“That’s too bad,” Hester said. “By whom? I may know them.”
“A Mr. Joseph Smith. He came with his secretary, quite a lovely young woman.” Hyder glanced away, cleared his throat, and moved behind his desk. “But I have one other place at the moment that might interest you.”
“This Mr. Smith,” Hester said. “A big man? Powerful frame? Slightly gaunt? Iron gray hair?”
Easing a covert look at Hester, Hyder’s manner became guarded. “An exact description of the man. Why do you ask?”
There was one more question. Claude, she remembered, had taken pride in the uniqueness of his car. “Driving a convertible with a custom paint job?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Is there something you wish to tell me about Mr. Smith?”
“No, Mr. Hyder, there is nothing I wish to say about him at all.”
“About this other place…”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t do at all, Mr. Hyder. Thank you for your time. Perhaps I’ll call again.” She escaped quickly, with a nod, a turn, a flight to her car.
* * * *
When Hester entered the house, Maudie was at the kitchen table sipping coffee and munching on a sweet roll. “Mr. Bennett called while you were out. Twice. ” Maudie lowered her roll without taking a bite. “You feel all right, Mrs. Bennett?”
“A little tired, a bit dizzy; the sun, the exertion of shopping.”
Hester continued her flight, from kitchen to den, where she picked up the phone and dialed Claude’s office.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked.
“Out. Just out…”
“Well, I wish you’d be on the ball when I need you.”
She half closed her eyes. Thirty-five years on the ball, she thought Thirty-five years of being in an assigned place and on the ball. “What was it you wanted, Claude?”
“I’m not happy with Jerry Lawter’s reports. I don’t like the way things are going in the sales office downstate. I’m going down there myself and put some ginger in Jerry and staff. So pack me a bag, will you?”
“Of course, Claude. What will you need? One day bag? Two days?”
“Two days, at least,” he said. “I’ll be by in thirty minutes. I don’t want to drive all night”
“I’ll have the bag ready, Claude.”
She had the luggage prepared, set at the foot of the bed, when he arrived.
He began stripping off his shirt, preparatory to showering and donning fresh clothing. She saw the excitement sparkling deep in his eyes, the almost frenzied movements of his hands.
“Haven’t you anything better to do,” he said suddenly and shortly, “than to stand there and gawk at me?”
A coldness washed over her, settling in her eyes. Looking at her, Claude made a movement expressing discomfort, turning away from her. “Sorry,” he said. “But you know how it is, things fouled up in Jerry Lawter’s office and all. You do understand.”
“Yes, Claude, I understand.”
She wandered out of the bedroom, through the house. She was at the living room looking out the windows, when Claude paused in the foyer, the packed suitcase in his hand. “Well,” he said, a faint note of awkwardness in his tone, “mind the posies while I’m gone.”
“Have a good trip,” she said.
It was the end of conversation. She heard him go out. From the window, she saw him put the suitcase in the back seat of the car, which he’d parked at the curb. He got in the car and drove off. She stood at the window and watched it out of sight. Then she turned quietly, went into the den, closed the door, picked up the phone, and dialed the long distance operator.
When his secretary put the call through, Jerry Lawter’s voice was filled with concern and anxiety. “Mrs. Bennett? It’s not Claude? I mean, the boss hasn’t…”
“No, Mr. Lawter. It’s still very much touch and go with him. He should avoid undue excitement and alcohol as killing plagues, but as of this moment Claude is all right. The fact is, he just left here, saying he was on his way to see you. ”
“Fine,” Jerry Lawter said more calmly, “I’ll be glad to see him.”
“You must give him a message, Mr. Lawter, immediately on arrival. He asked me at the last minute to pack for him. And I—I’m afraid I made a dreadful mistake. In the rush, I took the wrong pills from the medicine cabinet. Mr. Lawter…Claude is carrying useless headache pellets instead of the nitroglycerin pills so vitally necessary if he should have…if an attack… Three days… He’ll be away three days…”
“I understand, Mrs. Bennett. I’ll tell him the very instant he gets here.”
“Thank you,” Hester whispered. “Thank you very much.”
She wasn’t aware of moving, until she felt the hot afternoon sunlight on her face. She looked about the yard. A faint laugh came from her. Strange, she’d never before noticed how small and cramped the yard really was.
She crossed to the nearest flower bed and deliberately began pulling the plants out by the roots, one by one. She dropped each plant on the moist earth for a quick death in the sun.
THE FIVE YEAR CAPER
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, August 1965.
The day was uneventful, except for the incident that occurred as Henry Overby was preparing to close his teller’s cage at the end of the working day.
As he was totaling the cash in his drawer, Henry had the sensation of being watched. He glanced up, and there was Mr. Joshua Tipton, the bank president himself, standing in the doorway of his impressive, walnut-paneled office, studying Henry.
Mr. Tipton, a gray-maned old lion, a banker’s banker in the ancient tradition, rarely showed concern for anything so low on the evolutionary ladder as mere tellers. Awareness of Mr. Tipton’s drawn-out and minute appraisal of Henry Overby seeped through the bank, until just about all of his fellow workers were stealing glances in Henry’s direction.
Despite the accelerating nature of his pulse rate, Henry gave no outward sign of dismay. With a properly respectful inclination of his head in Mr. Tipton’s direction, Henry continued working with his normal quiet, deft efficiency.
Work in neighboring cages came almost to a halt as Mr. Tipton took it upon himself to stroll all the way across the bank to Henry’s window and stood there.
“How are you, Overby?” The austere, craggy countenance nodded cordially.
“I’m fine, Mr. Tipton. And you, sir?”
The president glanced through the wicket. “Have a good day?”
“Very good, I’m glad to report.”
“A number of our customers seem to prefer you, Overby. They like to have you wait on them. ”
“I try to serve with dispatch, Mr. Tipton.”
“A commendable attitude.” He glanced sharply away from Henry, and work behind the other wickets resumed with vigor. Less severely, Mr. Tipton’s eyes returned to Henry. “You’ve been with us for some time now, haven’t you, Overby?”
“Five years, sir.”
“A mere breaking-in period in the business of banking,” Mr. Tipton said.
“But time alone,” Henry ventured bravely, “is only one yardstick. There remains the diligence with which an employee applies himself.”
Mr. Tipton’s bushy brows quirked to attention. “Quite true. Taken much sick leave, Overby?”
“Never missed a day, sir.”
The president studied Henry a moment longer, then cleared his throat. “Yes, well… Nice chatting with you, Overby.”
“The pleasure was mine, Mr. Tipton.”
* * * *
Henry was able to contain himself until he was alone in his neat, almost barren bachelor apartment. On his record player he put some very cool Brubeck and very torrid Rusty Warren and then, from the tenth which he’d purchased on the way home, poured himself a precise ounce of Scotch to celebrate the occasion. Unlike the slightly built, commonplace Overby of banking endeavors, Henry brazenly cracked back at Rusty, guffawing as he realized he’d topped the gag emitted by the
tinny record player.
He danced his way to the kitchenette to stash the Scotch for future special occasions, a birthday ounce, a Christmas ounce, perhaps even two ounces at New Year’s.
The usual covey of strutting and cooing pigeons were gathering on the window sill. Henry fed them generously with graham crackers, bran flakes, and bread crumbs.
“Eat hearty, pals,” he told the fluttering flock, “toward the nearing day when it will be cake!”
Ah, yes, he thought as he began frying a thin hamburger for his dinner, Mr. Tipton’s conversation today has but one meaning.
Mr. Darcy Featherstone, who was now cashier, was going to be made a vice-president of the bank. Everyone knew that. But until today there had been no indication of who might be elevated to the cashier’s post.
As cashier, Henry thought, I’ll enjoy complete trust, unquestioned access to that beautiful vault.
The culmination of five years of planning, working, and waiting was almost at hand. It made all Henry’s past years seem remote and unreal. He could hardly remember the scrawny myopic little boy who, pushed from one unwilling relative to another after his parents had died, had long ago learned to keep his hungers, fears, and hopes to himself.
The day after he got his high school diploma, Henry had risen before dawn and crept from the house of the final relative, an uncle named Hiram. Henry had never turned back.
For the next couple of years, Henry had sampled the world, drifting and working odd jobs. A neat, polite, unobtrusive young man, he had been employed as a hardware clerk when he’d heard of the opening at the bank.
Applying for the job, he’d known he had impressed Mr. Joshua Tipton, then a vice president, as a fellow whose wants and needs were simple and few.
Little did he know, Henry chuckled as he flipped his dinner patty of ground beef.
After his loveless and vitamin-deficient childhood, Henry had a secret yearning for prestige so powerful that it occasionally boiled out of his subconscious in the form of dreams. Slumber might transform him briefly into a renowned statesman, or a famous philanthropist planning an Alice-in-wonderland community for orphaned children, or an eminent explorer pushing far up the Amazon.
But the fiber of Henry’s agile mind was far too strong to be satisfied by mere dreams. Prestige, he analyzed, was possible to him only through material things, since he had little prospect of becoming a statesman, philanthropist, or explorer.
He lined his secret sights on four specific prestige symbols: an imposing home; membership in an exclusive country club; a big expensive automobile, and an expensive and somewhat snobbish wife with a family tree, even if she should turn out to be a bit plain.
It was not through choice that he placed the wife at the bottom of the list. He was simply realistic, accepting the natural order of things.
The prerequisite to Henry’s needs was, of course, commonplace. Money, money, money: enough to take him far away, to a new name, to a beginning of life.
He’d had no hope of ever coming into so much money, even when he had gone to work at the bank. The position, at the outset, had attracted him for two reasons. A bank teller enjoyed more prestige than a hardware clerk. And he liked the feel of money, the thought of being surrounded daily by so much of it.
Then one day, he’d watched Mr. Darcy Featherstone go into the bank vault where fortunes, plural, were stacked. And the thought had come quite naturally to Henry’s mind: If I were in Mr. Featherstone’s position, I’d disappear one day, and when they started checking up they’d find I’d become a very rich man. In Mr. Featherstone’s position, I could easily alter the record of the serial numbers of the large bills. With free run of the vault I could secrete the bills in my clothing, if I prepared the garments beforehand with hidden pockets and pouches, slip into my topcoat, bid everyone the usual goodbye for the day, and walk out of the bank as a veritable animated gold mine. I could break down the bills later in one part of the country, take the hoard to some nice little town in, say, Vermont. Who would think ever of looking for the boldest of bank robbers around a snooty Vermont country club?
Henry had been jarred out of his trance, a few beads of sweat on his forehead, by the impatient clearing of a customer’s throat. The idea hadn’t frightened Henry for very long. It became a part of him, another facet in that unknown portion of his personality. The bank vault, only a few yards from where he worked each day, became something more to Henry than mere case-hardened steel and flame-resistant alloys. With the passage of time, the vault assumed the aspects of a hiding place for Henry’s own secret treasure trove; a personal depository just waiting the day when he could claim his fortune.
He was young. He had plenty of time. Eventually, efficient worker that he was, he had to be taken into the inner circle, from which he would have intimate and unsuspected association with the treasure. It was his one hope. It was surely worth waiting for.
Meanwhile, he had more than his salary to sustain him. Each day, he would be near his treasure. In a way, he would be watching over it. With a start, Henry came out of his money-spangled fog. Greasy black smoke was rising from the hard lump of scorched hamburger. Not only that, someone was knocking on the door of his apartment He grabbed the frying pan, blistered his fingers, yelped, reached for a pot holder, and removed the pan to the sink. Then, sucking his burned fingers, he dashed for the door.
With a vacuous smile on her large, damp mouth, Miss Mavis Birdsong was standing in the corridor. She had moved into the building a few weeks previously. Ripened to the point of generosity in face and figure, she was a blonde with large, round blue eyes. There was just a little too much of her for Henry’s taste, although he had accepted her friendship from the day she had moved in and crossed the hall to borrow a cup of sugar.
“Hi, Henry.”
“Hello, Miss Birdsong.”
She gave him a little pinch on the cheek. “Come on over. I made spaghetti like even the Italians wish they could make, more than I can handle by myself.”
Henry thought of the charred mess in his frying pan. “Well, I… “Fine.”
She linked her arm with his, precluding any further hesitation on his part. “I even have wine to go with it.”
“If you’re sure it won’t inconvenience you, if none of your other gentlemen callers.…”
“Just a couple guys I know, Henry. But you’re the only real gentleman in my life!”
In her apartment Mavis hummed in a throaty voice as she prepared his plate. “How goes it at the bank, Henry?”
“Okay. Well, excellent really.”
“That’s great. You get a promotion or something?”
“I think I’m going to. I—I’m sure they’re going to make me cashier. It’s been a long time coming, five years, but I’m certain I’ll be more than amply rewarded.” He gave a beatific sigh.
“Wonderful!”
Henry gave her a glance. For some reason or other, Miss Birdsong seemed slightly strained this evening.
“I’m afraid,” Henry said, “I’ve bored you with nothing but talk of the bank.”
“Not a bit I’ve enjoyed every minute.”
* * * *
Henry woke bushy-tailed the next morning. He bounced out of bed, did his knee bends and twenty-five daily pushups with no more effort than bending a finger.
In the preparation of his breakfast, he grasped the skillet handle and flipped the eggs in a manner that would have brought the envy of a first-rate short order cook.
Even the date didn’t bother him today: first day of the month, the day for cashing those endless payroll checks from textile and food processing plants in the area.
Henry made his customary prompt arrival at the bank. The blinds were still drawn on the double front doors, but he knew that Mr. Darcy Featherstone would have already arrived, met the guard, and unlocked.
Henry stepped inside. He promptly ceased all motion as a small, round object was jammed against his back.
“It’s a gun, pal.” A gritty voic
e behind Henry imparted the information.
Henry’s gaze made a wild sweep of the bank. Judkins, the guard, with a lump on his head and no gun in his holster, was bending over a leather couch where Mr. Darcy Featherstone was recovering from a faint. Against the far wall, the bank’s small complement of employees were lined up under the gun of a squat man who wore coveralls and a rubber monkey mask that covered his entire head.
In a similar overall-mask disguise, the man behind Henry herded him forward. “You can fill the sacks, chum.”
“We’re vegetarians,” the second monkey face said. “We like lettuce. All that lettuce you got on hand to meet the payroll checks.”
“Save it,” the man behind Henry said. “Just be sure to watch them jerks so nothing goes wrong until we get the lettuce into her car.” Her? Henry had a queerly detached feeling. Her! Driving the getaway car. Waiting behind the wheel right now, engine at the ready, for her male partners to emerge from the bank loaded with loot Mavis Birdsong. Yes. It had to be. The men in coveralls and masks were the exact size and shape of the pair who had visited her. Her choice of apartments had been by design, as well as her friendship for Henry. She wanted him to tell her about the bank so that she and these two hoodlums could plan a despicable act. “Come on, come on,” one of the robbers was snarling at Judkins, the guard. “Get the cashier on his feet and about the business of opening the vault!”
“Right with you.” Mr. Darcy Featherstone’s voice was that of a whimpering child caught in a sepulchre.
Pressed forward by the man behind him, Henry watched the teller’s cages swimming toward him. From the corner of his vision, he saw Mr. Featherstone cravenly rushing toward the vault. Mr. Featherstone was going to open the vault. And these unspeakable usurpers, the greedy pigs in monkey faces, were going to take, in a matter of minutes, the treasure to which he, Henry Overby, had been willing to devote years of his very life.
The Talmage Powell Crime Megapack Page 22
