There were three policemen sitting in the room when he entered. He identified himself, and they asked him to sit down. One of them went out. The remaining two were in shirtsleeves and seemed to be merely waiting around. In a little while a gray-haired man entered, followed by a detective who carried a cheap canvas zipper bag which he set on a desk near the door. The detective introduced himself to Shelton, and asked him to repeat his description of the jewelry. Shelton did so in some detail, answering more specific questions as they occurred to the detective.
The gray-haired man had slumped into a chair. Now he sat staring at the floor. Shelton slowly realized, as he described the jewelry, that this was the thief; for the man seemed resigned, very tired, and completely at home in the situation.
The detective went at last to the desk and opened the zipper bag and laid out the jewelry for Shelton to inspect. Shelton glanced at it and said it was his, picking up a wedding ring which had his name and his wife’s engraved on the inside.
“We’ll have the coat for you by tomorrow and maybe the silver, too,” the detective said, idly arranging the jewelry in a pattern on the desk as he spoke. Shelton felt that the detective was getting at something from the way he played with the jewelry. The detective completed the pattern on the desk and then turned his broad, dark face toward Shelton and said, “Is there anything else you lost?”
Shelton’s hand, of its own accord, moved toward his heart as he said, “That’s all I can remember.”
The detective turned his whole body now and sat easily on the edge of the desk. “You didn’t lose any money?”
The gray-haired thief raised his head, a mystified look clouding his face.
“Money?” asked Shelton. And yet he could not help adding, “What money?” Just curiously.
“We found this on him,” the detective said, reaching into the bag and taking out five rolled-up wads of money wrapped in red rubber bands. Shelton’s heart hurt him when he saw the rubber bands, because they, more than any of the other items, were peculiarly his. They were the rubber bands he always used in his office.
“There’s $91,000 here,” the detective said.
The thief was looking up at Shelton from his chair, an expression of wounded bewilderment drawing his brows together. The detective merely sat on the desk, an observer; the moment suddenly belonged only to Shelton and the thief.
Shelton stared at the money without any expression on his face. It was too late to think fast; he had no idea what sort of mind this stolid detective had and he dared not hesitate long enough to sound the man out. A detective, Shelton knew, is higher than a cop; is more like a businessman, knows more. This one looks smart, and yet maybe...
Shelton broke into a smile and touched one of the wads of bills that lay on the desk. (Oh, the 91,000; oh, the touch of it!) Sweat was running down his back; his heart pained like a wound. He smiled and stalled for lime. “That’s a lot of money,” he said softly, frantically studying the detective’s eyes for a sign.
But the detective was impassive, and said, “Is it yours?”
“Mine?” Shelton said, with a weak laugh. Longingly he looked at the solid wads. “I wish it were, but it isn’t. I don’t keep 91 thou—”
The thief, a tall man, stood up quickly and pointed to the money. “What the hell is this?” he shouted, amazed.
The detective moved toward him, and he sat down again. “It’s his. I took it out of the safe with the other stuff.”
“Take it easy,” the detective said.
“Where did I get it, then?” the thief demanded in a more frightened tone. “What’re you trying to do, pin another job on me? I only pulled one, that’s all! You asked me and I told you.” And, pointing directly up at Shelton’s face, he said, “He’s pullin’ something!”
The detective, as he turned to Shelton, was an agonizingly expressionless man who seemed to have neither pulse nor point of view. He simply stood there, the law with two little black eyes. “You’re sure,” he said, “that this is not your money?”
“I ought to know,” Shelton said, laughing calmly.
The detective seemed to catch the absurdity of it, and very nearly smiled. Then he turned to the thief and, with a nod of his head, motioned him outside. The two policemen walked out behind him.
They were alone. The detective, without a word, returned to the desk and put the jewelry back into the zipper bag. Without turning his head, he said that they would return the stuff to Shelton in the morning. And then he picked up one of the heavy wads, but instead of dropping it into the bag he hefted it thoughtfully in his palm and turned his head to Shelton. “Lot of dough,” he said.
“I’ll say,” Shelton agreed.
The detective continued placing the wads in the bag. Shelton stood a little behind him and to one side, watching as best he could for the slightest change in the man’s expression. But there was none; the detective might have been asleep but for his open eyes. Shelton wanted to leave — immediately. It was impossible to know what was happening in the detective’s head.
And yet Shelton dared not indicate his desperation. He smiled again, and shifted his weight easily to one foot and started to button his coat, and said — as if the question were quite academic — “What do you fellas do with money like that?”
The detective zipped the bag shut. “Money like what?” he asked evenly.
A twinge of pain shot through Shelton’s chest at the suspicious reserve in the detective’s question. “I mean, money that’s not claimed,” he amended.
The detective walked past him toward the door. “We wait,” he said, and opened the door.
“I mean, supposing it’s never claimed?” Shelton asked, following him, still smiling as though with idle curiosity.
“Hot money is never claimed,” the detective said. “Well just wait. Then we’ll start looking around.”
“I see.”
Shelton walked with the detective to the door of the precinct station, and he even talked amiably, and then they said a pleasant good night.
Staring at the pavement rolling under the wheels of his car, he could summon neither feeling nor thought. It was only when he opened the door of his house, the house that had once contained the fortune of his life, that his numbness flowed away, and he felt weak and ill.
“There must be a way to get it back,” she began.
“How?”
“You mean to tell me—?”
“I mean to tell you!” he shouted, and got to his feet. “What’ll I do, break into the station house?”
“But they’ve got laws against robbery!”
In reply, Shelton pulled his collar open and climbed the stairs and went to bed.
These days, Shelton rides to business very slowly. The few friends he has on the block have grown accustomed to the gray and haunted stare in his eyes. The children seem to quiet down as he guides his car through their street games.
Sometimes he goes by the police station, and passing it he slows down and peers through the car window at it, but he always continues on.