The Dusty Drawer
by Harry Muheim[1]
We welcome another new name to the pages of EQMM — Harry Muheim. Mr. Muheim was born in San Francisco, graduated from Stanford University, and worked at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood before becoming a member of the United States Navy. He learned Japanese at the Navy Language School and was then sent to the Pacific as an interrogator and interpreter. After the war he went back to Stanford for his M.A. In 1949 he won the Albert M. Bender award for creative writing in California. Since 1950 he has lived near New York — “submerged in suburbia” — where he is on the faculty of New York University and in spare time is one of the regular writers for NBC’s Philco Television Playhouse. As a matter of fact, we seem to recall that Mr. Muheim adapted his own story, “The Dusty Drawer,” for TV, and very successfully too; it is the story of a college botany teacher who planned and executed a “sweet revenge.”
Norman Logan paid for his apple pie and coffee, then carried his tray toward the front of the cafeteria. From a distance, he recognized the back of William Tritt’s large head. The tables near Tritt were empty, and Logan had no desire to eat with him, but they had some unfinished business that Logan wanted to clear up. He stopped at Tritt’s table and asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”
Tritt looked up as he always looked up from inside his teller’s cage in the bank across the street. He acted like a servant — like a fat, precise butler that Logan used to see in movies — but behind the film of obsequiousness was an attitude of vast superiority that always set Logan on edge.
“Why, yes, Mr. Logan. Do sit down. Only please, I must ask you not to mention that two hundred dollars again.”
“Well, we’ll see about that,” said Logan, pulling out a chair and seating himself. “Rather late for lunch, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I’ve had lunch,” Tritt said. “This is just a snack.” He cut a large piece of roast beef from the slab in front of him and thrust it into his mouth. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you all summer,” he added, chewing the meat.
“I took a job upstate,” Logan said. “We were trying to stop some kind of blight in the apple orchards.”
“Is that so?” Tritt looked like a concerned bloodhound.
“I wanted to do some research out West,” Logan went on, “but I couldn’t get any money from the university.”
“You’ll be back for the new term, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” Logan said with a sigh, “we begin again tomorrow.” He thought for a moment of the freshman faces that would be looking up at him in the lecture room. A bunch of high-strung, mechanical New York City kids, pushed by their parents or by the Army into the university, and pushed by the university into his botany class. They were brick-bound people who had no interest in growing things, and Logan sometimes felt sad that in five years of teaching he had communicated to only a few of them his own delight with his subject.
“My, one certainly gets a long vacation in the teaching profession,” Tritt said. “June through September.”
“I suppose,” Logan said. “Only trouble is that you don’t make enough to do anything in all the spare time.”
Tritt laughed a little, controlled laugh and continued chewing. Logan began to eat the pie. It had the drab, neutral flavor of all cafeteria pies.
“Mr. Tritt,” he said, after a long silence.
“Yes?”
“When are you going to give me back my two hundred dollars?”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Logan. We had this all out ten months ago. We went over it with Mr. Pinkson and the bank examiners and everyone. I did not steal two hundred dollars from you.”
“You did, and you know it.”
“Frankly, I’d rather not hear any more about it.”
“Mr. Tritt, I had three hundred and twenty-four dollars in my hand that day. I’d just cashed some bonds. I know how much I had.”
“The matter has all been cleared up,” Tritt said coldly.
“Not for me, it hasn’t. When you entered the amount in my checking account, it was for one hundred and twenty-four, not three hundred twenty-four.”
Tritt put down his fork and carefully folded his hands. “I’ve heard you tell that story a thousand times, sir. My cash balanced when you came back and complained.”
“Sure it balanced,” Logan exploded. “You saw your mistake when Pinkson asked you to check the cash. So you took my two hundred out of the drawer. No wonder it balanced!”
Tritt laid a restraining hand on Logan’s arm. “Mr. Logan, I’m going a long, long way in the bank. I simply can’t afford to make mistakes.”
“You also can’t afford to admit it when you do make one.”
“Oh, come now,” said Tritt, as though he were speaking to a child. “Do you think I’d jeopardize my entire career for two hundred dollars?”
“You didn’t jeopardize your career,” Logan snapped. “You knew you could get away with it. And you took my money to cover your error.”
Tritt sat calmly and smiled a fat smile at Logan. “Well, that’s your version, Mr. Logan. But I do wish you’d quit annoying me with your fairy tale.” Leaving half his meat untouched, Tritt stood up and put on his hat. Then he came around the table and stood looming over Logan. “I will say, however, from a purely hypothetical point of view, that if I had stolen your money and then staked my reputation on the lie that I hadn’t, the worst thing I could possibly do would be to return the money to you. I think you’d agree with that.”
“I’ll get you, Tritt,” said Logan, sitting back in the chair. “I can’t stand to be had.”
“I know, I know. You’ve been saying that for ten months, too. Goodbye.” Tritt walked out of the cafeteria. Norman Logan sat there motionless, watching the big teller cross the street and enter the bank. He felt no rage — only an increased sense of futility. Slowly, he finished his coffee.
A few minutes later, Logan entered the bank. Down in the safe-deposit vaults he raised the lid of his long metal box and took out three twenty-five-dollar bonds. With a sigh, he began to fill them out for cashing. They would cover his government insurance premium for the year. In July, too, he had taken three bonds from the box, when his father had overspent his pension money. And earlier in the summer, Logan had cashed some more of them, after slamming into a truck and damaging his Plymouth. Almost every month there was some reason to cash bonds, and Logan reflected that he hadn’t bought one since his Navy days. There just wasn’t enough money in botany.
With the bonds in his hand, he climbed the narrow flight of stairs to the street floor, then walked past the long row of tellers’ cages to the rear of the bank. Here he opened an iron gate in a low marble fence and entered the green-carpeted area of the manager and assistant manager. The manager’s desk was right inside the gate, and Mr. Pinkson looked up as Logan came in. He smiled, looking over the top of the glasses pinched on his nose.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Logan.” Pinkson’s quick eyes went to the bonds and then, with the professional neutrality of a branch bank manager, right back up to Logan’s thin face. “If you’ll just sit down, I’ll buzz Mr. Tritt.”
“Mr. Tritt?” said Logan, surprised.
“Yes. He’s been moved up to the first cage now.”
Pinkson indicated a large, heavy table set far over against the side wall in back of his desk, and Logan sat in a chair next to it.
“Have a good summer?” The little man had revolved in his squeaky executive’s chair to face Logan.
“Not bad, thanks.”
“Did you get out of the city?”
“Yes, I had a job upstate. I always work during my vacations.”