this job, why—”
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