“You quitter!” Her face looked feline. It only made a dim, white blur in the gloom of the bank, but Brodbine could sense the animality of it. “Quitter! Yellow streak, a foot wide!”
“We’ve got a good home, and everything’s safe. We’d be fools—”
“Eleven years o’ this tank-town, an’ now—”
He laid a hand over her mouth.
“Cut it out!” he growled, stirring to anger. “I’m running this deal. It’s all off!”
Furiously she struck his hand down.
“It ain’t all off! This punk town! Think I’m goin’ to stick in the mud here? All right for you, maybe! All right for a mutt an’ a quitter. But nix on that for mine! I know—I’ve got you! Got you hamstrung, you—!”
“Can it, or—”
Brodbine was afraid, now. Anger had swamped the woman’s caution. Her voice was rising.
“Can nothin’! You ain’t goin’ to put this over on me!” Her speech had reverted to the underworld. Her veneer had stripped clean off. “I know that safe combination as well’s you do, Tony. You’re going to make your get, with me! If you don’t—”
Brodbine felt a quivering at the pit of his stomach. He had as yet never struck a woman, but he wanted to, now. He wanted to kill. His nostrils widened. His lips grew even harder than they had been in the old days.
“That’ll do!” he growled. “Nobody ever threatened me, yet, and got away with it!”
“If you don’t go through,” she retorted, still in that rising whisper, “I’ll blow the game. I’ll wise ’em, who you are. That’ll be stir for both of us. I’ll be done, but so’ll you. You’re through with Rockville, anyhow. Which way? It’s up to you!”
The banker shivered. He felt sick. Delia, his moll—the wife had vanished—was a terribly dangerous woman. He knew her. Knew she would keep her word. In this moment of something almost like his regeneration, motivated though it so largely was by realization of the relative values of the crooked path and the straight, the woman stood squarely across his path. Nobody had ever done that, and succeeded.
The touch of the gun in his fingers thrilled him. He half-drew the weapon from his pocket.
“Hey!” exclaimed a voice in the gloom. “Who’s there? Whatcha doin’?”
They both faced round, tensed to silence. The vague form of old man Spracklin adumbrated itself in the corridor doorway. Brodbine retreated, back into his office.
“Plug him, you fool!” whispered the woman to her husband. “Get that rod in your desk, an’ let him have it!” Bold, defiant, she remained there at the edge of the shadow cast by the vault. Her husband was behind her, at her left side, perhaps twelve feet away.
“Answer, or I’ll shoot!” warned the aged watchman. His voice quavered a little, but Brodbine sensed the courage in it. An irrelevant thought nicked the banker’s brain, as such thoughts will even at life’s crises: “Didn’t know the old man had the backbone to fight. I’ll raise his pay—pension him!”
Brodbine saw the watchman’s gun flick a ray of dim light, as it was leveled. Instinct brought the ex-scratcher’s own canister to bear on Spracklin. No man, least of all one with a master’s degree in the University of Crime, likes to face a muzzle without trying to retaliate. Then Brodbine turned his gun aside.
“Plug him, you damn fool!” exclaimed the woman, this time aloud.
Spracklin’s gun coughed. At the same instant, almost, Brodbine fired. The woman crumpled down, with a curse only half-mouthed.
The watchman’s flash-lamp blinded Brodbine. He slid his gun into his pocket, and hoisted both hands.
“Don’t shoot, Joe!” he exclaimed. “And for God’s sake, put out that light!”
Dazed, the old man shuffled forward. He still held the light on Brodbine.
“Why—God’s sakes alive! Your—?”
“Shut up, and put out that light!” commanded the banker. “I’m boss, here. Do as I tell you!”
The light died. Old Spracklin stood there and shivered with a very cold fear. He understood nothing; and the dark, silent blotch of something that had been human, near the corner of the vault, sickened him. His teeth chattered a little, for all that they were false.
“Keep quiet! Come here!”
The watchman obeyed. Brodbine walked a few steps to his wife, knelt, listened at her heart. He unbuttoned the fur coat, with hands that did not tremble, that silently rejoiced.
Still, he realized, the old man was watching him. There was a role to act. So he started, a little, caught his breath, and tragically looked up.
“She—she’s dead!” he gulped, in the dark. “My wife—my wife—dead!”
“No! No, no! Don’t say that!” The gun shook in the old employee’s hand.
“We can’t have news of this get about, Spracklin!”
“No, no, no! But, Mr. Brodbine, what was you doin’ in the bank, this time o’ night?”
“Came down to get some ledgers, for over Sunday. My wife—poor soul—wanted to come along, too. Always that way, Spracklin!” The banker’s voice wept. “Always trying to help me, and now—”
“They was two shots fired, Mr. Brodbine,” asserted Spracklin, now recovering a little from his daze. “You fired, too!”
“Well?” sparred Brodbine, for time. He sensed the different tone in the old man’s query. He stood up, confronted Spracklin.
“What was you doin’ with a gun, at night, in the bank?”
“When I saw you with yours, I grabbed mine. No man’s going to stand still and see his wife or himself shot at, without doing something!”
“You could of spoke, sir. Told who you was.”
“For God’s sake, Spracklin! You going to stand there and argue with me all night? With my wife lying dead, here? Dead, shot down by you!”
“I was in my rights, sir!” stoutly asserted the old man. By the dim incandescent in front of the vault, Brodbine saw his jaw tauten, his combative powers return. “Anybody comin’ in here, o’ nights, is takin’ a big chanst! They’re right away under s’picion, an’ if they don’t ’count for themselves, I c’n shoot, an’ not be held li’ble for nothin’. Now, comin’ down to cases, what was you here fer?”
“I told you! Help me get my wife out of here!”
“Was you an’ her plannin’ to monkey with the cash? Hey?”
“Only a fool would say such a thing to Peter Brodbine!” The banker confronted old Spracklin, with tense fists.
“Children an’ fools speak the truth. It looks mighty funny to me! If I was to say—”
“Is the vault open, you idiot?”
“No, it ain’t.”
“It’d go hard with you, Spracklin, if this ever came to court! Remember that!” warned the banker. He gripped the old man by his left wrist. “I—we—had a right here, too. You remember that! My wife was killed here. D’you want it known? Aired in court? D’you know what you’d get?”
“I was in my rights!” doggedly repeated the old man. “It looks fishy to me, ’bout your bein’ here. An’ they was two shots fired! They couldn’t prove I done it!”
The banker shook him, savagely.
“Listen, you old fool!” he growled. “I’m trying to save your skin, and you haven’t got sense enough to know it. We’ve got to get her out o’ here, and home. We’ve got to do something, quick, to clear you, and—”
“Clear you, you mean! That’s more likely!”
“I won’t argue with you, Spracklin. You’re an old man, half-broken and not wholly responsible. If this came to court, your word wouldn’t be ace-high, against mine. But it needn’t ever come to court. It mustn’t! It would raise a horrible row in this town, and kick over everybody’s applecart. Everything can be kept quiet. Do as I tell you, that’s all!”
The banker’s voice was crisp, tense. It had become the voice of Tony the Scratcher. Just so had he bossed his “swell mob,” years and years ago. Old Spracklin yielded to the dominant influence.
“I—I don’t understand,” he weakened.
“You don’t have to understand! All you have to do, now, is mind me. I’m boss here, anyhow. You’re my employee. Listen! Clean that gun of yours. Reload it. Keep your fool mouth shut. Shut! Hear me? That’s all!”
“All, sir?”
“No. Here!” He thrust his gun into Spracklin’s pocket. “Here’s mine, too. I’ve got no time to attend to it. Clean mine, too, and reload it, and put it back in my desk. Do it right away! Don’t delay a minute. Understand me? Obey, and it may save you a trip to the chair!”
The old man’s brief flare-up of suspicion and defiance seemed to have been stamped down. Spracklin cringed.
“I’ll do what you say. But you stand back o’ me, won’t you? If anythin’ happens to me—”
“Nothing will happen to you, idiot! That is, if you keep that damned old trap of yours quiet! Now then, help me get my wife out of here. Out, to our car!”
They lifted her, clumsily enough and with a good deal of difficulty, for Lillian Brodbine was even fatter than Delia the Dip had been. Also, she was slippery in her fur coat. The bank door, too, made trouble. And wind, rain, and darkness are not conducive to the easy transportation of the dead.
In spite of all, they got her to the limousine, and into it. Nobody seemed to have seen them. The engine was still singing peacefully to itself, with all eight cylinders. The downpour drenched old Spracklin’s head, pattering rather absurdly on his bald cranium, for he had no hat. Brodbine clambered into the front seat. He felt Spracklin’s hand on his arm.
“I—I fired at the top o’ the safe, sir,” said the old man. “I didn’t shoot to kill. Wouldn’t, the first shot. That bullet must be somewheres in the bank. I’ll find it, an’ make ’way with it.”
“What d’you mean?” demanded the banker. “Mean that I—?”
“Now, now, sir. I’m goin’ to keep my trap shut, like you told me to! But, say—one man to another—it was her as wanted to clean out the bank, wasn’t it now?”
“It’s the chair for you, if anybody even knows she was here! Get back to the bank, now, and clean those guns!”
IV.
Brodbine drove the dead woman home. He felt secure, exultant. “The old man’s safe enough,” thought he. “He’s sharper than I thought, but he won’t dare snitch. He’s sewed up, tight. He couldn’t prove anything, anyhow, I guess a half-cracked old mutt like him wouldn’t have much weight against Honest Pete, if it came to a showdown. But it won’t come to a showdown!”
Then he thought of Dr. Abercrombie, the coroner. Also of fat old Gilkey, the Chief of Police, who must be notified. Hmmm. . . . Yes, those were certainly obstacles. But what were obstacles made for, except to be overcome?
“I guess I can get away with ’em,” thought Tony the Scratcher. “A little bull goes a long way, in these tank-towns.”
“There ought to be no real difficulty,” decided Brodbine the Banker. “The word of a man in my position carries weight.”
The man who was two men drove back home and into the garage. He was glad of the slashing rain that would very soon blur his tire-tracks where they turned from the street into the driveway. Blur them so that, by morning, nobody would be able to see he had taken the car out, that night. On the gravel driveway, the tracks wouldn’t show, anyway. So far, so good.
As he got within his own purlieus, Tony the Scratcher retreated into the background and Brodbine the Banker assumed dominance. It was mostly Brodbine who carried the dead woman into the house, via the back door. Yet it was the sinuous strength of Tony’s underworld days that hunched the limp body over his shoulder and got it upstairs.
Brodbine laid his dead wife down on the floor, and pulled all the shades in her room and his own. Then he went after the suitcases. He hung his coat and hat on the hall-rack, carried the cases upstairs and unpacked them, working by gas-jets turned low. As he replaced everything, and put the cases back in their respective closets, he hardly glanced at the body. In the long ago, he had seen too many such, for one more to stir his pulses. Beside, what joy was his that Lil was dead!
“Now for the big smash!” said he, at length, and began operations with the murdered woman.
He got her fur coat off, and her hat, and put them where they belonged. The limp neck of the woman, her lax hands, wax-colored face and dully accusing eyes made slight impression on him. He knew now that he hated her; had hated her for a good while. Knew that he had feared her, too, and that this was one of life’s most free and happy hours. He drew down her eyelids, however. That dull vacancy of seeming reproach was unpleasant.
He undressed the body, and examined the wound. This was on the left side, about two inches below the axilla. The woman must have had her arm drawn back, when the shot had been fired.
“Not very much blood,” he noted. “I wish there had been more.”
He gathered up all the clothes, and sorted them. Everything stained with blood he laid in a little heap. The rest of the things he put away, carefully. All at once an idea occurred to him. He went downstairs and examined the woman’s fur coat. Yes, the bullet hole showed. He thrust a finger through it, and pondered. Then he carried the coat into the kitchen, and threw it down the cellar stairs.
He returned to the body, got a nightdress—a used one—from his wife’s closet, punched a hole in it with a pair of scissors at the spot corresponding to the wound on the body, and put the nightdress on the dead woman. He wet a towel, sopped her face and hair, washed the wound and dabbled the nightdress with blood. Then he laid the woman in her bed, which he opened and tossed about a little, to make it seem as if she had slept there that night.
“Not quite enough blood,” he regretted, “but it’ll do. Now we’ll work in a bit of brandy. Mustn’t forget that!”
He dropped the wet and ensanguined towel on the floor, then fetched a bottle of brandy from his little stock in a trunk that only the woman and he had known contained any. He spilled brandy on her lips and neck, and left the uncorked bottle on the bedside table.
“Next,” said Brodbine. “We’ve got to have an alibi!”
This was simple. He locked one of the bedroom windows, that looked out over the roof of the summer kitchen. Taking off his rubbers and shoes, he tossed them into his clothes closet, and—lighting a candle—went up into the attic. Here he found and put on an old pair of hunting-boots, with calked soles. Downstairs again, he blew out the candle and set it back on the shelf where he had got it. He went into the kitchen. From the drawer of the kitchen table he took a broad-bladed chisel.
He left the house by the back door, climbed upon the summer kitchen, and with the chisel—working in dark and rain—“jimmied” the window in good, professional style. He now jumped down into a muddy flowerbed, and made deep tracks across a bit of soft lawn. These tracks led to the graveled driveway. Here he slipped off the hunting-boots, and in stocking-feet returned into the house, via the flagged back walk.
He went down cellar, and opened the door of the furnace where a bright coal fire was glowing redly. He had left all the drafts open to permit of the fire burning out quickly after he and his wife had left, so his wife’s fur coat and the hunting boots which he had rapidly cut into strips, once tossed inside, were quickly consumed.
“There!” he exclaimed. “They’ll have to go some to hook me up to it, now. Oh, damn it—those other clothes!”
Yes, he had forgotten the blood-stained clothes. Another trip to his wife’s room and back to the furnace disposed of all these. He shut the furnace door with the satisfaction of an artist who has done a good, trustworthy piece of work.
“Now,” said the banker, in a very happy frame of mind, “now for Abercrombie and Gilkey!”
He undressed, in his own room, after having carefully washed his hands. He put on pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers, and tossed his own bed quite artfully, taking especial care to dent the pillow. Then, lighter-hearted than he had been in months, he went to the phone and called the doctor.
A sleepy operator bothered him a little, so th
at by the time he had got Abercrombie out of the Land of Nod his voice really showed a good deal of nervousness.
“You, doctor?” he exclaimed. “This is Brodbine. My wife—she’s been shot! Burglar—and she’s dead! Yes, dead! Eh? In her bedroom. Just now. What? Yes, I’m alone, here. Mustn’t move her? My God, doctor, this is no time for your cold-blooded instructions. My wife—she’s dead, here! And you—all right, I get you! But hurry, hurry! What? Ten minutes? For God’s sake, doctor—!”
Next he called the stuffy little police station, under the post office. Gilkey, of course, was sound asleep. The old man, however, woke up quick enough when he realized that murder—what he would have called “a genu-ine, first-class murder”—had been done in Rockville. Such occasions to shine were rare, for the local police. And Mrs. Brodbine, of all people!
“I’ll be right up!” Gilkey promised. Brodbine could catch the quiver of anticipatory self-importance already puffing the good soul. “Yes, sir, I’ll send my men out—pick up any suspects. Lord, sir, I’m sorry to hear this. But I’ll do everything I can—the murderer, we’ll git him, all right. Be there jest as quick’s I can, sir. My God!”
“Pretty smooth!” judged the banker, as he hung up. “Abercrombie will be here in ten or fifteen minutes. Gilkey can’t make it in less than twenty or maybe twenty-five. He’s ’way downtown, and the doc’s only four blocks from here. That’s all as it should be. Abercrombie is coroner. If I get his O. K. on the evidence, it’s all over but the funeral. And I’ll get it, all right. A country crocus like this one—nothing to it!”
A few minutes now remained before Abercrombie should arrive. Minutes that the banker used for a complete review of the case. He weighed and tested everything, found no flaw. The more carefully he analyzed the evidence, the more iron-bound everything appeared. Only one weak link existed in the chain. That was old Spracklin. And Spracklin, being constrained by a very great fear, would certainly hold his tongue.
“Nothing to it!” judged the banker, again, and felt at peace.
Trrrrrrrrr!
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