Held to Answer/Chapter 25
Young Burbeck's desk at the Amalgamated National was in an open space behind a marble counter. About him in the same open space were desks of two other assistant cashiers. Back of these were the private offices of the cashier, the president and the vice-president, as well as one or two reception rooms. Beyond the marble counter was a broad public aisle, on the farther side of which the tellers and bookkeepers worked, screened by the usual wire and glass. The safe deposit vaults were in the basement and reached by a stairway from the open lobby on the first floor.
Hurrying from the minister's house, Burbeck reached his desk at ten minutes before the hour of nine. This left him ten minutes of waiting before he could get the eleven hundred dollars of the Wadham currency; and waiting was the very hardest thing he could do under the circumstances. He was the first of the assistant cashiers to arrive, but the cashier, Parma, heavy-jowled, with dark wall eyes, was visible through the open door of his office, checking over some of the auditor's sheets with a gold pencil in his pudgy hand. His thick shoulders and broad, unresponsive back somehow threw a chill of apprehension into Rollie. What brought that old owl down here at this time of the morning, he wondered.
The colored porter, resplendent in his uniform of gray and brass, advanced with obsequious courtesy and proffered a copy of the morning paper. Rollie snatched at it with a sense of relief, but the relief was only momentary. There was the hateful headline again. It had been hours, days, weeks since he saw that headline first, while standing on the street and looking up for the rope that was to be swinging over the cornice of the Hotel St. Albans. Couldn't they get something else for a headline? Why, of course not. The paper had been on the street but three hours. That headline must hold sway till the noon edition. Besides, it was a good headline.
Rollie grasped the paper firmly with both hands, threw his head back, and pretended to read; but he was not reading. He was looking to see if his hands trembled. Unmistakably they did. They trembled so the paper rattled as if it were having a chill. But pshaw! There was really little to read anyway, beyond the headline. The news had come in too late to make a story for the morning papers. It only said that Miss Dounay had been entertaining some friends and on retiring at half-past two had chanced to notice that her diamond necklace was missing. A search failed to reveal it in the apartment. She at once notified the police. That was all. No word as to who was present, who was suspected, whether a guest, or a servant, or a burglar, or whether any clue had been discovered. There had been no time for that. That would be the story for the afternoon papers. They would find out all about Miss Dounay's movements the night before, and all about her party, and who was present. They would interview each guest, and get a statement from him. They would be sure to interview John Hampstead. Rollie had a sudden feeling of security as he thought of their investigating Hampstead. It was amazing what a rocklike confidence a man could feel in Hampstead.
But they would also interview him—Rollie Burbeck. Because he was so readily accessible, they would interview him first. What would he tell them? How would he bear himself? Would his voice tremble when he tried to talk, as now his hands trembled when he tried to hold the newspaper?
At this very moment the diamonds were in his inside coat pocket. Could he receive the reporters with his usual urbanity, sit smiling nonchalantly, and recite the incidents of the evening, suggest theories and clues, express his righteous indignation at the crime,—all with that envelope and its contents rustling under every movement of his arm? Could he?
To the young man's tortured imagination, the necklace became again a serpent. He could feel it crawling there over his heart, could hear it hissing and rattling as if about to strike. Then it ceased to be a serpent, and was a nest of birds. He knew that every time a reporter asked a question, one of those birds would stretch its wings and call "Cuckoo."
There! It said "Cuckoo" just then. Was the bank haunted? Rollie looked up frightened. Cold sweat was on his brow. Not his hands alone but his whole body trembled. He was really in a very bad way. Could a man have delirium tremens, just from fright? Rollie didn't know, but if a reporter came in just then, he was sure that he would take out the diamonds and hurl them at the news gatherer.
Speaking of delirium tremens, he wished he had a good stiff highball. He must slip out presently long enough to get one. Worse than reporters would be coming round, too. Detectives would come. Chief of detectives Benson might come in person. Rollie disliked Benson and mistrusted him. Benson went on the theory that it takes a crook to catch a crook! When it came to inducing a crook to talk, he was a very handy man with a club. Benson would at once scour the pool rooms and hop joints. Suppose he got the Red Lizard in the dragnet. Suppose he hit the Red Lizard a clip or two with that small, ugly billy that was generally in Benson's pocket when he went to the sweat room; or suppose he kept Red's "hop" away from him for a few hours? Or suppose Benson happened to know in that uncanny way of his that he, Rollie, had done business with Spider Welsh? He might just walk into the bank and search Rollie on suspicion. And Rollie would have to submit, would have to seem to invite him, almost. His teeth were chattering at the thought.
Discovery—disgrace—conviction—ruin—that was the sequence of the ideas. Stripes! Ugh! Just when the way out, "the way up," was opening to him, too. Discovery, now that a moral hope was gleaming, would be infinitely more terrible than an hour ago, when he was only a rat burrowing from a terrier.
He tried to shake himself together. He must brace up and play the game with a cool head, or he could not play it at all. One thing was clear. The diamonds must be got out of his possession temporarily. But where should he put them? In his desk? Anywhere about the bank? Benson would find them if he started a search, and if Benson didn't search, some one in the bank might stumble upon them accidentally, and then the cat would be out of the bag for fair.
There was a police whistle now! The agitated young man looked about, startled, and then laughed at himself. It was not a police whistle at all. It was the first clear, bell-like note of the bank clock, beginning the stroke of nine.
With a sensation of relief that for a few minutes waiting was over and there was occupation for mind and body, Rollie took the minister's key and strolled in the most casual manner he could command down to the vault room.
"Doctor Hampstead's box," he announced, exhibiting his key. The vault clerk turned to his card index as a mere matter of form, for he remembered well enough Rollie's authorization, and read upon the card of the Reverend John Hampstead his signed permission for Rollo Charles Burbeck to do with his box "as I might or could do if personally present." The clerk stepped inside the vault, scanned the numbers and tiers, and thrust his master-key into the proper lock. Rollie slipped the minister's key into its own place, turned it, and the door flew open. The vault clerk returned to his stand outside the door. Rollie took the box and walked into one of the private rooms provided for the safe deposit patrons. In a moment he was ripping open the envelope marked "Wadham Currency", which he found exactly as the minister had described it.
At sight and feeling of the money in his fingers, a great wave of hope surged over Rollie. It was a solid assurance of escape. With this assurance, there came to the young man a sharp, definite impulse to begin at once the work of character building. As an initial step, he wrote upon one of his personal cards: "I. O. U. $1,100," and signed it, not with his initials, but boldly in vigorous chirography, to express the stoutness of his purpose, with the whole of his name, "Rollo Charles Burbeck." When putting this card carefully back in the envelope from which he had extracted the currency, and placing the envelope on the top of the papers in the box, the young man experienced a fine glow of satisfaction. He had done a good and honorable act in this bold assumption of his debt and in thus leaving the written record there behind him.
But when Rollie took up the currency from the table and slipped the long, thin package into his inside pocket, his fingers came in contact with that other envelope, the presence of which, under the strain of what he must go through this morning, threatened to break down his nerve completely.
With the preacher's box lying there open before him, came a sudden inspiration. What safer place for the Dounay jewels than in it? Doctor Hampstead's character put him absolutely above suspicion. He was the one guest at the supper before whose door no process of elimination would ever halt to point the finger of suspicion. His box, at the moment, was the safest place in the world for the Dounay diamonds.
Rollie was all alone in the closed room. No glance could possibly rest on him; yet, as furtively as if a thousand eyes were peering, he slipped the envelope containing the diamonds from his pocket into the box and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the lid cover the package from his sight. Returning to the vault room, he locked the box in its chamber and went upstairs to his desk in quite his usual debonair manner.
With a new feeling of confidence which made him bold and precise in all his movements, Rollie laid the safe deposit key, with its innocent little red rubber band about it, exactly in the center of the blotter upon his desk, where it might be every moment under his eye. Then, in the most casual way in the world, he pinned a penciled note to the stack of bills representing the "Wadham currency" and sent it by one of the bank messengers across the wide aisle to a receiving teller's cage. When it arrived, the gap in his financial fences had narrowed to thirty-one hundred dollars. This lessening of the breach increased his self-control and strengthened his resolution. He had only to wait now until the minister appeared with the additional currency, and then at the first opportunity he would slip down to the vault, get the diamonds, and go straight to Miss Dounay.
And in the meantime his premonition that reporters would lean heavily upon him for information about the actress's supper party proved correct. When he talked to these reporters, Rollie noticed that it gave him a fresh sense of security to let his eye turn occasionally to where the little flat key with the red band about it lay upon his desk, lay, and almost laughed. It was really such a good joke to think where the diamonds were.
What made this joke better was that each reporter shrewdly inquired whether Rollie thought the diamonds had actually been stolen, or whether this might not be the familiar device of dramatic press agents. Begging in each instance that he be not quoted, Rollie admitted that of course the whole affair might be no more than the latter.
Yet after the reporters had gone, Rollie wished he had not done this. It was clever, but it was not just to the woman to whom he was going to make his first exhibition of new character by returning her jewels and making a plea for mercy. That was not going to be an easy job—that confession? Besides, everything depended on whether she would grant his plea or not. Ruin stared again at this angle; for Miss Dounay might hand him over to Benson. Once more he had that distasteful vision of a chalky head and a suit of stripes. The thought produced a physical sensation as if his whole body were being stung by nettles.
But here came a big man down the aisle, his features expressing grave consideration, and his gray eyes twinkling with evident satisfaction. It was Doctor Hampstead. Courage and increase of confidence seemed to come into the office with the minister, and more was imparted by his cordial hand-clasp, as he leaned close and asked in a low voice:
"You got the Wadham currency?"
"Yes," Rollie answered eagerly and in an excited whisper told how he had laid the foundation stone of his new character by his I. O. U. left in the place of the currency.
"That is good," agreed the minister, his face beaming. "The right start, my boy, exactly."
Then, with a replica of that smile, sweet as a woman's, with which he had two hours before passed over his vault key to Rollie, he now placed in his hands an envelope like that which had contained the Wadham currency, only thicker. The young man seized it gratefully, but with fingers trembling so he could hardly get behind the flap of the envelope.
"It is there," said the minister, a little gurgle of emotion in his own throat.
"It is here," mumbled Rollie woodenly, a surge of relief and gratitude rising so high in his breast that it felt like a tense hard pain, and for a moment stifled the power of speech so that for want of words he reached out and touched the hand of the minister caressingly with his clammy fingers.
Hampstead, happier, if possible, than Rollie, understood his emotion.
"It's all right," he whispered. "Courage, boy, courage!" At the same time he laid a hand upon the young man's arm, with a pressure almost of affection. With the word and touch came clarity both of thought and feeling.
"Will you excuse me three or four minutes, Brother Hampstead?" Rollie inquired, the sudden leap of joy in his heart that the embezzlement was now to be legitimately wiped out so great that he could not this time stop to send the money across by a messenger.
The minister smiled understandingly, and Rollie stepped out of the little gate and across to the teller's window.
When he returned, old J. M. himself had come out of his office and was chatting with the minister. There was nothing unusual about this, since wherever Hampstead went persons of every sort were anxious to get a word with him. Presently Parma too joined the group at Rollie's desk. Of course the topic of conversation was Miss Dounay and her diamonds, for both the president and the cashier had learned that the minister and their own social ambassador were present at the supper, which every hour became more famous. In the midst of this conversation, a telephone call for Mr. Manton was switched to Rollie's desk.
"Yes," said the president, talking into the 'phone. "We will send a man over to represent us. Are you ready now?"
The bank president hung up the telephone and turned to Rollie. "Step right over to the Central Trust, Burbeck, and see us through on those transfers, will you? They are waiting now."
There was nothing for Rollie to do but to go immediately, much as he desired to whisper one more word of gratitude to the minister, and to receive the additional installment of moral strength which he felt sure would follow from a few quiet minutes with this man on whom his soul had begun to lean so heavily.
"Certainly, Mr. Manton," he answered, and then as he reached for his hat, he turned to the minister, saying: "Shall I find you here when I return?"
"That depends on how long before you return," laughed the minister, but the blandness of his expression indicated that he was in no hurry, and Rollie went out expecting to see him again in a few minutes.
But the matter of the transfers was not so easily dispatched. Over one detail and another the young man was held for nearly forty minutes. The delays, too, were of that vexatious sort which detained him without employing him; so that most of the irritating interval could be and was devoted to a consideration of his own very private and very pressing affairs.
Giving up hope of finding the minister in the bank upon his return, he addressed both his thoughts and his fears to the subject of Miss Dounay and her diamonds. The prospective interview with this passionate, self-willed, and no doubt wildly excited woman loomed before him oppressively, and the nearer it drew, the more ominous it seemed. A man going unarmed to return a stolen cub to a tigress in a jungle lair would be going upon a mission of peace and safety compared to his. He feared that in her passionate vehemence she would never permit him to get the full truth before her. How was he to turn aside the impact of her sudden burst of rage? She would assault him—tear him! If that curious Morocco dagger he had seen some of the guests fumbling with last night were at hand, she might even kill him.
The idea occurred to him that he had best lie to her, or at least begin by lying to her; that he might play the rôle of restorer of her diamonds, and put her under a debt of gratitude, explaining that the thief had brought them to him to borrow money on them; then, in the softer mood that would come through joy over their prospective recovery, he might elaborate the story, touch her sympathies, and make his full confession. She might even be happy enough over their recovery to cease the hunt for the criminal, and thus make confession unnecessary. That in itself would be a great relief.
Yet the common sense, if not the moral sense, of the young man rejected a proposal to lay the bricks of newfound honesty in the mortar of a lie. If he were true to the trust which Hampstead had reposed in him, he would walk straight into Miss Dounay's apartments and say, "Here are your diamonds. I am the thief. I throw myself upon your mercy!" This was what he resolved to do.
Reentering the bank, young Burbeck walked first to the open door of Mr. Manton's office. That gentleman was engaged with a caller, but the shadow at the door caused his eye to rove in that direction. Rollie waved his hand; J. M. nodded. The transfers had been accomplished; the president had taken note of that fact, and the assistant cashier's mission was discharged.
Rollie went immediately to his desk. There was a litter of papers representing matters of greater or less importance which had required attention during the interval of his absence from the office. He sifted them quickly. Some received his penciled O. K. and went into a basket for the messenger; two or three took him on errands to other desks about, or to the windows opposite; the rest went into a drawer. He had not removed his hat from his head, for he proposed to go immediately to Miss Dounay before the remnants of his fast oozing resolution could entirely trickle away.
But when he turned to pick up the vault key which his eye had seen so many times this morning, it was not at hand. He removed everything from the desk, he searched every nook and cranny of it. He took up the waste-basket, dumped the contents upon his desk, and examined every scrap and fold of envelope or paper. He even got down upon his knees and made sure the key was not upon the carpet, going so far as to move the desk. The key had disappeared. He searched his own pockets, realizing that when he left the bank that was where the key should have been placed.
In the excitement of the moment when Hampstead had brought in the money that saved him from being a defaulter, and in the disconcerting presence of J. M. and Parma, when he wanted to be alone with his benefactor, and especially with the more disconcerting instruction to go out and look after the transfers, he had, for the time being, forgotten the key. Now it was not to be found.
Rollie stood nonplussed first, and then aghast. His guilty conscience instantly suggested that some one had seen or suspected his visit to the vault and what had occurred there. This idea brought a rush of blood to the head. He was dizzy and had almost an attack of vertigo. Yet with a few clearing minutes of thought, the explanation leaped plainly into mind. Doctor Hampstead had taken the key. In the interval while Rollie was at the teller's window, he must have seen it lying there upon the desk, recognized it by the red rubber band, and having been assured that the key had served its purpose, had done the perfectly natural thing of dropping it in his pocket, and thinking no more of it.
Where was the minister now? Until Rollie could find him and get the key, he could make no confession to Miss Dounay.