He goes all through the bank, then if everything’s O.K. he goes to the front door and lowers the curtains. That’s a signal to the man across the street, who’s always there by that time. But even that’s not all. The man across the street doesn’t go in till the first man comes out of the bank, crosses over, and gives the word. That’s also in case there’s somebody in there with a gun. Maybe he knows all about those curtains. Maybe he tells the first man to go lower the curtains, and be quick about it. But if the first man doesn’t come out as soon as he lowers the curtains, the man across the street knows there’s something wrong, and puts in a call, quick.
The curtains were lowered, and Helm came out, and Snelling got out of his car, I climbed out and crossed over. Snelling and Helm went in, and Sheila dropped back with me.
“What are you going to do, Dave?”
“Give him his chance.”
“If only he hasn’t done something dumb.”
“Get to him. Get to him and find out what’s what. I’m going to take it as easy as I can. I’m going to stall, listen to what he has to say, tell him I’ll have to ask him to stick around till we check—and then you get at it. Find out. And let me know.”
“Do the others know?”
“No, but Helm’s guessed it.”
“Do you ever pray?”
“I prayed all I know.”
Adler came up then and we went in. I looked at the clock. It was twenty after eight. Helm and Snelling had their dust cloths, polishing up their counters. Sheila went back and started to polish hers. Adler went back to the lockers to put on his uniform. I sat down at my desk, opened it, and took out some papers. They were the same papers I’d been stalling with the afternoon before. It seemed a long time ago, but I began stalling with them again. Don’t ask me what they were. I don’t know yet.
My phone rang. It was Church. She said she wasn’t feeling well, and would it be all right if she didn’t come in today? I said yeah, perfectly all right. She said she hated to miss a day, but she was afraid if she didn’t take care of herself she’d really get sick. I said certainly, she ought to take care of herself. She said she certainly hoped I hadn’t forgotten about the adding machine, that it was a wonderful value for the money, and would probably pay for itself in a year by what it would save. I said I hadn’t forgotten it. She said it all over again about how bad she felt, and I said get well, that was the main thing. She hung up. I looked at the clock. It was twenty-five after eight.
Helm stepped over, and gave my desk a wipe with his cloth. As he leaned down he said: “There’s a guy in front of the drugstore I don’t like the looks of, and two more down the street.”
I looked over. Dyer was there, reading a paper.
“Yeah, I know. I sent for them.”
“O.K.”
“Have you said anything, Helm? To the others?”
“No, sir, I haven’t.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“No use starting anything, just on a hunch.”
“That’s it. I’ll help you open the vault.”
“Yes, sir.”
“See the front door is open.”
“I’ll open it now.”
At last the clock said eight-thirty, and the time lock clicked off. Adler came in from the lockers, strapping his belt on over his uniform. Snelling spoke to Helm, and went over to the vault. It takes two men to open a vault, even after the time lock goes off, one to each combination. I opened the second drawer of my desk, took out the automatic that was in there, threw off the catch, slipped it in my coat pocket, and went back there.
“I’ll do that, Snelling.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Bennett. Helm and I have it down to a fine art. We’ve got so we can even do it to music.”
“I’ll try it, just once.”
“O.K.—you spin and I’ll whistle.”
He grinned at Sheila, and began to whistle. He was hoping I’d forgotten the combination, and would have to ask help, and then he’d have a laugh on the boss. Helm looked at me, and I nodded. He spun his dial, I spun mine. I swung the door open.
At first, for one wild second, I thought there was nobody in there at all. I snapped on the switch, and couldn’t see anything. But then my eye caught bright marks on the steel panels of the compartments that hold the safe deposit boxes. Then I saw the trucks had all been switched. They’re steel frames, about four feet high, that hold the records. They run on rubber wheels, and when they’re loaded they’re plenty heavy. When they were put in there, they were all crosswise of the door. Now they were end to it, one jammed up against the other, and not three feet away from me. I dropped my hand in my gun pocket, and opened my mouth to call, and right that second the near truck hit me.
It hit me in the pit of the stomach. He must have been crouched behind it, like a runner, braced against the rear shelves and watching the time lock for the exact second we’d be in there. I went over backwards, still trying to get out the gun. The truck was right over me, like it had been shot out of a cannon. A roller went over my leg, and then I could see it crashing down on top of me.
I must have gone out for a split second when it hit my head, because the next thing I knew screams were ringing in my ears, and then I could see Adler and Snelling, against the wall, their hands over their heads.
But that wasn’t the main thing I saw. It was this madman, this maniac, in front of the vault, waving an automatic, yelling that it was a stick-up, to put them up and keep them up, that whoever moved was going to get killed. If he had hoped to get away with it without being recognized, I can’t say he didn’t have a chance. He was dressed different from the way he was the day before. He must have brought the stuff in the grip. He had on a sweat shirt that made him look three times as big as he really was, a pair of rough pants and rough shoes, a black silk handkerchief over the lower part of his face, a felt hat pulled down over his eyes—and this horrible voice.
He was yelling, and the screaming was coming from Sheila. She seemed to be behind me, and was telling him to cut it out. I couldn’t see Helm. The truck was on top of me, and I couldn’t see anything clear, on account of the wallop on my head. Brent was standing right over me.
Then, right back of his head, a chip fell out of the wall. I didn’t hear any shot at all, but he must have, because Dyer fired, from the street, right through the glass window. Brent turned, toward the street, and I saw Adler grab at his holster. I doubled up my legs and drove against the truck, straight at Brent. It missed him, and crashed against the wall, right beside Adler. Brent wheeled and fired. Adler fired. I fired. Brent fired again. Then he made one leap, and heaved the grip, which he had in his other hand, straight through the glass at the rear of the bank. You understand: The bank is on a corner, and on two sides there’s glass. There’s glass on half the third side too, at the rear, facing the parking lot. It was through that window that he heaved the grip. The glass broke with a crash, and left a hole the size of a door. He went right through it.
I jumped up, and dived after him, through the hole. I could hear Dyer and his two men coming up the street behind me, shooting as they came. They hadn’t come in the bank at all. At the first yelp that Sheila let out they began shooting through the glass.
He was just grabbing up the grip as I got there and leveled his gun right at me. I dropped to the ground and shot. He shot. There was a volley of shots from Dyer and Halligan and Lewis. He ran about five steps, and jumped into the car. It was a blue sedan; the door was open and it was already moving when he landed on it. It shot ahead, straight across the parking lot and over to Grove Street. I raised my gun to shoot at the tires. Two kids came around the corner carrying school-books. They stopped and blinked. I didn’t fire. The car was gone.
I turned around and stepped back through the hole in the glass. The place was full of smoke, from the shooting. Sheila, Helm, and Snelling were stooped down, around Adler. He was lying a little to one side of the vault, and a drop of blood was trickling down back of
his ear. It was the look on their faces that told me. Adler was dead.
IX
I STARTED FOR THE telephone. It was on my desk, at the front of the bank, and my legs felt queer as I walked along toward it, back of the windows. Dyer was there ahead of me. He came through the brass gate, from the other side, and reached for it.
“I’m using that for a second, Dyer.”
He didn’t answer, and didn’t look at me, just picked up the phone and started to dial. So far as he was concerned, I was the heel that was responsible for it all, by not doing what he said, and he was letting me know it. I felt that way about it too, but I wasn’t taking anything off him. I grabbed him by the neck of his coat and jerked him back on his heels.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
His face got white, and he stood there beside me, his nostrils fanning and his little gray eyes drawn down to points. I broke his connection and dialed the home office. When they came in I asked for Lou Frazier. His title is vice president, same as mine, but he’s special assistant to the Old Man, and with the Old Man in Honolulu, he was in charge. His secretary said he wasn’t there, but then she said wait a minute, he’s just come in. She put him on.
“Lou?”
“Yeah?”
“Dave Bennett, in Glendale.”
“What is it, Dave?”
“We’ve had some trouble. You better get out. And bring some money. There’ll be a run.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Stick-up. Guard killed. I think we’re cleaned.”
“O.K.—how much do you need?”
“Twenty thousand, to start. If we need more, you can send for it later. And step on it.”
“On my way.”
While I was talking, the sirens were screeching, and now the place was full of cops. Outside, an ambulance was pulling in, and about five hundred people standing around, with more coming by the second. When I hung up, a drop of blood ran off the end of my nose on the blotter, and then it began to patter down in a stream. I put my hand to my head. My hair was all sticky and wet, and when I looked, my fingers were full of blood. I tried to think what caused it, then remembered the truck falling on me.
“Dyer?”
“…Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Frazier is on his way out. He’s bringing money to meet all demands. You’re to stay here with Halligan and Lewis, and keep order, and hold yourself ready for anything he tells you. Let the police take care of Adler.”
“They’re taking him out now.”
I looked, and two of them, with the ambulance crew, were carrying him out. They were going the front way. Halligan had opened the door. Lewis and five or six cops were already outside, keeping the people back. They put him in the ambulance. Helm started out there, but I called him.
“Get in the vault, check it up.”
“We’ve been in. Snelling and I.”
“What did he get?”
“He got it all. Forty-four thousand, cash. And that’s not all. He got in the boxes. He left the little boxes alone. He went in the others with a chisel, the ones that had big valuables and securities in them, and he took it all from them, too. He knew which ones.”
“Mr. Frazier is on his way out with cash for the depositors. As soon as that’s under way, make a list of all the rifled boxes, get the box holders on the phone if you can, send them wires otherwise, and get them in here.”
“I’ll start on it now.”
The ambulance crew came in, and started over toward me. I waved them away, and they went off with Adler. Sheila came over to me.
“Mr. Kaiser wants to speak to you.”
He was right behind her, Bunny Kaiser, the guy she had brought in for the $100,000 loan the afternoon I had found the shortage. I was just opening my mouth to tell him that all demands would be met, that he could take his turn with the other depositors as soon as we opened, when he motioned to the windows. Every window on one side was full of breaks and bullet holes, and the back window had the big hole in it where Brent had thrown his grip through it.
“Mr. Bennett, I just wanted to say, I’ve got my glaziers at work now, they’re just starting on the plate glass windows for my building, they’ve got plenty of stock, and if you want, I’ll send them over and they can get you fixed up here. Them breaks don’t look so good.”
“That would help, Mr. Kaiser.”
“Right away.”
“And—thanks.”
I stuck out my left hand, the one that wasn’t covered with blood, and he took it. I must have been pretty wrung up. For just that long it seemed to me I loved him more than anybody on earth. At a time like that, what it means to you, one kind word.
The glaziers were already ripping out the broken glass when Lou Frazier got there. He had a box of cash, four extra tellers, and one uniformed guard, all he could get into his car. He came over, and I gave it to him quick, what he needed to know. He stepped out on the sidewalk with his cash box, held it up, and made a speech:
“All demands will be met. In five minutes the windows will open, all depositors kindly fall in line, the tellers will identify you, and positively nobody but depositors will be admitted!”
He had Snelling with him, and Snelling began to pick depositors out of the crowd, and the cops and the new guard formed them in line, out on the sidewalk. He came in the bank again, and his tellers set the upset truck on its wheels again, and rolled the others out, and they and Helm started to get things ready to pay. Dyer was inside by now. Lou went over to him, and jerked his thumb toward me.
“Get him out of here.”
It was the first time it had dawned on me that I must be an awful-looking thing, sitting there at my desk in the front of the bank, with blood all over me. Dyer came over and called another ambulance. Sheila took her handkerchief and started to wipe off my face. It was full of blood in a second. She took my own handkerchief out of my pocket, and did the best she could with it. From the way Lou looked away every time his eye fell on me, I figured she only made it worse.
Lou opened the doors, and forty or fifty depositors filed in. “Savings depositors on this side, please have your passbooks ready.”
He split them up to four windows. There was a little wait, and then those at the head of the line began to get their money. Four or five went out, counting bills. Two or three that had been in line saw we were paying, and dropped out. A guy counting bills stopped, then fell in at the end of the line, to put his money back in.
The run was over.
My head began to go around, and I felt sick to my stomach. Next thing I knew, there was an ambulance siren, and then a doctor in a white coat was standing in front of me, with two orderlies beside him. “Think you can go, or you going to need a little help?”
“Oh, I can go.”
“Better lean on me.”
I leaned on him, and I must have looked pretty terrible, because Sheila turned away from me, and started to cry. It was the first she had broken down since it happened, and she couldn’t fight it back. Her shoulders kept jerking and the doctor motioned to one of the orderlies.
“Guess we better take her along too.”
“Guess we better.”
They rode us in together, she on one stretcher, me on the other, the doctor riding backwards, between us. As we went he worked on my cut. He kept swabbing at it, and I could feel the sting of the antiseptic. But I wasn’t thinking about that. Once out of the bank, Sheila broke down completely, and it was terrible to hear the sound in her voice, as the sobs came out of her. The doctors talked to her a little, but kept on working on me. It was a swell ride.
X
IT WAS THE SAME old hospital again, and they lifted her out, and wheeled her away somewhere, and then they took me out. They wheeled me in an elevator, and we went up, and they wheeled me out of the elevator to a room, and then two more doctors came and looked at me. One of them was an older man, and he didn’t seem to be an intern. “Well, Mr. Bennett, you’ve got a bad head.”
&nb
sp; “Sew it up, it’ll be all right.”
“I’m putting you under an anesthetic, for that.”
“No anesthetic, I’ve got things to do.”
“Do you want to bear that scar the rest of your life?”
“What are you talking about, scar?”
“I’m telling you, you’ve got a bad head. Now if—”
“O.K.—but get at it.”
He went, and an orderly came in and started to undress me, but I stopped him and made him call my house. When he had Sam on the line I talked, and told him to drop everything and get in there with another suit of clothes, a clean shirt, fresh necktie, and everything else clean. Then I slipped out of the rest of my clothes, and they put a hospital shirt on me, and a nurse came in and jabbed me with a hypodermic, and they took me up to the operating room. A doctor put a mask over my face and told me to breathe in a natural manner, and that was the last I knew for a while.
When I came out of it I was back in the room again, and the nurse was sitting there, and my head was all wrapped in bandages. They hadn’t used ether, they had used some other stuff, so in about five minutes I was myself again, though I felt pretty sick. I asked for a paper. She had one on her lap, reading it, and handed it over. It was an early edition, and the robbery was smeared all over the front page, with Brent’s picture, and Adler’s picture, and my picture, one of my old football pictures. There was no trace of Brent yet, it said, but the preliminary estimate of what he got was put at $90,000. That included $44,000 from the bank, and around $46,000 taken from the private safe deposit boxes. The story made me the hero. I knew he was in the vault, it said, and although I brought guards with me, I insisted on being the first man in the vault, and suffered a serious head injury as a result. Adler got killed on the first exchange of shots, after I opened fire. He left a wife and one child, and the funeral would probably be held tomorrow.