Читать книгу A Self-Made Thief - Footner Hulbert - Страница 6

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THERE is a little hotel in Princesboro, and just above it is the single taxi-stand that the suburb boasts. At precisely twelve-forty next day a young fellow with a glossy little moustache and a nobby green suit issued from the hotel and hailed the first cab in line. It may be said that it was no part of Heberdon's plan to take the chauffeur into his confidence. In case of a chase, should the man prove unwilling, Heberdon carried that wherewith to persuade him.

With his hand on the door, Heberdon consulted his watch. "Must catch the one o'clock from the Nugent Avenue Station," he said to the chauffeur with a careless air. "Got to stop at the bank first. The Wool Exchange Trust on the plaza."

The man nodded. Heberdon got in and pulled the door after him. They started.

Up to this moment Heberdon's mind had been occupied with his calculations to the exclusion of aught else. But in the brief period of inaction during the ride, stage-fright laid its icy hand on his breast. His heart began to beat alarmingly, and to rise suffocatingly in his throat; a cold sweat sprang out on his palms and his temples, "I'll never be able to do it! Never! Never!" something whispered to him.

He would have given anything to leap out of the cab and run for it, but a force stronger than his will kept him fast. As a matter of fact, his days and nights of concentration on the plan of robbing the bank had in the end obsessed his brain. He could not conceive now of giving it up. His long preparations had created a power that carried him along in spite of himself. "Too late! Too late!" he thought despairingly.

He sought desperately to distract his mind from its terrors. Had he everything? Yes, the satchel, pistol unloaded—the light cloth cap to replace the too-conspicuous straw later, the thin hardwood wedge, the stout double iron hook that he had made himself out of a necktie-holder.

The taxi-cab stopped in front of the bank and the shaking Heberdon started subconsciously to go through the oft-rehearsed performance. To the driver he said with the best imitation of nonchalance he could muster:

"Let your engine run. I shan't be inside but a second."

Within the bank everything was always as he had seen it in his mind's eye; the uniformed attendant missing, the assistant manager alone in his little glass-enclosed office, at least half of the clerks out to lunch. At the door of the private office—which swung both ways—Heberdon made a feint of dropping his satchel. Stooping to pick it up he slipped his wedge under the door, and, straightening, tapped it home with the toe of his shoe.

There was but one customer in the corridor, and he was down at the receiving teller's window at the far end. Even as Heberdon looked at him he got his pass-book through the window and started to leave. In order to give him time to get out Heberdon turned to the customers' desk at his right hand, as if to write a cheque.

Silence filled the bank. The man who was walking out had on rubber-soled shoes, and his footfalls made no sound. From behind the brass grating came a sudden loud crackle as the book-keeper turned a page of his big ledger. He muttered to himself as he carried forward his column of figures. Then all was still again.

The silence contributed to Heberdon's demoralisation. He was suddenly conscious of the furnace-like heat of the place. His hand was trembling as with the palsy. Catching a sudden glimpse of a noiseless overhead fan out of the tail of his eye, he almost jumped out of his shoes.

"This will never do!" he said to himself as to somebody else. "You'll make a ghastly mess of the affair." All the way through he had the feeling of watching an alien body carry through what he had planned. "Drop it! Drop it!" he whispered. "Get out while there's time?" But that force outside his will kept him to it.

When the departing customer passed out through the street doors Heberdon turned around to the paying-teller's window. Within the pale and conscientious young man was counting and recounting his money, and arranging the packages of bills convenient to his hand against the rush he presently expected. All of a sudden the icy grip on Heberdon's breast relaxed. His hands ceased to tremble; he drew a long breath and found himself perfectly cool. "I have the pluck!" he told himself exultingly.

The paying-teller, aware of some one waiting at the window, looked up. He found himself gazing down the short barrel of an ugly little automatic pistol. Behind the pistol was a grim set face. He took his breath sharply, his jaw dropped, his hands fell nervelessly on his desk, a sickly green tinge crept under his skin. Heberdon had not mistaken his man.

In the soft and courteous tones he had often rehearsed, Heberdon said: "If you cry out or turn your head, I'll blow the top of your skull off. Raise the wicket and pass out all the money on your desk!"

Even before he finished speaking the young man's trembling hands flung up the brass gate and started shoving out the tall piles of bills. His wide and fascinated gaze never left the pistol. There was no sound to be heard but the whisper of the overhead fan and the soft plop of the packages as they slid off the little glass shelf into the satchel that Heberdon held beneath.

It was all over in fifteen seconds. "Twenty thousand, if it's a dollar!" thought Heberdon, with a fearful joy. At a peremptory nod from Heberdon the paying-teller let the little gate rattle down. Heberdon began to back away. The other man's sick eyes followed the pistol barrel. Heberdon turned and walked smartly to the street door. As he laid hand upon it he heard a gasping cry behind him:

"Boys, I'm robbed!"

The young man in the glass-enclosed office snatched a revolver from a pigeon-hole of his desk with incredible swiftness, and, springing up, launched himself against the door. But the wedge held it, at least for the moment. Heberdon passed out into the street, and turning with a careless movement dropped his double-hook over the two handles. No indifferent passer-by would be likely to catch the significance of what he was doing. He then walked sedately across the pavement and got in a cab.

"Nugent Avenue Station," he said with an off-hand air. "Let her go!"

As the cab got under way Heberdon had a fleeting glimpse of white and excited faces within the doors of the bank. The doors were violently rattled. The chauffeur did not hear it above the noise of his engine, but passers-by did, and Heberdon, looking back through the little rear window, saw them stop and look. He was only going to have a few seconds' start.

"It's enough!" he told himself. "There is no other car right handy. If my chauffeur gets cold feet I have the gun for him."

His spirits soared. "Twenty thousand! The Riviera, Italy, Cairo! A whole year of delicious idleness! Choice eats, choice drinks, choice smokes, and lively company! At last I'll be able to play the part I'm fitted for!"

In his flush of triumph he completely forgot his intention of returning the money. They were crossing the plaza at a good rate, the chauffeur, all unconscious of the storm preparing to break behind, when there came a report like a small cannon from beneath the cab. The sound had the effect of letting all the wind out of Heberdon, too.

"By the eternal, a tyre!" he thought. "I'm done! Why didn't I look at the tyres? What shall I do?"

The taxicab drew up beside the curb at the corner of the principal street leading from the plaza. At the same moment across the open space figures came tumbling out of the bank, and seeing the stoppage of the cab set up loud shouts. Heberdon leaped out and forthwith took to his heels down the street. The shoppers instinctively made for the doorways. The chauffeur, arrested in full motion, stood staring after his fare, a comical figure of astonishment.

The shouts from the bank gave him his cue. Suddenly he came to life and with a whoop leaped after Heberdon. Heberdon, stealing a white glance over his shoulder, saw with a sinking heart what long legs he had, and what a hard eye. Heberdon, like most city men, had not really tried out his legs in years. To be sure, Nature suggested the proper motions at this juncture, but he lacked confidence in his legs.

"I'll never be able to do it!" he told himself despairingly, and in so thinking his sinews softened. On the other hand, the young chauffeur looked able to run all day, and half a block behind the chauffeur was a mob gathering volume like a snowball.

All the other people gave them the right of way like fire-engines. The chauffeur gained on Heberdon with every stride. Heberdon could hear his quick, sure steps—quicker than his own. Finally the chauffeur cried, seemingly right behind him: "Stop, you thief!"

Heberdon, in a panic, dropped the satchel. The chauffeur stopped to pick it up, and the fugitive gained a precious thirty yards. But down the block the roar was momentarily growing louder. Those who dared not stop Heberdon were safely falling in behind his pursuers. The sound of that roar struck terror into the very core of Heberdon's breast. He learned what it was to be hunted.

"Why do I go on running," he thought. "It's all up! I might as well stop!"

He almost collided with a young lady in the act of descending from her limousine to enter a shop. The hunted creature received an impression of warm, kind eyes. She drew aside a little from the door of her cab with a barely perceptible gesture of invitation. Heberdon, swerving, flung himself in. She sprang after. A roar of rage went up from the pursuing crowd. The girl's eyes sparkled. Leaning out, she cried to the chauffeur:

"Step on her! Step on her! Turn the first corner to the left!"

The engine was running, and the car jerked violently into motion. She slammed the door. As they turned the corner, Heberdon, looking back, saw that his pursuers had stopped another car, and, climbing aboard, were pointing out the limousine to the chauffeur.

At such a moment Heberdon was not exactly susceptible to the charms of sex. He had an impression that with heightened colour and sparkling eyes she was studying him with extraordinary curiosity. He wished to escape from the regard of those eyes.

At the moment he was not conscious of what she looked like, but he remembered well enough later; her lovely clothes—a little too spectacular for Heberdon's lady cousins; her full, red, generous mouth, her glowing dark eyes. She was very young; her whole person radiated youth recklessly, lavishly.

She was as excited as a boy. Snatching up the speaking-tube, she cried: "Faster! Faster! Never mind what you break! Fifty dollars if you shake that car!" They were in a quieter street with a bad pavement, over which the car bounced, flinging them to the roof. They turned to the right and again to the left, but the following car clung to them. It was of lighter build, and picked up faster. The pavements became worse and worse, and, in spite of himself, the chauffeur and the limousine slowed down. His mistress snatched up the speaking-tube again.

"Step on her!" she cried. "To hell with the springs! I'll pay."

Heberdon's cold heart experienced a feeling of warmth. "Splendid creature!" he thought.

They turned to the right again into a well-paved street stretching away to the south. The chauffeur "stepping on her" at last they roared down with wide-open exhaust.

"No more corners!" commanded the girl. "We'll leave them at a standstill in the straight."

Looking through the back window, they saw their pursuers turn into the street, and other cars behind them. But as she had said, they were distancing them fast. They had now left the central part of Princesboro behind them, and their way stretched ahead of them unhindered by traffic. Heberdon began to breathe more freely.

The girl was still studying him. "What did you do?" she asked downrightly, like a boy.

"Nothing," muttered Heberdon. He looked away. He was scarcely in the posture in which he cared to talk to a pretty woman. He was accustomed to patronise women from an eminence. This one had him at a disadvantage. His vanity squirmed under those candid eyes.

But feeling that she was entitled to some sort of an explanation, he went on: "There was some trouble in the bank when I was passing. I don't know what it was. But they picked on me."

The girl looked disappointed. "You could trust me," she said.

The limousine was now making fifty miles an hour. "I'm safe if those tyres hold," thought Heberdon.

As if in answer to his thought, the girl said, smiling, "The tyres are new."

Alas for their hopes! There was a railway crossing at grade in their path, and as they approached it the striped gates slowly descended. The chauffeur put on his brakes, and the car half-slewed around in the road.

"Smash through!" cried the girl excitedly. "Take the gates! You have time!"

But the man, with a shake of his head, brought his car to a stop at the barrier.

"Oh, damn him for a coward!" cried the girl with tears in her eyes. "If I had been at the wheel!"

Without more ado, Heberdon leaped out. He never gave a thought to the fate of the girl. He ducked under the gates, but the oncoming train was now at hand, and he could not pass in front. It was an outbound freight, miles long, it seemed to his despairing heart, and moving slowly. There was nothing for him to do but run down the line alongside the train. The cars with his pursuers were drawing near.

Heberdon thought: "I'll swing myself on the caboose as she passes and hide inside. She's gathering way all the time. I have money to square the train crew. Anyhow, they couldn't throw me off until she slows down."

But on the rear platform stood a trainman with an uncompromising, hard eye. Heberdon ran on.

His pursuers had likewise taken to the railway line on foot. Catching sight of him, they raised renewed shouts. Heberdon was now at the entrance to the railway yards. A high board fence bounded it on either hand. But long lines of freight cars stood on the spreading tracks, and these suggested good cover to the fugitive. Crossing the main line, he ran around the end of one string of cars and crawled under another. Here he felt safe enough to slow down a little and give his overladen heart a chance.

"They'll run on down through the yard," he decided. "If I stay up at this end perhaps I can double back."

He heard his pursuers, now reduced to a score or so of men, come running down the line and pause among the cars at a loss. But one of them must have dropped to the ground and looked along underneath, for a voice was raised:

"I see his legs! Third track over!"

The fugitive took to his heels again, darting, twisting, doubling around the cars until he had fairly lost his own way in the depths of the yard. He saw nothing of his pursuers, nor did he hear them again. There must have been moments when they were close, but with a common impulse of prudence, they no longer called to each other. Heberdon did not know at what moment he might plump on them around a car. His heart was continually in his mouth. He who had lived such a sheltered and well-ordered life up to this time would have shuddered to catch sight in a mirror of the wild-eyed, hunted thing he was now.

The partly open portal of a box-car tempted him. He drew himself aboard, and softly closing the door flung himself down to rest. There was no rest for his fears, though. He felt trapped. He pictured his pursuers drawing a line around the yard, and when they had every point of egress watched, starting a car-to-car search. It appeared that he had made a fatal tactical error. He ought to have kept on going until he found a way out of the yard.

He wasted some moments of agony, then, trying to screw up his courage sufficiently to open the door again. Finally he began to draw it back an inch at a time. The crack revealed nothing stirring outside, nor could he hear any sound. He opened it sufficiently to permit the passage of his body, and stuck his head out. He looked into the face of the tall young chauffeur who was flattened against the car waiting for him. The chauffeur roared with laughter.

A hand shot out and gripped Heberdon's collar. He was ignominiously hauled out and dropped to the ground. He got to his feet and stood apathetically awaiting his captor's pleasure. There was no fight in him.

"Hey, men!" cried the chauffeur. "Here he is! I've got him!"

Men appeared from several directions around the cars.