“Knapp was very angry over having been compelled to help dig up his loot. He vowed he would get even. Some time after he had been locked up in Erie, he called us in and informed us, in profound confidence, that he had buried twenty-five hundred dollars in gold out on his place, and if we would take him out there he would show us where it was. The story was plausible, and three of the fellows got a team, and drove out seventeen miles with Knapp.
“They took three spades and a pick with them. Knapp began a lot of maneuvering, pacing off distances from house to barn, and from barn to tree, and from tree to stump. They followed him, and he tramped about for an hour, leading them through briers and swamps, and finally back toward the barn again.
“ ‘There is the place,’ he announced.
“They began to dig as if their hope of eternal salvation depended upon it. Knapp encouraged them to greater exertion, and told them he had buried the gold seven feet deep to have it secure. They toiled for hours, digging to a depth of eight feet, but finding nothing. One of them, who knew unbroken earth when he dug it, accused Knapp of tricking.
“ ‘This is the place,’ insisted the old man. ‘There is twenty-five hundred dollars in gold in two canvas bags.’
“They fell to again. It was a broiling hot day. They toiled until toward sundown, when the old man began to chuckle.
“ ‘That’ll do,’ he said. ‘I’m even.’
“ ‘Even for what?’ they asked.
“ ‘For the two days I had to dig,’ said Knapp.
“ ‘And there’s no gold here?’ they demanded wrath fully.
“ ‘There’s gold all right, but I cannot remember where it is,’ said Knapp.
“They drove him back to Erie, and locked him up again. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to sixteen years in the Alleghany Penitentiary. His wife was released. Knapp played insane, and beat the penitentiary. He was transferred to the lunatic division, and, soon after, he sawed the bars, escaped, and never was caught.”
The Robbery at Nopal
by Eugene P. Lyle, Jr
Into the Silent Desert Vanished the Club-Footed Thief of Nopal, But a Little Grain of Sand Left a Clew
I
The bank had not been opened for business ten minutes when the club-footed robber entered. The red tile floor still glistened from its usual morning wetting down with a hose, which was done as much for the cooling effect of swift evaporation in the dry air as to flush out the sifting of desert dust. Facing the entrance behind his cage, big Bart Stollard was cashing a check for Doc Avery, the druggist next door; and Mrs. Merriwether, fidgeting behind Avery, was the only other customer in the place. Mr. Trawl, the president, had just come in, trim and severe and very much the banker as always. Nodding curtly to Bart’s father, who was cashier, vice president and bookkeeper, he had passed on to his desk by the open window, which looked out across the shaded sidewalk into the hot glare of Nopal’s one business street.
Nothing much was stirring out there when the clatter of a motor cycle broke the stillness. From the direction of the paved highway it came, raising the dust, then swerved in a half circle and stopped in front of the bank. Dismounting, the rider leaned his machine against a pillar of the arcade, and crossed the sidewalk with a decided limp toward the door of the bank. Mr. Trawl supposed he was the messenger from the Southwest National of El Metropole, with the ten thousand dollars in ones, fives and twenty-dollar bills to take care of the month-end demand for cash. He was thick-set, coatless, dusty. An old brief case slung over his shoulder presumably contained the expected currency.
And then, before anybody rightly knew what was happening, the man was inside, and masked, and proceeding to hold up the bank. From first to last he spoke no word.
Big Bart Stollard, slow and deliberate as usual as he counted over the bills for Doc Avery, became aware of a black object thrust toward him between the bars of the wicket. It was the short barrel of an automatic pistol leveled at his breast. His good-natured face stiffened to rigid attention. The man had wedged himself in between Mrs. Merriwether and Doc Avery.
“Where’s your manners, young man?” Mrs. Merriwether squeaked indignantly.
She did not know that the bank was being robbed. But chubby Doc Avery did. The hand that held the pistol was resting on his shoulder, and he twitched and perspired, trying to keep very quiet. Over Avery’s shoulder Bart Stollard looked into a pair of eyes fixed on him through the slits of a gray felt mask. The mask covered the face down to the man’s tight-lipped mouth and up to the visor of a soiled checkered woolen cap. Bart spoke quietly to his father, to the frail, resolute man at the bookkeeper’s desk behind him.
“Please, dad, don’t try anything. I’m all right.”
“You won’t try anything either, Bart?”
“No, dad, I’ll be good.”
The robber gestured with the pistol. Bart nodded. Hands in air he backed toward his father until he stood on a line with him, both facing the eyes behind the gray mask at the teller’s wicket.
“Keep backing toward the wall, dad. That’s what he wants.”
They did that, and the robber stepped out from his usurped place in the line in front of Mrs. Merriwether. The old lady gasped to see that he was masked.
“My gracious, what can a body do?”
He showed her. He motioned her and Doc Avery backward to the rear wall beside the Stollards. Only Mr. Trawl, a petrified spectator at his desk, was left. The pistol motioned to him to join the others; he edged side-wise through the gate, then backed as before royalty. Doing so he brushed against the edge of the elder Stollard’s desk and knocked off a metal box in which the notes of the bank’s debtors were kept. The box struck the tile floor with a terrific crash. They all jumped — all except the robber.
“He’s deaf as a post,” muttered Doc Avery.
“Don’t stoop for that box, Mr. Trawl,” Bart shouted. “He’ll shoot you. He thinks you’re reaching for a gun. Come back here. That’s right. It’s no use to resist.”
Now the man moved swiftly. Dipping down at each stride in his violent limp he came skittering through the gate toward them. A monstrous cripple he seemed, and in his unremitting silence there was death alert to strike should they fail to comprehend the viperish pantomime of the instrument in his hand. Bart Stollard had a full view of him now. Tight over his heavy coatless body he wore a soiled chambray shirt, once blue, but faded to an ashen gray. Also he wore gaberdine riding breeches, old and grease-spotted, and high laced boots, one with a raised sole. His mask was wet with perspiration.
Throughout he spoke no human intelligent word, and once only mouthed an inarticulate growl. This was when, confronting them lined up against the wall, he had to make the same gesture twice and still they did not understand. He reached out with his left hand then, and sank his fingers in the elder Stollard’s thin shoulder and whirled him half round, pushing him face first against the wall. Bart Stollard lowered his hands, but the robber swung upon him and struck up his chin with the barrel of the pistol. Bart thought of the sidewinder, the desert rattlesnake that attacks man, as he felt the cold deadliness in the pupils of the eyes leveled on him. With the others he faced the wall, his hands over his head.
The rest was incredibly swift. Out of the tail of his eye Bart saw the robber dart into the open vault, skimming unevenly as he went — the sidewinder again in his horrible crippled haste. He gave them no chance for a break. Repeatedly the checkered cap, the masked face, reappeared, to vanish again within the vault. Bart could guess what he was doing in there. He was stuffing his brief case with packets of bills. He was stuffing the last of them in when he emerged. Keeping the automatic trained on them, he skittered backward as far as the gate when he faced about and ran for the street. Jostling past two Nopal merchants just coming in, he crossed the sidewalk, straddled his motor cycle, and kicked the starter. With a snort like a startled horse the machine leaped forward.