“I can understand how you feel,” Logan said sympathetically. He smiled inside at the precision of his planning. Fat William Tritt had been undermined just enough — not only in Pinkson’s mind, but in his own.
On the tenth of March, Norman Logan acted again. When Tritt was seated across the table from him, Logan said, “Well, here we go again, Mr. Tritt.” Tritt’s head came up, and once more he was looking into the barrel of the toy automatic. He did not try to speak. “Now go get the ten thousand,” ordered Logan. “And this time, do it.”
Without objecting, the teller moved quickly to his cage. Logan slipped the gun back into the drawer; then he took his brief case from the floor and stood it on the edge of the table. I Pinkson’s telephone didn’t buzz, and the guard remained out of sight. After a few moments, Tritt came out of the cage, carrying a small cloth bag.
“All right, continue with the bonds,” Logan said. “The bag goes on the table between us.” Logan shifted forward and opened the bag, keeping the money out of sight behind the brief case. The clean new bills were wrapped in thousand-dollar units, each package bound with a bright yellow strip of paper. Logan counted through one package, and, with Tritt looking right at him, he placed the package of money carefully in the brief case.
“There,” he said. “Now finish with the bonds.” Tritt finished filling out the form and got Logan’s signature. He was not as flustered as Logan had thought he’d be. “Now listen, Tritt,” Logan went on, “my getaway is all set, of course, but if you give any signal before I’m out of the bank, I’ll put a bullet into you — right here.” Logan pointed to the bridge of his own nose. “Please don’t think I’d hesitate to do it. Now get back to your cage.”
Tritt returned to the cage. While his back was turned, Logan slipped the bag of money from his brief case and dropped it into the drawer, next to the gun. He eased the drawer into the table, took the brief case, and walked out of the bank.
Outside, he stood directly in front of the entrance, as though he were waiting for a bus. After just a few seconds the burglar alarm went off with a tremendous electrical shriek, and the old guard came running out of the door after him.
He was followed immediately by Pinkson, the assistant manager, and Tritt.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Logan, his hands raised again in front of the guard’s gun, “here we are again, eh?”
A crowd was gathering, and Pinkson sent the assistant to turn off the alarm. “Come, let’s all go inside,” he said. “I don’t want any fuss out here.”
It was the same kind of scene that they had played before, only now Logan — the twice-wronged citizen — was irate, and now ten thousand dollars was missing from William Tritt’s cage. Tritt was calm, though.
“I was ready for him this time,” he said proudly to Pinkson. “I marked ten thousand worth of twenties. My initial is on the band. The money’s in his brief case.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Tritt,” Logan shouted suddenly, “who ever heard of making a getaway by waiting for a bus. I don’t know what your game is, but—”
“Never mind my game,” said Tritt. “Let’s just take a look in your brief case.”
He wrenched it from Logan’s hand, clicked the lock, and turned the brief case upside down. A group of corrected examination books fell out. That was all.
“See?” said Logan. “Not a cent.” The guard put away his gun as Pinkson began to pick up the scattered books.
Tritt wheeled, threw the brief case against the wall, and grabbed Logan by the lapels. “But I gave you the money. I did. I did!” His face was pasty gray, and his voice high. “You put it in the brief case. I saw you. I saw you do it!” He began to shake Logan in a kind of final attempt to shake the ten thousand dollars out of him.
Pinkson straightened up with the exam books and said, “For goodness’ sake, Mr. Tritt. Stop it. Stop it.”
Tritt stopped shaking Logan, then turned wildly to Pinkson. “You don’t believe me!” he shouted. “You don’t believe me!”
“It’s not a question of—”
“I’ll find that money. I’ll show you who’s lying.” He rushed over to the big table and swept it completely clear with one wave of his heavy arm. The slips fluttered to the floor, and the inkwell broke, splattering black ink over the carpet. Tritt pulled the table in a wild, crashing arc across the green carpet, smashing it into Pinkson’s desk. Logan saw the dusty drawer come open about a half-inch.
The big man dropped clumsily to his knees and began to pound on the carpet with his flattened hands as he kept muttering, “It’s around here some place — a cloth bag.” He grabbed a corner of the carpet and flipped it back with a grunt. It made a puff of dust and revealed only a large triangle of empty, dirty floor. A dozen people had gathered outside the marble fence by now, and all the tellers were peering through the glass panes of the cages at Tritt.
“I’ll find it! I’ll find it!” he shouted. A film of sweat was on his forehead as he stood up, turned, and advanced again toward the table. The slightly opened drawer was in plain sight in front of him, but everyone’s eyes were fixed on Tritt, and Tritt did not see the drawer under the overhang of the table.
Logan turned quickly to Pinkson and whispered, “He may be dangerous, Mr. Pinkson. You’ve got to calm him.” He grabbed Pinkson by the arm and pushed him backward several feet, so that the manager came to rest on the edge of the table, directly over the drawer. The exam books were still in his hand.
“Mr. Tritt, you must stop this!” Mr. Pinkson said.
“Get out of my way, Pinkson,” said Tritt, coming right at him, breathing like a bull. “You believe him, but I’ll show you. I’ll find it!” He placed his hands on Pinkson’s shoulders. “Now get away, you fool.”
“I won’t take that from anyone,” snapped Pinkson. He slapped Tritt’s face with a loud, stinging blow. The teller stopped, stunned, and suddenly began to cry.
“Mr. Pinkson. Mr. Pinkson, you’ve got to trust me.”
Pinkson was immediately ashamed of what he had done. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my boy. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I tell you he held a gun on me again. A real gun — it’s not my imagination.”
“But why didn’t you call Louis?” Pinkson said. “That’s the rule, you know.”
“I wanted to catch him myself. He — he made such a fool of me last time.”
“But that business last time was hallucination,” said Pinkson, looking over at Logan, who had nodded.
“It’s no hallucination when ten thousand dollars is missing,” Tritt shouted.
“That’s precisely where the confusion arises in my mind,” Mr. Pinkson said slowly. “We’ll get it straight, but in the meantime, I must order your arrest, Mr. Tritt.”
Logan came and stood next to Pinkson, and they both looked sympathetically at the teller as he walked slowly, still sobbing, back to the cage.
“I’m just sick about it,” Pinkson said.
“I think you’ll find he’s not legally competent,” said Logan.
“Perhaps not.”
Logan showed his concern by helping to clean up the mess that Tritt had made. He and the assistant manager placed the table back into its position against the far wall, Logan shoving the dusty drawer firmly closed with his fingertips as they lifted it.
Norman Logan returned to the bank late the next day. He sat at the table to make a deposit, and he felt a pleasantly victorious sensation surge through him as he slipped the gun and the ten thousand dollars out of the drawer and into his overcoat pocket. As he walked out the front door past the guard, he met Mr. Pinkson, who was rushing in.