The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “What are these apparently trivial things which have been going on for the last month, Mr. Howell?” Trant asked.

  “They are so insignificant that I am almost ashamed to tell you. The papers in Gordon’s waste-basket have been disturbed. Some one takes his pads and blotters. His coat, which hangs on a hook in his office, disappeared and was brought back again. An old pocket-book that he keeps in his desk, which never contains anything of importance, has been taken away and brought back in the same manner. Everything disturbed has been completely valueless, the sole object being apparently to plague the man. But it has shaken Gordon amazingly, incomprehensibly. And this morning, when he found some one had been trying to break into an old typewriter desk in his office—though it was entirely empty, even the typewriter having been taken out of it two days ago—he went absolutely to pieces, and made the statement about robbing the safe which I have just repeated to you.”

  “That is very strange,” said Trant, thoughtfully. “So these apparently senseless tricks terrorize your cashier! He was not keeping anything in the typewriter desk, was he?”

  “He told me not,” Howell answered. “Gordon might conceal something from me; but he would not lie.”

  “Tell me,” Trant demanded, suddenly, “what was the defalcation in the bank, which, as you just mentioned, so greatly affected your cashier just before your father left for Europe?”

  “Ten thousand dollars was taken; in plain words stolen outright by young Robert Gordon, the cashier’s—William Gordon’s—son.”

  “The cashier’s son!” Trant replied with interest.

  “His only son,” Howell confirmed. “A boy about twenty. Gordon has a daughter older. The boy seemed a clean, straightforward fellow like his father, who has been with us forty years, twenty years our cashier; but something was different in him underneath, for the first time he had the chance he stole from the bank.”

  “And the particulars?” Trant requested quickly.

  “There are no especial particulars; it was a perfectly clear case against Robert,” the banker replied, reluctantly. “Our bank has a South Side branch on Cottage Grove Avenue, near Fifty-first Street, for the use of storekeepers and merchants in the neighborhood. On the 29th of September they telephoned us that there was a sudden demand for currency resembling a run on the bank. Our regular messenger, with the officer who accompanies him, was out; so Gordon called his son to carry the money alone. It never occurred to either father or myself, or, of course, to Gordon, not to trust to the boy. Gordon himself got the money from the safe—twenty-four thousand dollars, fourteen thousand in small bills and ten thousand in two small packets of ten five-hundred-dollar bills apiece. He himself counted it into the bag, locked it, and sealed it in. We all told the boy that we were sending him on an emergency call and to rush above all things. Now, it takes about thirty-five minutes to reach our branch on the car; but in spite of being told to hurry, young Gordon was over an hour getting there; and when the officers of the branch opened his bag they found that both packets of five-hundred-dollar bills—ten thousand dollars—had been taken out—stolen! He had fixed up the lock, the seal of the bag, somehow, after taking the money.”

  “What explanation did the boy make?” Trant pressed, quickly.

  “None. He evidently depended entirely upon the way he fixed up the lock and seal.”

  “The delay?”

  “The cars, he said.”

  “You said a moment ago that it was impossible that your cashier would lie to you. Is it absolutely out of the question that he held back the missing bills?”

  “And ruined his own son, Mr. Trant? Impossible! But you do not have to take my opinion for that. The older Gordon returned the money—all of it—though he had to mortgage his home, which was all he had, to make up the amount. Out of regard for the father, who was heartbroken, we did not prosecute the boy. It was kept secret, even from the employees of the bank, why he was dismissed, and only the officers yet know that the money was stolen. But you can see how deeply all this must have affected Gordon, and it may be enough to account fully for his nervousness under the petty annoyances which have been going on ever since.”

  “Annoyances,” cried Trant, “which began almost immediately after this first defalcation in forty years! That may, or may not, be coincidence. But, if it is convenient, I would like to go with you to the bank, Mr. Howell, at once!” The young psychologist leaped to his feet; the banker rose more slowly.

  It was not quite one o’clock when the two young men entered the old building where Howell & Son had had their offices for thirty-six years. Trant hurried on directly up to the big banking room on the second floor. Inside the offices the psychologist’s quick eyes, before they sought individuals, seemed to take stock of the furnishings and equipment of the place. The arrangement of all was staid, solid, old-fashioned. Many of the desks and chairs, and most of the other equipment, seemed to date back as far as the founding of the bank by the senior Howell three years after the great Chicago fire. The clerks’ and tellers’ cages were of the heavy, over-elaborate brass scroll work of the generation before; the counters of thick, almost ponderous, mahogany, now deeply scored, but not discolored. And the massive safe, set into a rear wall, especially attracted Trant’s attention. He paused before its open door and curiously inspected the complicated mechanism of revolving dials, lettered on their rims, which required to be set to a certain combination of letters in order to open it.

  “This is still good enough under ordinary conditions, I dare say,” he commented, as he turned the barrels experimentally; “but it is rather old, is it not?”

  “It is as old as the bank and the building,” Howell answered. “It is one of the Rittenhouse six-letter combination locks; and was built in, as you see, in ’74 when they put up this building for us. Just about that time, I believe, the Sargent time lock was invented; but this was still new, and besides, father has always been very conservative. He lets things go on until a real need arises to change them; and in thirty-six years, as I told you at your office, nothing has happened to worry him particularly about this safe.”

  “I see. The combination, I suppose, is a word?”

  “Yes; a word of six letters, changed every Monday.”

  “And given to—”

  “Only to the cashier.”

  “Gordon, that is,” Trant acknowledged, as he turned away and appeared to take his first interest in any of the employees of the bank, “the man alone in the cashier’s room over there?” The psychologist pointed through the open door of the room at his right to the thin, strained figure bent far over his desk. He was the only one of all the men about the bank who seemed not to have noticed the stranger whom the acting-president had brought with him to inspect the safe.

  “Yes; that is Gordon!” the president answered, caught forward quickly by something in the manner, or the posture, of the cashier. “But what is he doing? What is the matter with him now?” He hurried toward the old man through the open door.

  Trant followed him, and they could see over the cashier’s shoulder, before he was conscious of their presence, that he was arranging and fitting together small scraps of paper. Then he jerked himself up in his chair, trembling, arose, and faced them with bloodless lips and cheeks, one tremulous hand pressed guiltily upon the papers, hiding them.

  “What is the matter? What are you doing, Gordon?” Howell said in surprise.

  Trant reached forward swiftly, seized the cashier’s thin wrist and lifted his hand forcibly from the desk. The scraps were five in number and upon them, as Gordon had arranged them, were printed in pencil merely meaningless equations. The first, which was written on two of the scraps, read:

  43$=80.

  The second, torn into three pieces, was even more enigmatical, reading:

  35=8?$

  But the pieces appeared to be properly put together; and Trant noted that, besid
es the two and three pieces fitting, all the scraps evidently belonged together, and had originally formed a part of a large sheet of paper which had been torn and thrown away.

  “They are nothing—nothing, Mr. Howell!” The old man tried to wrench his hand away, staring in terror at the banker. “They are only scraps of paper which I found. Oh, Mr. Howell, I warned you this morning that the bank is in danger. I know that now better than ever! But these,” he grew still whiter, “are nothing!”

  Trant had to catch the cashier’s hand again, as he tried to snatch up the scraps. “Who is this man, Mr. Howell?” Gordon turned indignantly to the young banker.

  “My name is Trant. Mr. Howell came to me this morning to advise him as to the things which have been terrifying you here in this office. And, Mr. Gordon,” said Trant, sternly, “it is perfectly useless for you to tell us that these bits of paper have no meaning, or that their meaning is unknown to you. But since you will not explain the mystery to us, I must go about the matter in some other way.”

  “You do not imagine, Mr. Trant,” the cashier fell back into his chair as though the psychologist had struck him, “that I have any connection with the plot against the bank of which I warned Mr. Howell!”

  “I am quite certain,” Trant answered, firmly, “that if a plot exists, you have some connection with it. Whether your connection is innocent or guilty I can determine at once by a short test, if you will submit to it.”

  Gordon’s eyes met those of the acting-president in startled terror, but he gathered himself together and arose.

  “Mr. Howell knows,” he said, hollowly, “how mad an accusation you are making. But I will submit to your test, of course.”

  Trant took up a blank sheet of paper from the desk and drew on it two rows of geometric figures in rapid succession.

  He handed the sheet to the cashier, who stared at it in wondering astonishment.

  “Look at these carefully, Mr. Gordon, and study them till I tell you to stop.” Trant took out his watch. “Stop now!” he commanded, “and draw upon the pad on your desk as many of the figures as you can.”

  The cashier and the acting-president stared into Trant’s face with increasing amazement; then the cashier asked to see Trant’s sheets again and drew from memory, after a few seconds, two figures.

  “Thank you,” said Trant, tearing the sheet from the pad without giving either time to question him. He closed the office door carefully and returned with his watch in his hand.

  “You can hear this tick?” He held it about eighteen inches from Gordon’s ear.

  “Of course,” the cashier answered. “Then move your finger, please, as long as you hear it.”

  The cashier began moving his finger. Trant put the watch on the desk and stepped away. For a moment the finger stopped; but when Trant spoke again the cashier nodded and moved his finger at the ticks. Almost immediately it stopped again, however; and Trant returned and took up his watch.

  “I want to ask you one thing more,” he said to the weary old man. “I want you to take a pencil and write upon this pad a series of numbers from one up as fast as you care to, no matter how much more rapidly I count. You are ready? Then one, two, three—” Trant counted rapidly in a clear voice up to thirty.

  “1-2-3-4-10-11-12-19-20-27-28—” the cashier wrote, and handed the pad to Trant.

  “Thank you. This will be all I need, except these pieces,” said Trant, as he swept up the scraps which the cashier had been piecing together.

  Gordon started, but said nothing. His gray, anxious eyes followed them, as the banker preceded Trant from the cashier’s room into his private office.

  “What is the meaning of all this, Mr. Trant?” Howell closed the door and swung round, excitedly. “If Gordon is connected with a plot against the bank, and that in itself is unbelievable, why did he warn me the bank was in danger?”

  “Mr. Gordon’s connection with what is going on is perfectly innocent,” Trant answered. “I have just made certain of that!” He had seated himself before Howell’s desk and was spreading out the scraps of paper which he had taken from Gordon. “But tell me. Was not Gordon once a stenographer, or did he not use a typewriter at least?”

  “Well, yes,” Howell replied, impatiently. “Gordon was private secretary to my father twenty years ago; and, of course, used a typewriter. It was his old machine, which he always kept and still used occasionally, that was in his desk which, as I told you, was broken into this morning.”

  “But the desk was empty—even the machine had been taken from it!”

  “Gordon took it home only a day or so ago. His daughter is taking up typewriting and wanted it to practice upon.”

  “In spite of the fact that it must be entirely out of date?” Trant pressed. “Probably it was the last of that pattern in this office?”

  “Of course,” Howell rejoined, still more impatiently. “The others were changed long ago. But what in the world has all this to do with the question whether some one is planning to rob us?”

  “It has everything to do, Mr. Howell!” Trant leaped to his feet, his eyes flashing with sudden comprehension. “For what you have just told me makes it certain that, as Gordon warned you, one of your clerks is planning to enter your safe at the first opportunity! Gordon knows as little as you or I, at this moment, which of your men it is; but he is as sure of the fact itself as I am, and he has every reason to know that there is no time to lose in detecting the plotter.”

  “What is that? What is that? Gordon is right?”

  The banker stared at Trant in confusion, then asserted, skeptically: “You cannot tell that from those papers, Mr. Trant!”

  “I feel very certain of it indeed, and—just from these papers. And more than that, Mr. Howell, though I shall ask to postpone explaining this until later, I may say from this second paper here,” Trant held up the series of numbers which the cashier had written, “that this indicates to me that it is entirely possible, if not actually probable, that Gordon’s son did not steal the money for the loss of which he was disgraced!”

  The banker strode up and down the room, excitedly. “Robert Gordon not guilty! I understood, Trant, that your methods were surprising. They are more than that; they are incomprehensible. I cannot imagine how you reach these conclusions. But,” he looked into the psychologist’s eyes, “I see no alternative but to put the matter completely in your hands, and for the present to do whatever you say.”

  “There is nothing more to be done here now,” said Trant, gathering up the papers, “except to give me Gordon’s home address.”

  “Five hundred and thirty-seven Leavenworth Street, on the South Side.”

  “I will come back to-morrow after banking hours. Meanwhile, as Gordon warned you, put an extra guard over the bank to-night. I hope to be able to tell you all that underlies this case when I have been to Gordon’s home this evening, and seen his son, and”—Trant turned away—“that old typewriting machine of his.”

  He went out, the banker staring after him, perplexed. Trant knew already that forty years of service for the little bank of Howell & Son had left Gordon still a poor man; and he was not surprised when, at seven o’clock that night, he turned into Leavenworth Street, to find Number 537 a typical “small, comfortable home,” put up twenty years before in what had then been a new real estate subdivision and probably purchased by Gordon upon the instalment plan. Gordon’s daughter, who opened the door, was a black-haired, gray-eyed girl of slender figure. She had the air of the housekeeper, careful and economical in the administration of her father’s moderate and unincreasing means. But a look of more direct responsibility upon her face made Trant recollect, as he gave his name and stepped inside, that since her brother’s default and her father’s sacrifice to make it up, this girl herself was going out to help regain the ownership of the little home.

  “Father is upstairs lying down,” she explained, sol
icitously, as she showed Trant into the living room. “But I can call him,” she offered, reluctantly, “if it is on business of the bank.”

  “It is on business of the bank,” Trant replied. “But there is no need to disturb your father. It was your brother I came to see.”

  The girl’s face went crimson. “My brother is no longer connected with the bank,” she managed to answer, miserably. “I do not think he would be willing—I think I could not prevail upon him to talk to anyone sent by the bank.”

  “That is unfortunate,” said Trant, frankly, “for in that case my journey out here goes half for nothing. I was very anxious to see him. By the way, Miss Gordon, what luck are you having with your typewriting?”

  The girl drew back surprised.

  “Mr. Howell told me about you,” Trant explained, “when he mentioned that your father had taken his old typewriter home for you to practice upon.”

  “Oh, yes; dear father!” exclaimed the girl. “He brought it home with him one night this week. But it is quite out of date—quite useless. Besides, I had hired a modern one last week.”

  “Mr. Howell interested me in that old machine. You have no objection to my seeing it?”

  “Of course not.” The girl looked at the young psychologist with growing astonishment. “It is right here.” She led the way through the hall, and opened the door to a rear room. Through the doorway Trant could see in the little room two typewriting machines, one new and shiny, the other, under a cover, old and battered.

  “Say! what do you want?” A challenging voice brought Trant around swiftly to face a scowling boy clattering down stairs.

  “He wants to look at the typewriter, Robert,” the girl explained.

  Trant looked the boy over quietly. He was a clean-looking chap, quietly dressed and resembling his father, but was of more powerful physique. His face was marred by sullen brooding, and in his eyes there was a settled flame of defiance. The psychologist turned away, as though determined to finish first his inspection of the typewriter, and entered the room. The boy and the girl followed.