The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 31

"Square, yes-corners just sticking out! Well, when you do rob us, Jasper, I'll look up John. But do try to keep from robbing us as long as you can. I'd hate to have to a.s.sociate with a religious detective in a boiled s.h.i.+rt!"

Both men laughed, and Jasper went back to his cage. His head continued to hurt, he admitted. The president advised him to lay off for a week.

He didn't want to, he said. With the new munition industries due to the war in Europe, there was much increase in factory pay rolls, and Jasper took charge of them.

"Better take a week off than get ill," argued the president late that afternoon.

Jasper did let himself be persuaded to go away for at least a week-end.

He would run up north, to Wakamin Lake, the coming Friday, he said; he would get some black-ba.s.s fis.h.i.+ng, and be back on Monday or Tuesday.

Before he went he would make up the pay rolls for the Sat.u.r.day payments and turn them over to the other teller. The president thanked him for his faithfulness, and as was his not infrequent custom invited Jasper to his house for the evening of the next day-Thursday.

That Wednesday evening Jasper's brother John appeared at the Soul Hope meeting in Rosebank. When he had gone home and had magically turned back into Jasper this Jasper did not return the wig and garments of John to the bureau but packed them into a suitcase, took the suitcase to his room in Vernon and locked it in his wardrobe.

Jasper was amiable at dinner at the president's house on Thursday, but he was rather silent, and as his head still throbbed he left the house early-at nine-thirty. Sedately, carrying his gray silk gloves in one hand and pompously swinging his stick with the other, he walked from the president's house on the fas.h.i.+onable boulevard back to the center of Vernon. He entered the public garage in which his car was stored.

He commented to the night attendant: "Head aches. Guess I'll take the 'bus out and get some fresh air."

He drove away at not more than fifteen miles an hour. He headed south.

When he had reached the outskirts of the city he speeded up to a consistent twenty-five miles an hour. He settled down in his seat with the unmoving steadiness of the long-distance driver: his body quiet except for the tiny subtle movements of his foot on the accelerator, of his hands on the steering wheel-his right hand across the wheel, holding it at the top, his left elbow resting easily on the cus.h.i.+oned edge of his seat and his left hand merely touching the wheel.

He drove in that southern direction for fifteen miles-almost to the town of Wanagoochie. Then by a rather poor side road he turned sharply to the north and west, and making a huge circle about the city drove toward the town of St. Clair. The suburb of Rosebank, in which his brother John lived, is also north of Vernon. These directions were of some importance to him: Wanagoochie eighteen miles south of the mother city of Vernon; Rosebank, on the other hand, north, eight miles north, of Vernon; and St. Clair twenty miles north-about as far north of Vernon as Wanagoochie is south.

On his way to St. Clair, at a point that was only two miles from Rosebank, Jasper ran the car off the main road into a grove of oaks and maples and stopped it on a long-unused woodland road. He stiffly got out and walked through the woods up a rise of ground to a cliff overlooking a swampy lake. The gravelly farther bank of the cliff rose perpendicularly from the edge of the water. In that wan light distilled by stars and the earth he made out the reedy expanse of the lake. It was so muddy, so tangled with sedge gra.s.s that it was never used for swimming; and as its only inhabitants were slimy bullheads few people ever tried to fish there. Jasper stood reflective. He was remembering the story of the farmer's team which had run away, dashed over this cliff and sunk out of sight in the mud bottom of the lake.

Swis.h.i.+ng his stick he outlined an imaginary road from the top of the cliff back to the sheltered place where his car was standing. Once he hacked away with a large pocketknife a ma.s.s of knotted hazel bushes which blocked that projected road. When he had traced the road to his car he smiled. He walked to the edge of the woods and looked up and down the main highway. A car was approaching. He waited till it had pa.s.sed, ran back to his own car, backed it out on the highway, and went on his northward course toward St. Clair, driving about thirty miles an hour.

On the edge of St. Clair he halted, took out his kit of tools, unscrewed a spark plug, and sharply tapping the plug on the engine block, deliberately cracked the porcelain jacket. He screwed the plug in again and started the car. It bucked and spit, missing on one cylinder, with the short-circuited plug.

"I guess there must be something wrong with the ignition," he said cheerfully.

He managed to run the car into a garage in St. Clair. There was no one in the garage save an old negro, the night washer, who was busy over a limousine, with sponge and hose.

"Got a night repair man here?" asked Jasper.

"No, sir; guess you'll have to leave it till morning."

"Hang it! Something gone wrong with the carburetor or the ignition.

Well, I'll have to leave it, then. Tell him- Say, will you be here in the morning when the repair man comes on?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, tell him I must have the car by to-morrow noon. No, say by to-morrow at nine. Now, don't forget. This will help your memory."

He gave a quarter to the negro, who grinned and shouted: "Yes, sir; that'll help my memory a lot!" As he tied a storage tag on the car the negro inquired: "Name?"

"Uh-my name? Oh, Hanson. Remember now, ready about nine to-morrow."

Jasper walked to the railroad station. It was ten minutes of one. Jasper did not ask the night operator about the next train into Vernon.

Apparently he knew that there was a train stopping here at St. Clair at one-thirty-seven. He did not sit in the waiting room but in the darkness outside on a truck behind the baggage room. When the train came in he slipped into the last seat of the last car, and with his soft hat over his eyes either slept or appeared to sleep. When he reached Vernon he went off the direct route from the station to his boarding house, and came to the garage in which he regularly kept his car. He stepped inside. The night attendant was drowsing in a large wooden chair tilted back against the wall in the narrow runway which formed the entrance to the garage.

Jasper jovially shouted to the attendant: "Certainly ran into some hard luck. Ignition went wrong-I guess it was the ignition. Had to leave the car down at Wanagoochie."

"Yuh, hard luck, all right," a.s.sented the attendant.

"Yump. So I left it at Wanagoochie," Jasper emphasized as he pa.s.sed on.

He had been inexact in this statement. It was not at Wanagoochie, which is south, but at St. Clair, which is north, that he had left the car.

He returned to his boarding house, slept beautifully, hummed in his morning shower bath. Yet at breakfast he complained to his landlady of his continuous headache, and announced that he was going to run up north, to Wakamin, to get some ba.s.s fis.h.i.+ng and rest his eyes. She urged him to go.

"Anything I can do to help you get away?" she queried.

"No, thanks. I'm just taking a couple of suitcases, with some old clothes and some fis.h.i.+ng tackle. Fact, I have 'em all packed already.

I'll probably take the noon train north if I can get away from the bank.

Pretty busy now, with these pay rolls for the factories that have war contracts for the Allies. What's it say in the paper this morning?"

Jasper arrived at the bank, carrying the two suitcases and a neat, polite, rolled silk umbrella, the silver top of which was engraved with his name. The doorman, who was also the bank guard, helped him to carry the suitcases inside.

"Careful of that bag. Got my fis.h.i.+ng tackle in it," said Jasper to the doorman, apropos of one of the suitcases, which was heavy but apparently not packed full. "Well, I think I'll run up to Wakamin to-day and catch a few ba.s.s."

"Wish I could go along, sir. How is the head this morning? Does it still ache?" asked the doorman.

"Rather better, but my eyes still feel pretty rocky. Guess I been using 'em too much. Say, Connors, I'll try to catch the train north at eleven-seven. Better have a taxicab here for me at eleven. Or no; I'll let you know a little before eleven. Try to catch the eleven-seven north, for Wakamin."

"Very well, sir."

The president, the a.s.sistant cas.h.i.+er, the chief clerk-all asked Jasper how he felt; and to all of them he repeated the statement that he had been using his eyes too much, and that he would catch a few ba.s.s at Wakamin.

The other paying teller from his cage next to that of Jasper called heartily through the steel netting: "Pretty soft for some people! You wait! I'm going to have the hay fever this summer, and I'll go fis.h.i.+ng for a month!"

Jasper placed the two suitcases and the umbrella in his cage, and leaving the other teller to pay out current money he himself made up the pay rolls for the next day-Sat.u.r.day. He casually went into the vault-a narrow, unimpressive, unaired cell, with a hard linoleum floor, one unshaded electric bulb, and a back wall composed entirely of steel doors of safes, all painted a sickly blue, very unimpressive, but guarding several millions of dollars in cash and securities. The upper doors, hung on large steel arms and each provided with two dials, could be opened only by two officers of the bank, each knowing one of the two combinations. Below these were smaller doors, one of which Jasper could open, as teller. It was the door of an insignificant steel box, which contained one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars in bills and four thousand dollars in gold and silver.

Jasper pa.s.sed back and forth, carrying bundles of currency. In his cage he was working less than three feet from the other teller, who was divided from him only by the bands of the steel netting.

While he worked he exchanged a few words with this other teller.

Once as he counted out nineteen thousand dollars he commented: "Big pay roll for the Henschel Wagon Works this week. They're making gun carriages and truck bodies for the Allies, I understand."

"Uh-huh!" said the other teller, not much interested.

Mechanically, un.o.btrusively going about his ordinary routine of business, Jasper counted out bills to amounts agreeing with the items on a typed schedule of the pay rolls. Apparently his eyes never lifted from his counting and from this typed schedule which lay before him. The bundles of bills he made into packages, fastening each with a paper band. Each bundle he seemed to drop into a small black leather bag which he held beside him. But he did not actually drop the money into these pay-roll bags.

Both the suitcases at his feet were closed, and presumably fastened; but one was not fastened. And though it was heavy it contained nothing but a lump of pig iron. From time to time Jasper's hand, holding a bundle of bills, dropped to his side. With a slight movement of his foot he opened that suitcase, and the bills slipped from his hand down into it.

The bottom part of his cage was a solid sheet of stamped steel, and from the front of the bank no one could see this suspicious gesture. The other teller could have seen it, but Jasper dropped the bills only when the other teller was busy talking to a customer or when his back was turned. In order to delay for such a favorable moment Jasper frequently counted packages of bills twice, rubbing his eyes as though they hurt him.

After each of these secret disposals of packages of bills Jasper made much of dropping into the pay-roll bags the rolls of coin for which the schedule called. It was while he was tossing these blue-wrapped cylinders of coin into the bags that he would chat with the other teller. Then he would lock up the bags and gravely place them at one side.

Jasper was so slow in making up the pay rolls that it was five minutes of eleven before he finished. He called the doorman to the cage and suggested: "Better call my taxi now."