There was a slight pause, and then he went on: “You might get old Fontain Dever. But his tears — and he depends on tears — would hardly move a jury in a case like this.”
The lawyer seemed to consider the hard point.
“And yet,” he said, “it will be a case to put the best among us on his mettle. You will have made so many conspicuous blunders in it.”
The thick voice of the big creature behind the desk broke in: “You have one minute longer.”
Colonel Braxton made a courteous gesture of acknowledgment.
“And I will use it, if you please, to point out one of those blunders to you. You imagine, sir, that I came here alone, and therefore there would be no witness to your act. But if you take a step beyond your desk and look out through an opening in the trees, you will see, at the foot of the hill, within an easy stone’s throw, a carriage with a Negro driver, and a gentleman at leisure on the seat behind him reading a Richmond paper. That gentleman is Mr. Dabney Mason. He is no fearful person like myself! When he hears your shot, he will come up, and you will have him to kill. And after that, the Negro driver will come up, and you must shoot him too, for you cannot permit an escaping witness to this affair. Thus, Mr. Caleb Lurty, once on the way, there will be no end to murder.”
The trapped creature glanced side-wise at the window, for he feared some trick. He started like one awakened from a dream. And the primordial brute that had emerged to dominate his will withdrew. He turned toward the window, leaving the weapon.
Colonel Braxton gave the beaten man no further notice. He walked past him to the door. But there, as he went out, he paused and addressed a final word to him:
“You gave me three minutes, sir,” he said; “I will do better. I will give you three hours — three hours to cross the border of Virginia.”
There came an iron vigor into his voice: “And I pledge you my word of honor, Mr. Caleb Lurty, that if I find you in this state tomorrow, I will promptly get you the three things that the acts of your abominable life have earned: a striped suit, a shaved head, and a seven-foot cell... all free, at no cost, sir, and with my distinguished compliments!”
In the carriage on the road below, Colonel Braxton related the incidents of the adventure to Dabney Mason. That gentleman was not astonished at the recovery of the purloined will, for he was accustomed to these spectacular successes in the affairs of this eccentric lawyer. But the peril in which the man had stood disturbed him.
“My friend,” he said, “why did you go alone into this danger?”
“Danger!” echoed Colonel Braxton. “Why, Dabney, I was never in any danger!”
“In no danger!” cried the man. “The man might have killed you.”
“Now, Dabney,” replied Colonel Braxton, as in a soft reproach, “you must credit me with some rudiments of common sense... Whenever I see a deadly weapon accessible to fools or children, I unload it.”
And opening his hand he disclosed the half-dozen cartridges he had taken from Caleb Lurty’s weapon when, upon entering the room, he had paused for a moment beside the desk.
He balanced them thoughtfully in his hand, and then tossed them into the bushes by the roadside.
Banks Are Never Wrong
by John D. Hess[4]
Would you have thought that anyone could dream up a new wrinkle on “poltergeist” shenanigans in a modern, error-proof bank? Well, here it is — a perfectly delicious yarn!
Like Mr. Jebal Deeks himself, the Valley National Bank was neither small nor large. Again like Mr. Deeks, the Bank was most proper; no one had ever found any reason to suspect that either Deeks or the Bank was anything but dependable and perfectly, though dully, honest.
Deeks’s career at the Bank had shown a creeping, labored progress. He began as a teller and was shifted from department to department, always a minor officer, always trusting a half-spoken promise that the Bank was giving him such a variety of experience to groom him for the critical job of cashier or perhaps the executive position of vice-president.
But, finally, after he had spent twenty-two years moving from the trust department to the loan department to the savings department to the accounting department, Jebal Deeks came to believe that high office would never be his. The belief grew to disappointment, and disappointment grew to bitterness, and when Deeks entered his twenty-third year of service he was a dangerous man.
Halfway through his twenty-third year Deeks began to plot the ruin of the Bank.
He was a bachelor, and therefore had ample time to develop schemes that might cause chaos in the institution which continued to trust him as a stable-master trusts a docile old nag reserved for elderly women who have never been on a horse before.
Strangely enough, embezzlement did not occur to him until he had worked out and discarded twenty other plans. Embezzlement would be a simpler matter. He had access to the vault, the books, the files, the cash drawers, all the hallowed and secret niches in the Bank’s complex structure. On a carefully chosen day he could fill two suitcases with cash and negotiables, calmly walk out the front door, and thus perpetrate the only scandal in the long and honored history of the Valley National Bank.
As the plan developed he savored little mind-pictures of his superiors on the day his crime came to light. Mr. Rolfe, the cashier, would probably faint and might even have a heart attack. Mr. Elliott, the first vice-president, would rage and sputter helplessly and his breakdown of decorum would cause the second, third, and fourth vice-presidents to make rapid and violent gestures of reform and retaliation.
The news would soon reach Mr. Edward T. P. Fannington, PRESIDENT. Deeks always thought of the title in capital letters because that was the way the word was printed on the little wooden desk sign that separated Mr. Fannington from other mortals. When the embezzlement became known, Mr. Fannington, PRESIDENT, would have to call a special meeting of the board of directors, and over that meeting would preside the mysterious and never-present chairman, Colonel Vincent Sykes.
Colonel Sykes, whom Deeks had seen only seven times in all his years at the Bank, would doubtless bring to bear all the icy dignity and monstrous authority that marked him as the city’s first citizen, and the minutes of that particular meeting would probably never be entered into the annals of the Valley National Bank. It would be murderous.
Delicious as these thoughts were to him, Deeks finally abandoned the idea of embezzlement. He was not afraid that he would be caught and sent to jail; he expected that. He dropped his plans because he knew that, however skillfully he worked, he could not possibly arrange to be present when his wild deed wrought its effect on the Bank and the officers he sought to confound and destroy.
Once he walked out with his suitcases full of assets, he could never return. And, in a relatively short time, the insurance companies would make up the loss and the general public would consider the incident nothing but a bit of old gossip. Jebal Deeks and his one brilliant splurge of vengeance would subside and be forgotten.
Then, at church, of all places, Jebal Deeks found his Great Idea. The minister was delivering a pre-Christmas sermon on the text, “It is better to give than to receive.” The text struck a chord deep within him; almost immediately he saw its usefulness. He spent that night in a turbulent fever of creative wickedness. By dawn the plot was defined, organized, and ready for execution.
Jebal Deeks would not take money from the bank — he would give!
On that very Monday he whipped into action.
Result: at 6:15 that evening John Berry, chief teller, was still working because his accounts did not balance.