The banker and the bear

Dick has never been able satisfactorily to explain why, as soon as she had finished her breakfast that morning, she went to the bank. Just before starting she told Alice that John had run off without his eye-glasses, and that she was going to take them down to him, which was true, but not entirely adequate. She told herself that since Mrs. Sponley’s fever had abated, she was sure to want to know all about the happenings of the day before, and that telling her might have serious consequences. Alice would not be able to give her any information about it, and the morning paper containing the interview that had so badly frightened Curtin had been stuffed, as soon as Dick had read it, into John’s pocket, and was now on its way down town. So that if Dick herself was well out of the way, Mrs. Sponley might have whatever poor happiness ignorance affords, for a while longer. That was an excellent reason. A year later Jack Dorlin told her that she came to the bank on Thursday morning simply because he had not come to see her Wednesday evening, which was a piece of impudence Dick could well afford to answer merely with an infinitely scornful smile.

They met at the corner, half a square away from the bank.

“What on earth has brought you down here?” he exclaimed, as he came up with her. “Has anything gone wrong?”

She waived the question. “Hello, Jack,” was all she said. There was small matter in the words to blush over; but the color sprang into her face, for something in the inflection of them had been almost a caress, and the fact that she had not offered him her hand and that she had barely glanced at him lent an emphasis to it that he would be sure to understand.

They walked a score of paces in silence. The mere sense of nearness that came to them in the crowd was good enough without seeking to better it by talking. But the words that hung in Jack’s throat had to come out at last.

“There’s something I must tell you—”

Not there on that crowded sidewalk, with bank clerks and messenger boys, lawyers and merchants, rich men, poor men, beggar men,—all hurrying and jostling past,—to slip between them, and make an interruption at every three words. No, certainly not there, if Dick could help it. So Jack, who for all he knew of his surroundings at that moment might have been walking down a grassy lane, between hawthorn hedges that breathed softly into the moonlight; Jack, who knew only that it was Dick’s hand that brushed lightly by his own; poor, stupid Jack must needs again be interrupted.

“There are a lot of things you must tell me,” she said. “All I know about what happened yesterday is what I saw in this morning’s paper. John was so thoroughly tired out when he came home that, as soon as he could get rid of the reporters, he went to bed, and—”

She was talking aimlessly, for she saw how he was misunderstanding her, how her words must be hurting him, and she could think of nothing but that. Why, oh, why had he made her do it!

Though he mistook the reason, he saw that the situation was painful to her, and he came quickly to the rescue.

“You haven’t told me why you’ve come down here at this time in the morning,” he said easily. “There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Bagsbury, I hope.”

His consideration for her, even at such a moment, touched her. The tremulous brightness of her eyes would have told him something if he had looked up at them. She herself had forgotten by that time where they were standing.

“It’s nothing—I mean nothing important. I want to see John for a minute.”

“It’s pretty early for him yet, isn’t it?” asked Jack. Still he would not look at her. They were standing just before the entrance to the bank, but she did not move to go in. Hillsmead came bustling up, and, as he passed them, lifted his hat in his latest and most impressive manner; but they looked at him with unseeing eyes. He would have had the same sort of reception had he been a six-gun field battery, or a circus parade with caged animals.

“Is it?” she asked listlessly. “He started before I did—oh, of course; he walks. I forgot that.”

Then her tone changed quickly. “I think I’ll go in and wait for him. It’ll be all right for me to stay in his office till he comes, won’t it?”

He nodded assent, and led the way into the bank. They passed Hillsmead as they turned in behind the rail, and Jack wondered why he wore that peculiar expression. But he did not think of Hillsmead for more than a fraction of a second.

He ushered Dick into the private office, raised a window, and placed a chair for her near by where she could feel the breeze. “I don’t believe it will be very long before he comes,” he said.

Then with an effort he added: “I can’t stay here. I—I have my work, you see—”

He turned toward the door, but before he reached it she spoke his name.

“Don’t go away, Jack. I want—tell me what you started to tell me out there.”

She had not taken the chair he had placed for her, but was standing close by the window. He could not see her face.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “You had answered me already. It was wrong in me to try to compel you to do it more directly. I presumed on your liking me, and wanting to be kind to me.”

He dropped down in John’s big desk chair, and, bending forward, pressed his clasped hands together between his knees.

“It is just what I tried to tell you a week ago last night in the Bagsburys’ library,” he went on, speaking slowly and precisely; “nothing but just this: that I know what it really means now to love you, Dick. I didn’t know those other times when I told you. You were right about that. Now that I really understand, I can see how little I understood before. And until that night, I hoped that you knew I really understood, and that you—”

If he had looked at her, he would have stopped there, but his eyes were still averted, and he labored painfully on through a bog of words, until at last, mercifully, she interrupted him.

“That wasn’t what you told me the other night. You only told me that you had found out that I was right when I said you didn’t—you didn’t—know. John came in then, and I—”

But then the words she had meant to say suddenly refused to be said. For the first time she realized that they were not true. He did not change his position, but she heard his breath coming quicker. He was holding himself hard.

“I suppose I did commit such a piece of idiocy as that. It’s just what I’d be likely to do. I’m getting tired of being such an utterly—hopeless—”

It was her hand, laid lightly on his lips, that checked him there. “You mustn’t say such things about yourself any more,” she said. She took her hand away, but remained standing close beside him.

Still he did not raise his eyes.

“You are stupid this morning, though,” she said, and her voice was quivering. “Jack—Jack, are you—going to make me—”

Then, at last, he rose swiftly to his feet; and he looked at her as though to make up in that first moment for a six months’ blindness. He caught her hands timidly, as though he expected that they would resist; but they lay quite contentedly in his and he gripped them tighter.

“Do they mean what they’re telling me?” he asked breathlessly. “Do you know what they’re telling me?” But he needed no other answer than what he saw in her face, and though he let go her hands, it was that he might hold her close in the circle of his arms.

“You didn’t believe what I said that night, did you, Dick? You knew what I was trying to say.”

A tremulous little sigh of complete happiness was all her answer at first, but afterward she said:—

“Yes, I knew, of course, all the time. I told myself that you meant that you had found out you didn’t care, and I tried to make myself believe it. But if I’d been afraid that I really should believe it—”

He interrupted her, but not by speaking.

There are occasions when arbitrary divisions of time, such as minutes, cease to have any particular significance, and we can but guess from collateral evidence how much later it was when Dick, after a glance into the street below, said with a laugh,—

“There comes John, now.”

“Let him come. He’s a malevolent sort of wretch. He laid his plans, you see, to come down and interrupt us again, just at a—a critical moment; but for once he’s too late. We foiled him.”

“We?” she questioned demurely. “He’d have been here in plenty of time if—”

But she should not have expected to be allowed to finish a sentence like that.

“Jack! Let me go. Please let me go. Oh, he’s coming!”

“It will be such a fine surprise for Mr. Bagsbury,” he answered placidly.

But John was not to have his surprise just then. Before he reached the outer office he was stopped by Mr. Peters.

“There’s a good one on us, Mr. Bagsbury. We can’t get into either of the big vaults. The time-locks are still going. They ought to have come open a quarter of an hour ago. Curtin says he set them just as usual, but I suppose he must have wound them a little too far. That would be easy enough to do. They’re likely to come open any minute now.”

“Where is Curtin?” John asked.

“He’s somewhere about. Oh, I guess he’s in the telephone box.”

There was, after all, a fundamental error in Melville Sponley’s calculations which would probably have beaten him even if luck had turned things differently; if, for instance, Curtin had not chosen that particular moment for his telephoning. The Bear had never in the course of the fight, and particularly not in this last turn of it, reckoned upon the quickness of John’s intuitions. Most men would have taken the obvious explanation instead of the far more remote one, and until it was too late would have waited for the vaults to open themselves. John would have been too late had he been obliged to wait for the laborious processes of reason to guide him; but thanks to insight, or imagination, or genius, or whatever you may be pleased to call it, he moved swiftly. Before Peters had finished speaking, John understood the whole trick, and, what is more to the purpose, he had no doubt of his understanding.

He looked about thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said to Peters:—

“Don’t interfere in what’s going to happen. I know exactly what I’m going to do.”

With that he walked rapidly toward the open door of the telephone box.

He had no intention of stealing up and taking Curtin unawares, but chance brought it about. The rubber matting deadened his footfalls, and as he drew nearer, a movement by one of the clerks attracted Curtin’s attention in the other direction. Even at that, had it not been for the intoxication induced by the whiskey and by the excitement of the moment, Curtin must have perceived John’s presence before the Banker had come within a single pace of him. But as it happened, John was not an arm’s length away when Curtin said, “They think it’ll come open in a minute.”

It was not, as Sponley thought, discretion that stopped him then, but a big, lean forearm which came under his chin, bending his head back suddenly so that every muscle in his body turned limp as rags and the terrible grip of the inner crook of an elbow which throttled him. As his hands involuntarily flew to release his throat, John caught the receiver away from him and clapped it to his own ear. He heard Sponley say,—

“Locked it up till twelve, didn’t you?”

Then he rang off, and tightening his grip on Curtin, backed out of the cabinet. Every man in the bank, save the one who remained deep in oblivion in the inner private office, came running to the spot, but they did not need John’s quick admonition not to interfere.

Curtin had ceased even to appear to struggle. He simply hung, so much dead weight, from John Bagsbury’s rigid elbow.

“I don’t know whether I’ve broken your neck or not. I hope not. Come into my office. There are some things I’d like to have you tell me.”

He let his arm relax, and Curtin tumbled in a heap on the floor.

With an exclamation of impatience John lifted him, and half dragged, half led him down the aisle. The door of the outer office was open. When he reached the inner one, he kicked it open and thrust Curtin forward. The man went staggering across the room, until he stumbled and fell upon the cracked old leather sofa which groaned under his sudden impact.

Jack Dorlin had taken Dick by the shoulders and gently pulled her out of Curtin’s zigzag course; then they stood quite still watching him as he lay there, with one hand fumbling at his throat.

Dick knew that John Bagsbury was standing in the doorway. She could hear his loud, slow breathing, but she did not turn to look at him, for she guessed that the expression in his face was one that she would rather not be able to remember. He was looking at her and at Jack in a puzzled way, as though he suspected them of being merely a hallucination. Dick was the first to speak:—

“I think he is fainting. Will you get some water, Jack?”

The sound of her voice brought John Bagsbury to himself again. “I did not know you were in here,” he said simply. Then, as Jack Dorlin left the room, he added: “I’m glad you were. I was pretty mad. I was—I was all right until I felt him in my hands, but that was too much for me.”

Without reply she moved toward the sofa.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“To loosen his collar,” she replied laconically. “Somebody’s got to do it.”

“I will,” he said, and with shaking hands he did.

Curtin revived quickly when Jack Dorlin dashed the water in his face, and he sat up feebly and looked about the room. Dick turned away to the window, and in a moment Jack stepped to her side.

“Why are all those people waiting out there?” she asked in an undertone.

He glanced down into the street. There was, as on yesterday, a little knot of people standing about the door.

“Come here and look, Mr. Bagsbury,” said Jack, quietly.

It was not the angry man of five minutes ago, nor the John Bagsbury who had just been talking to Dick, nothing but the Banker who spoke to Jack Dorlin, after a glance out of the window.

“I have some business to talk over with Mr. Curtin,” he said swiftly; “but I’ve no time for that just now. Will you look after him, Dorlin, until I’m at liberty again?”

Without waiting for Jack to reply, he strode out of the office and shut the door behind him.

“I suppose I’d better go,” said Dick.

Jack was very close to her, standing between her and Curtin, and he spoke almost in a whisper: “I suppose so. I wish you were my prisoner instead of—”

There is your chance, Curtin. You know it is less than a ten-foot drop from that open window to the sidewalk. Once out there, you are safe enough. It will hardly be worth while trying to prove anything against you in a court of law; all you are afraid of is John Bagsbury. If you will be quick, he will not be able to get his hands on you again.

He thought of all that. If he could have had one good drink of whiskey, he would have tried it; but as it was, he only took a hesitating step toward the window, and Dick saw.

“Be careful, Jack!” she said.

He turned quickly about and understood. “Do you feel that breeze too much, Mr. Curtin? Don’t move. I’ll close the window.”

When he had closed and locked it, Dick was gone.

“Thank you,” said Curtin.

The narrowness of his escape from such a blunder made Jack uncomfortable, but exceedingly alert. He sat in John’s chair, and for what seemed to him half the morning his eyes at least never wandered from the man on the sofa.

It was really a little less than half an hour before John Bagsbury came back into the room. He was still only the Banker, quick of speech and placid of mind.

“Now, I’m ready to talk with you, Mr. Curtin. No—don’t go, Dorlin. We have arranged for what currency we need for the present, and there’ll be some experts here in a few minutes now, to see if they can do anything with the vaults.”

“Are they going to run us again to-day?” asked Jack.

“I don’t think so,” said the Banker, smiling. “Those people we saw were bringing their money back. They didn’t want it for more than one night.”

He turned to Curtin. “Mr. Sponley is doing a good morning’s work,” he said. “He’s on the floor himself, and from the way it looks now he will beat Pickering inside of two hours. If he does that, of course they may run us again.”

The Banker looked thoughtfully out of the window for a moment, then he continued: “You have done a good many questionable things, Mr. Curtin, since you came here six months ago, and you have done one or two things in the last day or two that are unquestionable. I am inclined to think that I can have you committed to prison for a considerable term of years. I think there is enough in what you told Hauxton Tuesday afternoon, and in your manipulating the time-locks yesterday, to accomplish that. But I’m not sure that I want to. I should gain nothing, not even the personal satisfaction for an injury. You’ve been acting on instructions, I suppose. I have still another hand to play with the man who gave you those instructions.”

“He’ll beat you,” said Curtin, sullenly.

“And I want you to act in my interest while I play it,” John went on evenly. “That course can’t be less to your advantage than the one you’ve been following. I want you now to answer some questions. When will those vaults come open?”

“I don’t—”

“The truth!” thundered John, moving forward, and Curtin went white. “Tell me the truth, Mr. Curtin.”

“At twelve o’clock.”

“That is true,” said John, “I know. Now please tell me just how you came to do it.”

“Oh, damn you!” said Curtin, brokenly. “Damn both of you! You’ll tear me to pieces between you. He made me do it.”

“I know he did. I want you to tell me how.”

Sullenly, brazenly, fearfully, shiftily, and with many intervals of feeble blasphemous ravings against the two strong men who had ground him between them, Curtin told the long story, and John listened with half his mind, while the other half was making plans. But at last something caught his whole attention.

“Say that again,” he commanded. “You tell me that Sponley laid violent hands on you, yesterday afternoon, in the bar-room of the Eagle Café? Was there a witness present?”

“The barkeeper.”

John sprang to his feet. “That’s what I want,” he said exultantly, and his jaws came together with a snap. “Dorlin, will you order a carriage, quick? We’ll have to cut it fine.”

Then his strong lips bent in an ironical smile.

“You’ll come with me, Mr. Curtin, to the nearest justice and swear out a warrant for Sponley’s arrest on a charge of assault and battery.”