Читать книгу A Self-Made Thief - Footner Hulbert - Страница 5

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HEBERDON lived in a tiny but rather luxurious flat immediately across the park from the club. The same building now altered into bachelor apartments had been the city residence of his family for a generation, and from it Heberdon derived the modest income that barely sufficed his needs. He himself had scraped together every cent of his little patrimony to make the necessary alterations to put the house on an income-producing basis. Indeed, up to this time every act of Heberdon's life had been marked by prudence and caution—too much caution perhaps.

His law practice was largely one of courtesy. It about paid the rent of the smallest office in a good building and the wages of an office boy, who was necessary to keep the establishment open, for Heberdon never allowed his "practice" to interfere with his afternoon bridge at the club, nor, for that matter, with golf in the mornings, when the weather was suitable. He had a standing offer to enter the office of his uncle, ex-Judge Palliser, of the State Supreme Court, but that he knew entailed real work, and he was coy about accepting it.

"Really, I can't give up my practice," he would say. That practice did yeoman's service in conversation.

Heberdon was the last of his immediate family, but he enjoyed a large and ultra-respectable connection of uncles, aunts, cousins, et cetera. Besides Judge Palliser—head of the firm of Palliser, Beardmore, Beynon and Riggs, and one of our leading corporation lawyers—there was Mrs. Pembroke Conard, leader of the old Knickerbocker set, his aunt; Professor Maltbie Heberdon, Dean of Kingston, another uncle, and so on. Heberdon, though he affected to despise them as a lot of dull owls, was, nevertheless, very sensible of the advantages of such connections, and lost no opportunity of cultivating his graft with those who counted. For years h had been "paying attention" to his cousin, Ida Palliser, the judge's eldest daughter. It was an indefinite sort of affair, entailing no responsibilities.

Other young men might have considered that Heberdon's lines were cast in very pleasant places, but never was there a more inveterate grumbler. Nobody appreciated him at his true worth, he felt. He had been born to accomplish great things, he told himself, but circumstances held him down.

Next morning he awoke, conscious of a feeling of heaviness under the occiput. His thoughts ran: "What's the matter with me? Drank too much last night! Blamed fool! Well, never again!"

Suddenly recollection of the bet rushed back on him, and he sat up in bed in a panic. "Great Heaven! What have I done? I must have been out of my mind! How can I get out of it? How can I get out of it?"

He got out of bed all shaky and took a stiff horn of whisky to steady his nerves. Presently he felt better.

"It's not up to me to get out of it," he thought. "At least, not right away. I have a month. The other fellows are sure to weaken. Hanwell's scared green already, and Spurway will be, as soon as he sobers up. If I play my cards right they'll pay me the money not to do it. As for Nedham, he can go to hell, dam stubborn mule!

"In the meantime I'll go ahead just as if I meant to carry the thing through. Pick my bank. Lay all my plans—"

At this point in his deliberations a queer little feeling of pleasure began to run through his mind like quicksilver. "It would be fun to plan such a job! To pit my wits against the whole of what Nedham calls 'organised' society. I have the wits and the pluck to do it, too. Never had a chance to prove them. Rotten dull life I lead. I was cut out for something better.

"They laughed at me! I'd love to show them! If I should do it, it would be perfectly safe. Nobody would ever suspect me. And those fellows would damn well keep their mouths shut. Lord! The very idea makes my blood run faster!

"But, of course, I'm not going to do it really. And yet—"

In the course of the morning Hanwell called him up at the office. At the first sound of his anxious voice Heberdon smiled contemptuously into the receiver. "Hallo, Frank! How do you feel this morning?"

"Great!" rejoined Heberdon, with particular heartiness.

Hanwell's voice fell. "Oh, you do, do you?" He paused.

"What can I do for you, old man?" asked Heberdon. "Say, about that bet last night. What a pack of fools we were!" A loud but unconvincing laugh here. "You didn't take it seriously, of course."

"Do I understand you're trying to get out of it?" demanded Heberdon with assumed astonishment.

"Oh, no, no!" said Hanwell quickly. "A bet's a bet, of course. That's not what I called up about. I wanted to know—er—if you'd be at the club to-night."

"Sure."

Later Spurway dropped in on him, pinker than usual and very self-conscious. His greeting was effusive. He tried to get away with the innocent candid, but he was as transparent as window-glass.

"'Lo, Frank. I certainly did get beyond myself last night."

"Oh, you had a bit of a bun on."

Spurway passed a fat hand over his brow. "I have a vague recollection of making some bet or other. Thought I'd better come round and find out what it was. Of course I'll stick by my part of it, though I was drunk."

"Come off," said Heberdon scornfully. "You weren't as drunk as all that."

Spurway made a heavy pretence of trying to remember. "Something about your sticking up a bank," he said.

"Cut out the comedy," exclaimed Heberdon. "You remember just as well as I do."

"But when I woke up this morning I couldn't believe in my own recollection. You surely weren't in earnest."

"I was."

"Oh, my Lord, Frank! Think what you're doing!" Heberdon stuck out his chin truculently. "Are you trying to renege?" he demanded.

"Oh, no, no!" said Spurway helplessly. "But this is awful—awful!" He went out muttering to himself.

Finally Nedham came. Nedham was of tougher fibre than the other two, and he went directly to the point.

"Look here, Frank, that was a damn fool business we started last night. Let's call it off. I'm quite sure that Hanwell and Spurway feel the same about it as I."

"I don't know that it is exactly up to them—or to you," said Heberdon with a disagreeable smile. "I was the challenged one."

Nedham stared. "You can't mean that you intend to carry it out!"

"I carry out everything I start."

"But, my dear fellow, you're risking everything, your professional reputation, your liberty!"

"Why don't you say plainly that you want to get out of it?" said Heberdon with a sneer.

"I do want to get out of it," answered Nedham earnestly. "I don't want to be a party to another man's suicide—worse than suicide."

"Much obliged," said Heberdon. "You can always stop payment on your cheque, you know."

Nedham flushed up angrily and rose. "You talk like a schoolboy!"

"I don't need you to put me right," retorted Heberdon. "It isn't my feet that are cold."

Nedham strode angrily out of the office.

Heberdon immediately started making his plans. He still told himself that, of course, he would drop the thing as soon as Nedham et al. were reduced to a proper state of humility, but in the meantime he went about it as in a game with himself. That very day he dropped into several down-town banks to look around. He soon found that wealth was not so "wide-open" as he had confidently asseverated.

You no sooner started to look around a bank than you found watchful eyes upon you. "How dare they suspect me of anything crooked?" thought Heberdon with a sense of outrage.

He had no sense of humour. The largest bank of all had a "pill-box" elevated above the floor with ugly looking loopholes commanding the entrances. Heberdon shrewdly suspected that this was a mere bit of stage business, but if the pill-box had been constructed merely for its psychological effect, it worked in his case. The skin of his scalp tingled at the thought of defying the aim of a possible unseen watcher within. He decided that the big down-town banks with their crowds of customers and numerous guards and attendants were out of the question.

There remained the up-town and suburban banks. Their business is now mainly in the hands of two or three big institutions who specialise in outlying branches. Heberdon procured lists of the latter, and, striking out the obviously impossible ones, began to visit the others in order.

He put them through a gradual process of elimination. Some were hopeless at first glance. Others more promising he revisited and compared. He gave up his whole time to it. More and more it became like a fascinating game. At last he had an opportunity to apply his long-pondered theories on crime. His idle days were at last filled with an object. Never had his brain worked so quickly and sharply; never had life seemed so full.

From his long list he struck off one name after another. He found that small banks generally were arranged according to one of two plans; either the banking office was a square—or round—enclosure with the cages ranged all round, or else the cages extended in a row down one side of a corridor. Needless to say the latter plan suited him better. In such a bank all the clerks were under his eye at once, and no one could take him from the rear.

The paying-teller's window was his particular object. Sometimes it was awkwardly placed in relation to his getaway; sometimes the teller himself was too determined-looking a fellow. In one bank otherwise suitable, Heberdon was shocked to discover an electric lock on the street door which presumably could be operated from within the cages in case anybody tried to make a hasty getaway. This he considered a low-down trick. Some banks dealt principally with stores; these paid out little money, but only took it in. Others did a business so small as to be beneath Heberdon's notice altogether.

Not to detail too minutely the different stages of his search, it may be said at once that he finally picked on the Princesboro branch of the Wool Exchange Trust Company. This bank included several large factories among its customers and paid out large sums weekly for pay-roll purposes. It faced the plaza of the Princesboro Bridge. It occupied a corner store, and the cages stretched in a long line down a corridor none too brightly lighted. The paying-teller occupied the cage nearest the street door, though separated from the door by the office of the cashier or manager. Most important of all to Heberdon, the paying-teller was a pale, mild-appearing young man, just what he was looking for. "He'll collapse like a pricked balloon," he told himself.

With exemplary patience Heberdon returned to the bank day after day to watch and observe from without and within. The appearance of the elegant correct young lawyer, with his pince-nez, was not such as to excite suspicion readily. Those clerks who noticed him probably took him for a new customer. As a result of these visits Heberdon established the following main facts:—

(a) There was a uniformed attendant—possibly armed—on guard in the corridor during business hours, a dangerous-looking customer.

(b) But he went out to lunch every day at twelve-thirty, remaining until one.

(c) Between the hours of twelve and one very few customers visited the bank.

(d) The little glass-enclosed office just inside the street door and on your left as you entered was occupied by two men, manager, presumably, and his assistant. The former went out every day, remaining until one, whereupon the other went out for an hour. Both were exact and regular in their habits.

(e) The pay-roll money was mostly drawn on Friday afternoons. The rush to withdraw began soon after one o'clock and continued until the closing hour. For a while before they came on Fridays, the paying-teller always occupied himself in getting his cash out of the safe and arranging it on the desk in front of him in convenient form to pay out.

(f) At the street entrance to the bank were a pair of old-fashioned doors which opened inward only, and had knobs on them.

Outside the doors there was a folding steel gate, but as this was always drawn back during business hours, it did not enter into Heberdon's calculations. It was perhaps the doors that finally led him to settle on the Princesboro Bank. "Oh, this is a cinch!" he said to himself.

From the foregoing may be readily deduced the reasons that led Heberdon to decide that the hour of twelve-fifty on any Friday would be the proper time to pull off his trick.

It would be difficult to say just at what moment all this ceased to be a game, and crystallised into a positive intention. Heberdon himself could not have told. He was an adept in deceiving himself anyway. He discouraged what further timid overtures Spurway and Hanwell made, waiting for Nedham to humble himself. But Nedham never did, and in the end all three avoided him at the club, and took in another man to make a fourth at bridge.

Heberdon shrugged and went on planning. The elaborate imaginary structure that he reared for his amusement ended by mastering him. It became more real than reality. He became enamoured of the ingenuity of his plan; he could not bear to destroy anything so perfect; he had to try it. Still protesting to himself that it was all a game, he went on with his preparations until it was too late to turn back.

No trouble was too great for him to take in respect to the smallest detail of his scheme. He could have done it the second Friday after the wager was laid, but he took a whole extra week to make sure he had not forgotten anything, or had not overlooked any contingency. For instance, his disguise, he devoted whole days to perfecting that.

Among the members of the Chronos Club were a number of actors with whom Heberdon was acquainted. He made a practice of dropping into the dressing-room of one of them who happened to be playing in town, and watched him make up. He learned that professionals commonly do not use false moustaches, et cetera, but glue loose hair to their faces and trim and curl it to suit. Such appendages are almost impossible to detect.

Practising endlessly before his own mirror, Heberdon finally succeeded in making a glossy little moustache and embryo side-burns that would pass closest muster. He designed to play the part of a flashy young sport of the latest model and haunted burlesque theatres, roadhouses, and shore resorts to study his types.

A straw hat of exaggerated pattern, a much "shaped" and bepocketed suit of a weird shade of green, loud shoes, socks, tie, and shirt altered the correct Heberdon's appearance beyond all recognition. He left o the pince-nez, without which he had never been seen. On the day before that set for his enterprise he made up and dressed in his new clothes, in order to accustom himself to them, and spent the afternoon at Brighton Beach.

Here he boldly wooed the sun, and by evening the added pink tinge to his complexion completed his metamorphosis. He looked ten years younger; a perfect product of Coney Island and the East Side social clubs, one would have said. On his way home he came face to face with his three friends in Gramercy Park. They passed him without recognition, and Heberdon triumphed inwardly.

In his own room that night Heberdon bent all the faculties of his mind on the next day's task. He went over and over his plan, looking at it from every angle. "It is water-tight," he said to himself at last. "I can't fail!" Then he went to bed and slept like a child on the eve of an excursion.