And that might have continued to be all; that might have been a portrait of Horatio Boggs to the very end of his colorless and uneventful existence, had he not, on that fourth of July, driven to the Jersey shore.
He’d long since left Philadelphia and Camden behind him. The scrub pines had thinned out; the tang of salt had come into the air. He’d been approaching Fisher’s Landing, when, abruptly, up ahead where a white cross arm said Cross Crossings Corefully, he had come upon sheer chaos and annihilation. A light sedan had been hit by a shore-bound express; reduced to a twisted mass. The train still blocked the crossing. The concrete was jammed with parked cars.
Applying the brakes of his coupé, turning off the ignition and carefully — very carefully and prudently — putting the key in his pocket, Mr. Boggs had joined the throngs of the curious. Worming his way into the front ranks of the crowd, he had reached the spot where two Jersey troopers in sky-blue uniforms were kneeling beside something half naked. Something quite terrible. Someone had said, “It’s Terry Colt.”
Mr. Boggs read the newspapers, of course. He knew who Terry Colt was. Terry Colt had commenced in the headlines in Prohibition days; he was out on bail, now, awaiting trial on the charge of smuggling aliens. But if there was any thrill to be found in gazing down upon a dead and mangled big shot, Mr. Boggs had left it abruptly to those with constitutions stronger than his own.
Nauseated, quite sick at his stomach, Mr. Boggs had turned away. Seeing for the instant in the death of Terry Colt, who had failed to cross a crossing carefully, simply a vindication of his own lifelong philosophy of prudence and caution, Mr. Boggs had wandered back along the tracks toward the road.
Here was a tire. Here a single spoke. There a tiny patch of blood-stained gray broadcloth. Here was Terry Colt’s shoe, tom from his foot. And there — Abruptly, Horatio Boggs had come to a halt. There, trampled deep into the marshy grass, was something which looked very much like a bond house runner’s leather wallet!
Then, upstairs in his room in West Philadelphia, after breakfast, the morning of the fifth, Mr. Boggs had sadly, and not deliriously as upon the day before, taken stock a second time of the contents of Terry Colt’s wallet. He’d spread out upon his bed one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three twenty dollar bills.
Counterfeits! The story of Terry Colt’s death had been in the morning Inquirer. Very early the morning of the fourth, it seemed, U. S. Treasury agents had raided an apartment in North Philadelphia. They’d arrested two men and a woman; confiscated copper plates for turning out counterfeit twenties and tens. Terry Colt, alone of those who had been in the apartment, had escaped. Flyers had gone out over the teletypes of four States. Later in the morning, a Jersey trooper had recognized Terry Colt at the wheel of his car; had given pursuit, and in his escape, Terry Colt had tried to push a train out of his way. There wasn’t any mention, of course, of a lost wallet. Because nobody knew that a wallet had been lost. Nobody, there in that excited and morbid crowd had seen drab, inconspicuous little Mr. Boggs swiftly tuck the leather case beneath his coat. He’d got away with it, all right. But what good had it done him?
He could see that Terry Colt’s bills weren’t genuine. The paper was thinner. Or was it, really? The ink seemed lighter. Or did it? What was it that the paper said about the confiscated plates? Why, it said that they were the work of a former U. S. Treasury engraver, and that had it been possible to use them with adequate ink upon at all adequate paper, they would have seemed perfect. Well, the paper and the ink would certainly have fooled Mr. Boggs. Ordinarily. Not now, of course. Not after he’d read that Terry Colt’s latest illegal racket was counterfeit currency. But once. Yes, and—
Mr. Boggs wondered abruptly whether these bills wouldn’t still fool a lot of people who didn’t know where they’d come from. Look at them! Numbered consecutively like real bills. Nothing very miraculous about it, maybe. Any job printer who printed consecutively numbered tickets or sales slips could have superimposed those numbers upon the engravings of the bills. But it went to show, thought Mr. Boggs, the infinite care and patience and finesse which had been taken with the whole job. Suppose these bills would fool even an expert, like Dan Meyers at the bank? Why, then a man could spend all of them. With impunity. Couldn’t he?
The line there at Dan Meyers’ grilled window moved on up. Telling himself not to worry — what was there to worry about? — if this sample bill taken at random from the lot didn’t pass muster, he could convince Dan that he’d got it quite innocently, couldn’t he? Mr. Boggs handed Dan Meyers his pass book and deposit slip.
An eternity passed. A million years.
Dan Meyers handed Mr. Boggs back his pass book, the deposit duly entered. Dan tossed the twenty into a pile of other twenties in a drawer. And Horatio Boggs stood there for a second, giddy, reeling!
Then his life-long prudence and caution asserted themselves. A uniformed armored car messenger who’d taken the place back of Mr. Boggs in line was stepping up to Dan’s window. Horatio Boggs elbowed in ahead of the messenger again. But Dan hadn’t even looked at that twenty! The possibility of Mr. Boggs handing him a note which was queer, hadn’t even remotely occurred to Dan. Dan, carelessly, had accepted the bill without the slightest examination.
“Dan,” said Mr. Boggs tremulously, “I wonder if you’d take a good look at that twenty I just— You see—” And now he was offering it gratuitously to Dan: the story he’d been going to tell Dan, if Dan challenged him. How he’d been having a beer in a taproom on South Broad. How the man next to him had offered the bartender a twenty which the bartender couldn’t change. And then how he, Mr. Boggs, the Good Samaritan, had taken three fives and five ones from his own wallet, and... “But I got to worrying about it afterwards, see? I read about this raid on a gang of counterfeiters out in North Philadelphia, and I—”
Was he talking too much, he wondered suddenly? Should he have hinted to Dan that he suspected the precise source of the bill? But no. No, he evidently hadn’t been talking too much. Dan had good-humoredly picked up the bill again; and felt it, this time; scrutinized it; turned it over and scrutinized its other side. And Dan’s expression hadn’t changed. It was smiling good humor, still. As if Dan understood perfectly what must have gone on in the mind of timid fussy little old Mr. Boggs — the inevitable childish fears following the changing of the twenty for an utter stranger.
“As good as gold,” Dan grinned.
Heart pumping wildly, head swimming in delirium, he left poor old Dan Meyers. Yes, poor old Dan Meyers — stuck there in his teller’s cage, accepting deposits, cashing checks, making up factory payrolls and handing them out to uniformed messengers, to the end of his unexciting days. He, Horatio Boggs, was free!
And he was free. But, prudent, cautious, sensible always, he wasn’t a damned fool about it. Some men would have dashed off to the South Seas carrying their fortunes, in cash, on their persons, and been robbed of it, or murdered for it in some native brothel. Not Mr. Boggs! Mr. Boggs realized that it would be far wiser to let the bank guard his fortune. And, prudent and cautious about that, too, he bided his time against the day when he could logically explain so large a cash deposit.
He let a week slip past. That following Friday, he cashed his weekly pay check from Cameron & Calahan, instead of, as he’d done for twenty-four years, depositing it
“Going down to Bowie, Saturday afternoon,” he said to Dan.
“And play the ponies?” Dan had his little joke.
“And maybe play the ponies,” Mr. Boggs confessed. Because that was where he was going to be clever. He intended actually to commence frequenting the tracks. Actually to get a reputation as a gambler.