The letter went on. “I was shocked to recognize as one of the hooligans holding up the Quigly Avenue subway train last Friday evening a boy for whom I’d predicted better things.” I could hear her voice, reading this to me. Hefty Henniker, without a doubt. “My duty as a citizen is obviously to impart my knowledge to the authorities,” she went on. I moaned, and read further. “However, rather than interrupt what I am certain will be a splendid career, Norman, I will be satisfied if you and your companions mail to me (Registered, please) all the money and other goods stolen in your little adventure. I will see that proper disposition is made of your ‘loot’, and promise that your name will not enter the picture if you do the Right Thing. Should I fail to receive this parcel by Wednesday morning, Norman, I will (more in sorrow than in anger) telephone the police and tell them the identity of the ‘Brains’ behind the train robbery. Yours very sincerely,” and she finished with her name, (Miss) Hanna Henniker, and her address.
I convened the battle staff to arrange our surrender. “Who’s President of this lash-up?” I asked, opening the meeting.
“You are,” Brother Thing said. “Maybe we need a fresh election,” Mouse said, clutching his shopping bag to his lap.
“If you were a cop, and picked me up, who would you finger for my partners in crime?” I asked. “Be reasonable. Hips Henniker hasn’t only got me nailed to the wall, she’s got the whole Hayden Street Social & Athletic Club under her heel.”
“You mean you’d fink?” Squint asked me.
“I wouldn’t have to,” I said. “You’d be in cells right down the hall to mine in fifteen minutes, even if I didn’t give the johns anything but name, rank, and serial number.”
“How would they prove that we were anywheres near the subway when the heist came off?” Thing demanded.
“Fingerprints,” I said. “We must have left some prints on the wallets and that other stuff we handled.”
“Now the Presidential mind is perking,” Mouse said. “Five days late, true; but it’s perking.” He set the shopping bag on the meeting table. “We’ll all watch you, Prez, while you wrap it up; then we’ll walk you down to the Post Office to mail it,” he said.
“Thank you for your unquestioning trust, Brother Mouse,” I said. “For the benefit of the other brethren, I suggest we audit the take before we ship it back to its original owners.”
Believe me, a grand and a half plus enough gadgets to stock a hockshop isn’t the easiest package to watch a civil servant stamp and toss into the Registered Mail sack.
As the mail went out, I walked home alone, figuring in my head that my crime of the century, which lacked only my talent for keeping a rag over my snout, had cost me twenty bucks personal money.
We had two more meetings that week. One was to bounce me out as Prez (Brother Thing got the gavel and First Cigar); the other was to plan for that stupid dance. I was delegated to get the tickets printed, which I hope you’ll buy two or more of, one dollar contribution each, now you know the whole story behind our money raising projects.
Almost the whole story.
The rest I haven’t told the membership of the Hayden Street Social & Athletic Club, even. Maybe I never will.
It was this letter, pink envelope, “PERSONAL” and all, with a foreign stamp, that I got this morning. The postmark said San Juan Del Monte, Morelos, Mexico.
Inside was this snapshot of Miss Henniker, standing in the sunshine and smiling. “Dear Norman,” began the note she’d written on the back of her photo. “My lyric poetry will, I believe, flourish splendidly in these salubrious climes. Give my thanks to your companions, and ‘Put not thy trust in Woman.’ ” She signed it, Sincerely.
So come on, buddy, take a couple tickets. That Katzenjammer Six is no New York Philharmonic, but I guarantee they’re loud.
An Exercise in Insurance
by James Holding
Dostoyevsky proclaims that “true security is to be found in social solidarity”, but there are occasions — and here we learn of one of them — when more primitive measures must suffice.
When three masked men walked into the bank with sawed-off shotguns that afternoon and calmly began to clean out the tellers’ cash drawers, I wasn’t even nervous. I was sure they weren’t going to get away with it. I was perfectly certain that five straight-shooting policemen, strategically placed, would be waiting for the robbers outside the bank door when they emerged.
That’s the way it would have happened, too, if it hadn’t been for Miss Coe, Robbsville’s leading milliner.
As proprietress and sole employee of a hat shop, just around the comer from the bank and felicitously called Miss Coe’s Chapeux, Miss Coe fabricated fetching hats for many of the town’s discriminating ladies. She was an excellent designer, whose products exhibited a fashionable flair, faintly French, that more than justified her use of the French word in her shop name.
Miss Coe was middle-aged, sweet, pretty, methodical and utterly reliable. Indeed, her dependability was often the subject of admiring comment from local ladies who had become somewhat disillusioned by the unreliability of other tradesmen. “You can always count on Miss Coe,” they frequently told each other. “If she says she’ll have the hat ready on Tuesday at eleven, she’ll have it ready. She’ll be putting in the last stitch as you come in the door.” I had even heard remarks of this kind at my own dinner table, since my wife was one of Miss Coe’s steady customers.
But perhaps you are wondering what Miss Coe, a milliner — reliable and methodical as she undoubtedly was — could possibly have to do with the robbery of our bank P
Well, you may remember that some years ago, several of the companies that insured banks against robbery agreed to reduce the premium rates on such insurance if the insured bank was willing to conform to a certain security arrangement.
This meant, simply, that to win the lower insurance rate, a bank must maintain a robbery alarm system somewhere outside the bank itself; that in the event of a robbery, a warning bell or buzzer must sound elsewhere so that police could be instantly alerted without interference, and arrive on the scene in time to prevent the robbery and even, hopefully, to capture the bandits in the act.
In those days of rather primitive electrical wiring, the insurance companies did not insist that, to meet this security requirement, the outside alarm be necessarily installed in the police station itself. Any other location where the ringing of the alarm would unfailingly initiate instant action would serve as well.
The potential savings on insurance premiums made possible in this way were quite substantial. Our bank accordingly decided to take advantage of them. As Cashier, I was entrusted with the job of selecting a suitable outside alarm site, preferably somewhere near the bank, since the installation charges would thus be minimal.
After some thought, and with the memory of my wife’s recent words to a bridge partner, “You’ll find Miss Coe utterly dependable,” fresh in my mind, I went around to see the milliner on my lunch hour one day.
After introducing myself I explained to her that the bank intended to install an alarm buzzer somewhere in the neighborhood. I explained the alarm’s purpose. Then I went on diplomatically, “Miss Coe, I have never heard you referred to among the ladies of my acquaintance without some warm testimonial to your complete reliability, to your calm, methodical turn of mind.”
“How nice,” she murmured, pleased. “I do try to be precise and methodical about things, it’s true. I find life less complicated that way.”
“Yes. And that’s exactly why I am going to ask you to permit us to install our alarm buzzer in your shop.”