The banker and the bear

Next morning Bagsbury’s bank had a joke, that is, the younger and less serious employees thought they had a joke,—Curtin had come down early. Ridiculously early, too; not only before his own hour, which was any time in the middle of the morning, but before John Bagsbury himself appeared, or Jackson, the cashier. There was no visible press of work which seemed to demand Curtin’s attention, for he stood about in a lost way, apparently unable to make up his mind to do anything. Every one who passed Jack Dorlin’s desk paused to make jocular speculations, principally to the effect that Curtin’s alarm clock must have gone wrong. Curtin with an alarm clock!

But Jack Dorlin found it hard to enjoy the joke; he could not satisfactorily convince himself that it was a joke at all. Neither he nor Dick had ever told John Bagsbury that Sponley had lied in saying that he did not know Jervis Curtin, though now, after six months, the lie still troubled them. Throughout the game which they knew was being played about the bank both of them were handicapped by a lack of familiarity with the rules. It was like nothing else in their experience. Up to within a year they had never met any one who was an expert at skating over the ice of the law where it was thin. The exact knowledge which enables men to avoid by the merest fraction the breaking of this law, which must on no account be broken, and encourages them to defy this other law with impunity, this classified knowledge was a science of whose very existence they had never been made aware. To their minds such things as conspiracies and spies and betrayals were things which occurred only in a certain sort of novel which they seldom read. They could not think of a real detective without a smile. They heartily distrusted Sponley, and they suspected Curtin, but they could not speculate upon the possible relation between these two without feeling rather foolish. They decided again and again that it was nothing, but just as often they again began wondering what it was. And the fear of making themselves ridiculous kept them of speaking of it to John.

Jack’s distrust of Curtin was not nearly as strong as it had been when he entered the bank. This was not so much because he seemed a good-humored, easy-going fellow,—Jack could take that cordial manner for just about what it was worth,—but because he believed that Curtin’s ignorance and utter unimportance in the bank reduced his capacity for rascality to almost nothing. But Jack’s suspicions never more than slept, and any unusual act of Curtin’s, no matter how innocent it might look, was enough to waken them.

Jack had been promoted to the remittance ledgers; his desk stood at the rear end of an aisle which ran nearly the length of the room, behind the rank of tellers’ cages and in front of the vaults. At the other end of the aisle was the door which opened on the two private offices. Just before this door stood a large chest of drawers where was kept a large part of the bank’s collateral securities. This chest was, of course, directly in Jack Dorlin’s line of vision, and when, a few minutes after Curtin’s arrival, he raised his eyes from his work, he saw the assistant cashier searching busily through one of the drawers. That was nothing, and his eyes fell to his work again, but when he glanced up, Curtin was still there. Fifteen—twenty minutes passed; Curtin was going through that chest systematically from top to bottom.

Jack flung down his pencil impatiently, for again he had caught himself in the act of speculating on the old theme, on Curtin’s motives. There was no possible reason why Curtin shouldn’t look over the collateral if he chose; there might be some excellent reason why he should. But then, why had he come early? Why didn’t he set some one else to finding what he wanted? Why could he not wait until Jackson came down? Jackson knew everything there was in that chest.

At that moment Hillsmead walked past his desk, and Jack grinned to see him making straight for Curtin. They talked but a moment, and Curtin walked away to his own desk, while Hillsmead retraced his steps toward the rear of the bank. He stopped to say to Jack:—

“That man’s a regular fool. He’s been looking in that collateral box for half an hour; but when I asked him if I could help him find anything he was looking for, he said he was just as much obliged, but he’d found it, and then he went away. I’d like to know what he was looking for.”

“Postage-stamps, maybe,” Jack suggested.

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t look there for postage-stamps. They don’t keep anything but collateral in that box. When he wants to mail things, he just gives ’em to an office boy.”

Jack often wished that he had enough leisure during the day to enjoy Hillsmead properly. He used to chuckle over him in the evening, and quote him to Dick; but then there were other things to think about in the evening.

It was growing late that same afternoon, long after closing time, and concentration on columns of figures was becoming difficult, when Jack, glancing up, saw the cashier come out of the office with his street coat on, which meant that he was going home. Then a few minutes later he saw John Bagsbury follow him, and he wished his own work was done so that he could go, too—just where John Bagsbury was going, and have an hour with Dick before dinner-time. He sat there in a brown study until recalled to himself by seeing Curtin go through the doorway into the outer private office and then, turning to the right, enter John Bagsbury’s room.

“Go in there, if you like,” he said to himself, apostrophizing the assistant cashier; “go and stay as long as you please and steal the furniture; I’m tired of watching you.” But in spite of himself, he did watch. Again and again he forced himself back to his work, but he was aware all the while that Jervis Curtin had not yet come out of that door. And after half an hour in which he did about ten minutes’ work, he gave up trying, and slipping from his high stool he walked slowly toward the door at the other end of the aisle.

When John Bagsbury had come in from lunch the day before, he had interrupted Curtin before he had told Sponley anything beyond the fact of Pickering’s visit to the bank. Acting on the hint Sponley had given him, Curtin at once set about to find out what was the nature of Pickering’s business with the bank. It was a simple matter for an officer in his position to discover that Pickering had made a deposit of one hundred thousand dollars, and had given his note for an additional five hundred thousand. That was complete enough information for anybody so far as Curtin could see, and he had given it to Sponley when the speculator came to see him that evening, with a good deal of self-congratulation upon his success. But Sponley was far from satisfied.

“What collateral did he put up?” he demanded.

“None, I suppose. His note does not mention any collateral. It isn’t made out on the sort of form we use when we take collateral.”

“That doesn’t mean anything except that Bagsbury doesn’t want anybody to know what kind of security it was. That’s what I want you to find out for me.”

“I don’t see how I’m going to do it,” Curtin remonstrated. “If he’s gone to all that trouble to keep us from finding out, it isn’t likely that he’s left it around where anybody can see it. Probably it’s not with the other collateral at all.”

“Probably not,” Sponley assented.

“It’s ten to one,” the other continued, “that he’s put it somewhere among his private papers.”

“Well,” said Sponley, “doesn’t that simplify matters?”

Curtin glanced at him, then smiled uneasily in reply.

“What do you mean?”

“Only that if you know where a thing is likely to be, you stand a fair chance of finding it by looking there.”

Curtin was frightened, and he laughed.

“On the other hand,” he said, “if one can’t look there, he’s not so likely to find it.”

“Why can’t you?” Sponley asked quickly. “You know where he keeps his private papers, don’t you?”

Curtin answered coolly. Everything the man did was something of a pose. He posed to himself. Just now he really believed that he was cool.

“If that suggestion is made as a jest,” he said, “it seems to me rather unprofitable. If you mean it seriously, it’s an insult.”

“It’s neither a jest nor an insult,” said Sponley. “It’s business. Of course, if you’re squeamish about looking through a file of papers marked ‘private,’ you can look through the other collateral first. You may find what you want there; but if you don’t, I guess you’ll have to see the job through.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s not to be considered for a moment There’s no good talking any further about it.”

“It won’t be so difficult as it sounds,” Sponley continued evenly. “Bagsbury keeps all that sort of thing in the cabinet that stands in his office all day. It’s never locked. They take it into one of the vaults just before they lock up at night, but you’ll have nearly an hour after he’s gone home when the way will be clear. It’ll take a little management, but it won’t be difficult.”

“Look here,” said Curtin, “I will not hear any more. You’ve said rather too much as it is. What you suggest is outrageously, infernally insulting, and—”

“There’s no use in talking big,” Sponley cut in. “The job may be unpleasant, but you’ve got to do it.”

“I won’t do it,” Curtin almost shouted. Then more quietly: “If your own delicate sense of honor doesn’t tell you that it’s an insult to a gentleman to ask him to sneak and spy or perhaps crack a safe, why, you’ll have to take my word for it. But I don’t want anything more to do with you. I won’t stay in a position where I’m liable to that sort of damned insolence. You’d better leave my house at once. Do you understand me?”

Sponley laughed. The opportunity with such a man comes when the pendulum has swung back, when the brave, hot wrath has burned out of him. Sponley did not try to pacify Curtin. Curtin wished to be angry, did he? Well, he should be just as angry as he pleased.

“If you choose to call yourself a spy, nobody will take the trouble to deny it,” he said; “but you don’t gain anything by it. You must understand that this is exactly what I hired you for; not at all to be assistant cashier at the bank. You are in my employ; I may tell you to crack a safe for me sometime, and when I do, you’ll do it.”

“I may have been in your employ, as you say, up to five minutes ago, but I’m not now. Is that clear? You’ve made a mistake, that’s all. You’ve hired the wrong kind of man.”

“I think not,” said Sponley, smiling; “you are just the right kind of a man. You see, you’re not exactly independent. You’ve been spending a good deal of money lately; Mrs. Curtin has entertained a good deal—”

“You damned impertinent—”

“Ah! there you make your mistake. That is the only thing that is really pertinent at all. It’s just a question of money.”

Curtin grinned; he was trying to adopt Sponley’s tactics. “It seems to me,” he said (why would not the words come evenly?), “it seems to me that there I have as good a hold on you as you have on me. Your part in this business will hardly bear daylight.”

“I’m no such blunderer as that,” answered Sponley, tolerantly. “This is what will happen. I will tell Bagsbury that I have bought your stock, and then, since you are really grossly incompetent as assistant cashier, at the next directors’ meeting we will act on your resignation. And you can see what will happen after that. You owe me alone enough money to make a rather fine smash, and you have other creditors besides. You can console yourself by telling John Bagsbury any fanciful yarn you can think of about me.”

One could hardly say that Curtin listened, though he heard. He sat gripping the arms of his chair and stared. Sponley looked at him keenly. He could read the thoughts, though the blank face afforded no index.

“You see,” he went on, “you’re not the sort to take poverty easily. When a fellow like me or John Bagsbury goes broke, his case isn’t hopeless at all. We’re used to making money, and we know how to take care of ourselves. We can do it, even if we do have to start back at the beginning. But you’re different. You’ve never been able to earn any money. Your father took care of you at first, and then he left you his property, and your friends took care of that for you, and you and they have got rid of most of it. When a fellow like you has hard luck and gets smashed, he comes down after a while to hanging round his former friends, trying to beg the price of a drink.”

Curtin was trying to speak, but his shaking lips would not obey him. He rose from his chair and stood facing his persecutor.

“All right,” he said at last. “All right. You can do all you say you will. You can bust me up; but I’d rather have that than the other. I’d rather have that than sell my soul to you. That’s what you want. But, by God, you won’t get it!”

He began pacing the room, now swiftly, now slowly; Sponley sat still and watched him in silence for a moment. Then he asked:—

“Do you mind if I smoke? I want to think.”

Curtin nodded, without pausing in his nervous walk.

Sponley sat perfectly still. His gross body completely filled the wide arm-chair; there was something uncanny about his complete repose. You could as easily conceive of his receding from a position he had once taken, or relenting toward one who was in his power, as of a fat Indian idol’s answering a prayer for mercy. He did not look at Curtin, he only smoked and waited.

As for Curtin, he had made his brave speech. He had resisted temptation, and the glow of virtuous indignation and righteous resolve was fast turning to cold ashes.

And the minutes crept away till the big hand of the clock had made half its journey before Sponley spoke.

“Sit down a minute, Curtin, and we’ll talk this thing over. We’ve both got excited, and we’ve both talked big, and we’ve both pretty generally made fools of ourselves. That’s fun enough while it lasts; but when a fellow wakes up the next morning and has to face the consequences, he feels rather silly. If we don’t manage to hang together some way, why, I’ll be in an awkward fix, and you’ll be busted, and we’ll both wish we’d shown a little sense. Now I don’t ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself, and I never will ask you to. I don’t ask you to meddle with John Bagsbury’s private papers. This is a matter that concerns the bank, and you and I are as much a part of it as he is. But we’ll leave it this way: if you can find out what collateral it was that Pickering put up, why, it will help us both out. And if you can’t—well, we’ll talk about that later. Don’t say anything about it now. Take time to think it over. Good night.”

That was the reason why Curtin had puzzled the clerks by looking so thoroughly through the collateral box next morning. And now, for half an hour, he had searched drawer after drawer in the little oak cabinet in John Bagsbury’s private office. At first he listened intently for footsteps, but soon his quest became absorbing.

Finally it was rewarded. There were the yellow warehouse certificates. Lard! Forty thousand tierces!

And then the half-shut door behind him creaked as some one pushed it open. It was numbness rather than self-control that kept him still. Jack spoke,—

“I beg your pardon.”

The sound of the voice, the voice which was not John Bagsbury’s, restored Curtin to himself. He looked up.

“Ah, Mr. Dorlin! Are you looking for Mr. Bagsbury? He went home about an hour ago, I think. I want him myself. He’s put a certain paper away so carefully that we can’t find it.”

There was another step behind them and Sponley entered the office. He glanced about before he spoke.

“So I’ve missed the president again, have I? That seems to be sort of habit with me these days. However, it’s a matter of business, this time, that you can attend to, Mr. Curtin.”

With that he turned and bowed to Jack Dorlin. It was a polite, deliberate bow, which turned Jack out of the office as effectively as if it had been a whole platoon of police.