“Yeah? What else?”
“I went to a picture tonight with the Snellings.”
“Didn’t Snelling see him leave?”
“I didn’t say anything to Snelling. I don’t know what he saw. But the picture had some Mexican stuff in it, and later, when we went to the Snellings’ apartment, I started a bum argument, and got Snelling to call Charlie to settle it. Brent spent some time in Mexico once. That was about twelve o’clock.”
“And?”
“The maid answered. Charlie wasn’t there.”
We looked at each other, and both knew that twelve o’clock was too late for a guy to be out that had just had a bad operation.
“Come on.”
“You calling Sheila?”
“We’re going to the bank.”
The protection service watchman was due on the hour, and we caught him on his two o’clock round. He took it as a personal insult that we would think anybody could be in the bank without him knowing it, but I made him take us in there just the same, and we went through every part of it. We went upstairs, where the old records were stored, and I looked behind every pile. We went down in the basement and I looked behind every gas furnace. We went all around back of the windows and I looked under every counter. I even looked behind my desk, and under it. That seemed to be all. The watchman went up and punched his clock and we went out on the street again. Helm kind of fingered his chin.
“Well, I guess it was a false alarm.”
“Looks like it.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. Report everything.”
“Guess there’s no use calling Sheila.”
“Pretty late, I’m afraid.”
What he meant was, we ought to call Sheila, but he wanted me to do it. He was just as suspicious as he ever was, I could tell that from the way he was acting. Only the watchman was sure we were a couple of nuts. We got in the car, and I took him home, and once more he mumbled something about Sheila, but I decided not to hear him. When I let him out I started for home, but as soon as I was out of sight I cut around the block and headed for Mountain Drive.
A light was on, and the screen door opened as soon as I set my foot on the porch. She was still dressed, and it was almost as though she had been expecting me. I followed her in the living room, and spoke low so nobody in the house could hear us, but I didn’t waste any time on love and kisses.
“Where’s Brent?”
“...He’s in the vault.”
She spoke in a whisper, and sank into a chair without looking at me, but every doubt I’d had about her in the beginning, I mean, every hunch that she’d been playing me for a sucker, swept back over me so even looking at her made me tremble. I had to lick my lips a couple of times before I could even talk. “Funny you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know it.”
“What do you mean you didn’t know it? If you know it now, why didn’t you know it then? You trying to tell me he stepped out of there for a couple of minutes, borrowed my telephone, and called you up? He might as well be in a tomb as be in that place, till it opens at eight-thirty this morning.”
“Are you done?”
“I’m still asking you why you didn’t tell me.”
“When I got in, and found he wasn’t home, I went out looking for him. Or at any rate, for the car. I went to where he generally parks it — when he’s out. It wasn’t there. Coming home I had to go by the bank. As I went by, the red light winked, just once.”
I don’t know if you know how a vault works. There’s two switches inside. One lights the overhead stuff that you turn on when somebody wants to get into his safe deposit box; the other works the red light that’s always on over the door in the daytime. That’s the danger signal, and any employee of the bank always looks to see that it’s on whenever he goes inside. When the vault is closed the light’s turned off, and I had turned it off myself that afternoon, when I locked the vault with Snelling. At night, all curtains are raised in the bank, so cops, watchman, and passersby can see inside. If the red light went on, it would show, but I didn’t believe she’d seen it. I didn’t believe she’d even been by the bank. “So the red light winked, hey? Funny it wasn’t winking when I left there not ten minutes ago.”
“I said it winked once. I don’t think it was a signal. I think he bumped his shoulder against it, by accident. If he were signaling, he’d keep on winking it, wouldn’t he?”
“How’d he get in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do know.”
“I don’t know, but the only way I can think of is that he slipped in there while we were all gathered around, looking at that spider.”
“That you conveniently on purpose brought in there.”
“Or that he did.”
“What’s he doing in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, come on, quit stalling me!”
She got up and began walking around. “Dave, it’s easy to see you think I know all about this. That I know more than I’m telling. That Charles and I are in some kind of plot. I don’t know anything I can say. I know a lot I could say if I wasn’t—”
She stopped, came to life like some kind of a tiger, and began hammering her fists against the wall.
“—bought! That was what was wrong! I ought to have cut my heart out, suffered anything rather than let you give me that money! Why did I ever take it? Why didn’t I tell you to—”
“Why didn’t you do what I begged you to do? Come over here today and let him have it between the eyes — tell him the truth, that you were through, and this was the end of it?”
“Because, God help me, I wanted to be happy!”
“No!.. Because, God help you, you knew he wasn’t over here! Because you knew he was in that vault, and you were afraid I’d find it out!”
“It isn’t true! How can you say that?”
“Do you know what I think? I think you took that money off me, day by day, and that not one penny of it ever found its way into your cash box. And then I think you and he decided on a little phoney hold-up, to cover that shortage, and that that’s what he’s doing in the vault. And if Helm hadn’t got into it, and noticed that Brent didn’t come out of the bank the second time he went in, I don’t see anything that was to stop you from getting away with it. You knew I didn’t dare open my trap about the dough I had put up. And if he came out of there masked, and made a quick getaway, I don’t know who was going to swear it was him, if it hadn’t been for Helm. Now it’s in the soup. All right, Mrs. Brent, that vault that don’t take any messages till eight-thirty, that works both ways. If he can’t get any word to you, you can’t get any word to him. Just let him start that little game that looked so good yesterday afternoon, and he’s going to get the surprise of his life, and so are you. There’ll be a reception committee waiting for him when he comes out of there, and maybe they’ll include you in it too.”
She looked straight at me the whole time I was talking, and the lamplight caught her eyes, so they shot fire. There was something catlike about her shape anyway, and with her eyes blazing like that, she looked like something out of the jungle. But all of a sudden that woman was gone, and she was crumpled up in front of me, on the sofa, crying in a queer, jerky way. Then I hated myself for what I had said, and had to dig in with my fingernails to keep from crying too.