The knocking continued — a rather curious sort of summons, I thought. It was both urgent and hesitant, alternately loud and soft in an odd spasmodic way. I glanced a bit uneasily at the suitcase on the floor beside the desk. But I could not just ignore the rapping. Judging from its insistence, whoever it was seemed to know that the bank was still occupied.
I went out through the grate in the rail divider and walked slowly down the short corridor to the door. The shade was drawn over the glass there — I had drawn it myself earlier and I could not see out into the private parking area at the rear. The knocking, I realized as I stepped up to the door, was coming from down low on the wood panel, beneath the glass. A child? Still frowning, I drew back the edge of the shade and peered out.
The person out there was a man, not a child — a medium-sized man wearing a mustache, modishly styled hair, and a business suit and tie. He was down on one knee, with his right hand stretched out to the door; his left hand was pressed against the side of his head, and his temple and the tips of his fingers were stained with what appeared to be blood.
He saw me looking out at about the same time I saw him. We blinked at each other. He made an effort to rise, sank back onto his knee again, and said in a pained voice that barely carried through the door, “Accident... over in the driveway... I need a doctor.”
I peered past him. As much of the parking area as I could see was deserted, but from my vantage point I could not make out the driveway on the south side of the bank. I hesitated, but when the man said plaintively, “Please... I need help,” I reacted on impulse: I reached down, unlocked the door, and started to pull it open.
The man came upright in one fluid motion, drove a shoulder against the door, and crowded inside. The door edge cracked into my forehead and threw me backward, off-balance. My vision blurred for a moment, and when it cleared and I had my equilibrium again, I was looking not at one man but at two.
I was also looking at a gun, held competently in the hand of the first man.
The second one, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, closed and re-locked the door. Then he too produced a handgun and pointed it at me. He looked enough like the first man to be his brother — medium-sized, mustache, modishly styled hair, business suit, and tie. The only appreciable difference between them was that One was wearing a blue shirt and Two a white shirt.
I stared at them incredulously. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Unnecessary questions,” One said. He had a soft, well modulated voice, calm and reasonable. “It should be obvious who we are and what we want.”
“My God,” I said, “bank robbers.”
“Bingo,” Two said. His voice was scratchy, like sand rubbing on glass.
One took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped the blood — or whatever the crimson stuff was — off his fingers and his temple. I realized as he did so that his mustache and hair, and those of the other man, were of the theatrical makeup variety.
“You just do what you’re told,” One said, “and everything will be fine. Turn around, walk up the hall.”
I did that. By the time I stopped again in front of the rail divider, the incredulity had vanished and I had regained my composure. I turned once more to face them.
“I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” I said.
“Is that right?” One said. “Why?”
“You’re not going to be able to rob this bank.”
“Why aren’t we?”
“Because all the money has been put inside the vault for the weekend,” I said. “And I’ve already set the time locks; the vault doors can’t be opened by hand and the time locks won’t release until nine o’clock Monday morning.”
They exchanged a look. Their faces were expressionless, but their eyes, I saw, were narrowed and cold. One said to Two, “Check out the tellers’ cages.”
Two nodded and hurried through the divider gate.
One looked at me again. “What’s your name?”
“Luther Baysinger,” I said.
“You do what here, Luther?”
“I’m the Fairfield branch manager.”
“You lock up the money this early every Friday?”
“Yes.”
“How come you don’t stay open until six o’clock?”
I gestured at the cramped old-fashioned room. “We’re a small branch bank in a rural community,” I said. “We do a limited business; there has been no need for us to expand our hours.”
“Where’re the other employees now?”
“I gave them permission to leave early for the weekend.”
From inside the second of the two tellers’ cages Two called, “Cash drawers are empty.”
One said to me, “Let’s go back to the vault.”
I pivoted immediately, stepped through the gate, entered the cages, and led the two of them down the walkway to the outer vault door. One examined it, tugged on the wheel. When it failed to yield he turned back to me.
“No way to open this door before Monday morning?”
“None at all.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. As I told you, I’ve set the time locks here, and on the door to the inner vault as well. The inner vault is where all the bank’s assets are kept.”
Two said, “Damn. I knew we should have waited when we saw the place close up. Now what do we do?”
One ignored him. “How much is in that inner vault?” he asked me. “Round numbers.”
“A few thousand, that’s all,” I said carefully.
“Come on, Luther. How much is in there?”
His voice was still calm and reasonable, but he managed nonetheless to imply a threat to the words. If I continued to lie to him, he was saying tacitly, he would do unpleasant things to me.
I sighed. “Around twenty thousand,” I said. “We have no need for more than that on hand. We’re—”
“I know,” One said, “you’re a small branch bank in a rural community. How many other people work here?”
“Just two.”
“Both tellers?”
“Yes.”
“What time do they come in on Monday morning?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Just when the vault locks release.”
“Yes. But—”
“Suppose you were to call up those two tellers and tell them to come in at nine-thirty on Monday, instead of nine o’clock. Make up some kind of excuse. They wouldn’t question that, would they?”
It came to me then, all too clearly, what he was getting at. A coldness settled on my neck and melted down along my back. “It won’t work,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “What won’t work?”
“Kidnapping me and holding me hostage for the weekend.”
“No? Why not?”
“The tellers would know something was wrong if I asked them to come in late on Monday.”
“I doubt that.”
“Besides,” I lied, “I have a wife, three children, and a mother-in-law living in my house. You couldn’t control all of them for an entire weekend.”
“So we won’t take you to your house. We’ll take you somewhere else and have you call your family and tell them you’ve been called out of town unexpectedly.”
“They wouldn’t believe it.”
“I think they would. Look, Luther, we don’t want to hurt you. All we’re interested in is that twenty thousand. We’re a little short of cash right now; we need operating capital.” He shrugged and looked at Two. “How about it?”
“Sure,” Two said. “Okay by me.”
“Let’s go out front again, Luther.”
A bit numbly I led them away from the vault. When we passed out of the tellers’ cages, my eyes went to the suitcase beside the desk and lingered on it for a couple of seconds. I pulled my gaze away then — but not soon enough.