There was a description of Brent’s sedan, and the license number. Dyer had got that, as the car drove off, and it checked with the plates issued in Brent’s name. There was quite a lot about the fact that the car was moving when he jumped aboard, and how that proved he had accomplices. There was nothing about Sheila, except that she had been taken to the hospital for nervous collapse, and nothing about the shortage at all. The nurse got up and came over to feed me some ice. “Well, how does it feel to be a hero?”
“Feels great.”
“You had quite a time out there.”
“Yeah, quite a time.”
Pretty soon Sam got there with my clothes, and I told him to stand by. Then two detectives came in and began asking questions. I told them as little as I could, but I had to tell them about Helm, and Sheila seeing the red light, and how I’d gone against Dyer’s advice, and what happened at the bank. They dug in pretty hard, but I stalled as well as I could, and after a while they went.
Sam went out and got a later edition of the afternoon paper. They had a bigger layout now on the pictures. Brent’s picture was still three columns, but my picture and Adler’s picture were smaller, and in an inset there was a picture of Sheila. It said police had a talk with her, at the hospital, and that she was unable to give any clue as to why Brent had committed the crime, or as to his whereabouts. Then, at the end, it said: “It was intimated, however, that Mrs. Brent will be questioned further.”
At that I hopped out of bed. The nurse jumped up and tried to stop me, but I knew I had to get away from where cops could get at me, anyway, until the thing broke enough that I knew what I was going to do.
“What are you doing, Mr. Bennett?”
“I’m going home.”
“But you can’t! You’re to stay until—”
“I said I’m going home. Now if you want to stick around and watch me dress, that’s O.K. by me, but if you’re a nice girl, now is the time to beat it out in the hall.”
While I was dressing they all tried to stop me, the nurse and the intern, and the head nurse, but I had Sam pitch the bloody clothes into the suitcase he had brought, and in about five minutes we were off. At the desk downstairs I wrote a check for my bill, and asked the woman how was Mrs. Brent.
“Oh, she’ll be all right, but of course it was a terrible shock to her.”
“She still here?”
“Well, they’re questioning her, you know.”
“Who?”
“The police…. If you ask me, she’ll be held.”
“You mean—arrested?”
“Apparently she knows something.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Don’t say I told you.”
“I won’t, of course.”
Sam had a taxi by then, and we got in. I had the driver go out to Glendale, and pull up beside my car, where I had left it on Anita Avenue. I had Sam take the wheel, and told him to drive around and keep on driving. He took Foothill, and went on up past San Fernando somewhere, I didn’t pay any attention where.
Going past the bank, I saw the glass was all in place, and a gold-leafer was inside, putting on the lettering. I couldn’t see who was in there. Late in the afternoon we came back through Los Angeles, and I bought a paper. My picture was gone now, and so was Adler’s, and Brent’s was smaller. Sheila’s was four columns wide, and in an inset was a picture of her father, Dr. Henry W. Rollinson, of U.C.L.A. The headline stretched clear across the page, and called it a “cover-up robbery.” I didn’t bother to read any more. If Dr. Rollinson had told his story, the whole thing was in the soup.
Sam drove me home then, and fixed me something to eat. I went in the living room and lay down, expecting cops, and wondered what I was going to tell them.
Around eight o’clock the doorbell rang, and I answered myself. But it wasn’t cops, it was Lou Frazier. He came in and I had Sam fix him a drink. He seemed to need it. I lay down on the sofa again, and held on to my head. It didn’t ache, and I felt all right, but I was getting ready. I wanted an excuse not to talk any more than I had to. After he got part of his drink down he started in.
“You seen the afternoon papers?”
“Just the headlines.”
“The guy was short in his accounts.”
“Looks like it.”
“She was in on it.”
“Who?”
“The wife. That sexy-looking thing known as Sheila. She doctored the books for him. We just locked up a half hour ago. I’ve just come from there. Well boy, it’s a crime what that dame got away with. That system in the savings department, all that stuff you went out there to make a report on—that was nothing but a cover. The laugh’s on you, Bennett. Now you got a real article for the American Banker.”
“I doubt if she was in on it.”
“I know she was in on it.”
“If she was, why did she let him go to her father for the dough to cover up the shortage? Looks to me like that was putting it on a little too thick.”
“O.K.—it’s taken me all afternoon to figure that one out, and I had to question the father pretty sharp. He’s plenty bitter against Brent. All right, take it from their point of view, hers and Brent’s. They were short on the accounts, and they figured on a phoney hold-up that would cover their deficit, so nobody would even know there had been a shortage. The first thing to do was get the books in shape, and I’m telling you she made a slick job of that. She didn’t leave a trace, and if it wasn’t for her father, we’d never have known how much they were short. All right, she’s got to get those books in shape, and do it before you next check on her cash. That was the tough part, they were up against time, but she was equal to it, I’ll say that for her. All right, now she brings a spider in, and he slips in the vault and hides there. But they couldn’t be sure what was going to happen next morning, could they? He might get away with it clean, with that handkerchief over his face nobody could identify him, and then later she could call the old man up and say please don’t say anything, she’ll explain to him later, that Charles is horribly upset, and when the cops go to his house, sure enough he is. He’s in bed, still recovering from his operation, and all this and that—but no money anywhere around, and nothing to connect him with it.
“But look: They figure maybe he don’t get away with it. Maybe he gets caught, and then what? All the money’s there, isn’t it? He’s got five doctors to swear he’s off his nut anyway, on account of illness—and he gets off light. With luck, he even gets a suspended sentence, and the only one that’s out is her old man. She shuts him up, and they’re not much worse off than they were before. Well, thanks to a guy named Helm it all went sour. None of it broke like they expected—he got away, but everybody knew who he was, and Adler got killed. So now he’s wanted for murder—and robbery, and she’s held for the same.”
“Is she held?”
“You bet your sweet life she’s held. She doesn’t know it yet—she’s down at that hospital, with a little dope in her arm to quiet her after the awful experience she had, but there’s a cop outside the door right now, and tomorrow when she wakes up maybe she won’t look quite so sexy.”
I lay there with my eyes shut, wondering what I was going to do, but by that time my head was numb, so I didn’t feel anything any more. After a while I heard myself speak to him, “Lou?”
“Yeah?”
“I knew about that shortage.”
“…You mean you suspected it?”
“I knew—”
“You mean you suspected it!”
He fairly screamed it at me. When I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets, his face all twisted and white. Lou is a pretty good-looking guy, big and thickset, with brown eyes and a golf tan all over him, but now he looked like some kind of a wild man.
“If you knew about it, and didn’t report it, there goes our bond! Don’t you get it, Bennett? There goes our bond!”
It was the first I had even thought of the bond
. I could see it, though, the second he began to scream, that little line in fine type on the bond. We don’t make our people give individual bond. We carry a group bond on them, ourselves, and that line reads: “…The assured shall report to the Corporation any shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or theft on the part of any of their employees, within twenty-four hours of the time such shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or theft shall be known to them, or to their officers, and failure to report such shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or theft shall be deemed ground for the cancellation of this bond, and the release of the Corporation from liability for such shortage, embezzlement, defalcation, or shortage.” I felt my lips go cold, and the sweat stand out on the palms of my hands, but I went on:
“You’re accusing a woman of crimes I know damned well she didn’t commit, and bond or no bond, I’m telling you—”
“You’re not telling me anything, get that right now!”
He grabbed his hat and ran for the door. “And listen: If you know what’s good for you, you’re not telling anybody else either! If that comes out, there goes our fidelity bond and our burglary bond—we won’t get a cent from the bonding company, we’re hooked for the whole ninety thousand bucks, and—God, ninety thousand bucks! Ninety thousand bucks!”
He went, and I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. I called up a florist, and had them send flowers to Adler’s funeral. Then I went upstairs and went to bed, and stared at the ceiling trying to get through my head what I had to face in the morning.
XI
DON’T ASK ME ABOUT the next three days. They were the worst I ever spent in my life. First I went in to the Hall of Justice and talked to Mr. Gaudenzi, the assistant district attorney that was on the case. He listened to me, and took notes, and then things began to hit me.
First I was summoned to appear before the Grand Jury, to tell what I had to say there. I had to waive immunity for that, and boy, if you think it’s fun to have those babies tearing at your throat, you try it once. There’s no judge to help you, no lawyer to object to questions that make you look like a fool, nothing but you, the district attorney, the stenographer, and them. They kept me in there two hours. I squirmed and sweated and tried to get out of admitting why I put up the money for Sheila, but after a while they had it. I admitted I had asked her to divorce Brent and marry me, and that was all they wanted to know. I was hardly home before a long wire from Lou Frazier was delivered, telling me the bonding company had filed notice they denied liability for the money that was gone, and relieving me of duty until further notice. He would have fired me, if he could, but that had to wait till the Old Man got back from Honolulu, as I was an officer of the company, and couldn’t be fired until the Old Man laid it before the directors.
But the worst was the newspapers. The story had been doing pretty well until I got in it. I mean it was on the front page, with pictures and all kinds of stuff about clues to Brent’s whereabouts, one hot tip putting him in Mexico, another in Phoenix, and still another in Del Monte, where an auto-court man said he’d registered the night of the robbery. But when they had my stuff, they went hog wild with it. That gave it a love interest, and what they did to me was just plain murder. They called it the Loot Triangle, and went over to old Dr. Rollinson’s, where Sheila’s children were staying, and got pictures of them, and of him, and stole at least a dozen of her, and they ran every picture of me they could dig out of their files, and I cursed the day I ever posed in a bathing suit while I was in college, with a co-ed skinning the cat on each arm, in an “Adonis” picture for some football publicity.
And what I got for all that hell was that the day before I appeared before them, the Grand Jury indicted Sheila for alteration of a corporation’s records, for embezzlement, and for accessory to robbery with a deadly weapon. The only thing they didn’t indict her for was murder, and why they hadn’t done that I couldn’t understand. So it all went for nothing. I’d nailed myself to the cross, brought all my Federal mortgage notes to prove I’d put up the money, and that she couldn’t have had anything to do with it, and she got indicted just the same. I got so I didn’t have the heart to put my face outside the house, except when a newspaperman showed up, and then I’d go out to take a poke at him, if I could. I sat home and listened to the shortwave radio, tuned to the police broadcasts, wondering if I could pick up something that would mean they were closing in on Brent. That, and the news broadcasts. One of them said Sheila’s bail had been set at $7,500 and that her father had put it up, and that she’d been released. It wouldn’t have done any good for me to have gone down to put up bail. I’d given her all I had, already.
That day I got in the car and took a ride, just to keep from going nuts. Coming back I drove by the bank and peeped in. Snelling was at my desk. Church was at Sheila’s window. Helm was at Snelling’s place, and there were two tellers I’d never seen before.
When I tuned in on the news, after supper that night, for the first time there was some sign the story was slackening off. The guy said Brent hadn’t been caught yet, but there was no more stuff about me, or about Sheila. I relaxed a little, but then after a while something began to bore into me. Where was Brent? If she was out on bail, was she meeting him? I’d done all I could to clear her, but that didn’t mean I was sure she was innocent, or felt any different about her than I had before. The idea that she might be meeting him somewhere, that she had played me for a sucker that way, right from the start, set me to tramping around that living room once more, and I tried to tell myself to forget it, to forget her, to wipe the whole thing off the slate and be done with it, and I couldn’t. Around eight-thirty I did something I guess I’m not proud of. I got in the car, drove over there, and parked down the street about half a block, to see what I could see.
There was a light on, and I sat there a long time. You’d be surprised what went on, the newspaper reporters that rang the bell, and got kicked out, the cars that drove by, and slowed down so fat women could rubber in there, the peeping that was going on from upstairs windows of houses. After a while the light went off. The door opened, and Sheila came out. She started down the street, toward me. I felt if she saw me there I’d die of shame. I dropped down behind the wheel, and bent over on one side so I couldn’t be seen from the pavement, and held my breath. I could hear her footsteps coming on, quick, like she was in a hurry to get somewhere. They went right on by the car, without stopping, but through the window, almost in a whisper, I heard her say: “You’re being watched.”
I knew in a flash then, why she hadn’t been indicted for murder. If they’d done that, she wouldn’t have been entitled to bail. They indicted her, but they left it so she could get out, and then they began doing the same thing I’d been doing: watching her, to see if she’d make some break that would lead them to Brent.
Next day I made up my mind I had to see her. But how to see her was tough. If they were watching her that close, they’d probably tapped in on her phone, and any wire I sent her would be read before she got it, that was a cinch. I figured on it awhile, and then I went down in the kitchen to see Sam. “You got a basket here?”
“Yes sir, a big market basket.”
“O.K., I tell you what you do. Put a couple of loaves of bread in it, put on your white coat, and get on over to this address on Mountain Drive. Co in the back way, knock, ask for Mrs. Brent. Make sure you’re talking to her, and that nobody else is around. Tell her I want to see her, and will she meet me tonight at seven o’clock, at the same place she used to meet me downtown, after she came from the hospital. Tell her I’ll be waiting in the car.”
“Yes sir, seven o’clock.”
“You got that all straight?”
“I have, sir.”
“There’s cops all around the house. If you’re stopped, tell them nothing, and if possible, don’t let them know who you are.”
“Just leave it to me.”
I took an hour that night shaking anybody that might be following me. I drove up to Saugus, and coming
in to San Fernando I shoved up to ninety, and I knew nobody was back of me, because I could see everything behind. At San Fernando I cut over to Van Nuys, and drove in to the hospital from there. It was one minute after seven when I pulled in to the curb, but I hadn’t even stopped rolling before the door opened and she jumped in. I kept right on.
“You’re being followed.”
“I think not. I shook them.”
“I couldn’t. I think my taxi driver had his instructions before he came to the house. They’re about two hundred yards behind.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“They’re there.”
We drove on, me trying to think what I wanted to say. But it was she that started it.
“Dave?”
“Yes?”
“We may never see each other again, after tonight. I think I’d better begin. You’ve—been on my mind, quite a lot. Among other things.”
“All right, begin.”
“I’ve done you a great wrong.”
“I didn’t say so.”
“You didn’t have to. I felt everything you were thinking in that terrible ride that morning in the ambulance. I’ve done you a great wrong, and I’ve done myself a great wrong. I forgot one thing a woman can never forget. I didn’t forget it. But I—closed my eyes to it.”
“Yeah, and what was that?”
“That a woman must come to a man, as they say in court, with clean hands. In some countries, she has to bring more than that. Something in her hand, something on her back, something on the ox cart—a dowry. In this country we waive that, but we don’t waive the clean hands. I couldn’t give you them. If I was going to come to you, I had to come with encumbrances, terrible encumbrances. I had to be bought.”
“I suggested that.”
“Dave, it can’t be done. I’ve asked you to pay a price for me that no man can pay. I’ve cost you a shocking amount of money, I’ve cost you your career, I’ve cost you your good name. On account of me you’ve been pilloried in the newspapers, you’ve endured torture. You’ve stood by me beautifully, you did everything you could for me, before that awful morning and since—but I’m not worth it. No woman can be, and no woman has a right to think she is. Very well, then, you don’t have to stand by me any longer. You can consider yourself released, and if it lies in my power, I’ll make up to you what I’ve cost you. The career, the notoriety, I can’t do anything about. The money, God willing, someday I shall repay you. I guess that’s what I wanted to say. I guess that’s all I wanted to say. That—and good-bye.”