After a while the phone rang. From what she said, I could tell it was her father, and that he’d been trying to reach her all afternoon and all night. She listened a long time, and when she hung up she lay back and closed her eyes. “He’s in there to put the money back.”
“...Where’d he get it?”
“He got it this morning. Yesterday morning. From my father.”
“Your father had that much — ready?”
“He got it after I talked to him that night. Then when I told him I wouldn’t need it, he kept it, in his safe deposit box — just in case. Charles went over there yesterday and said he had to have it — against the check-up on my cash. Papa went down to the Westwood bank with him, and got it out, and gave it to him. He was afraid to call me at the bank. He kept trying to reach me here. The maid left me a note, but it was so late when I got in I didn’t call... So, now I pay a price for not telling him. Charles, I mean. For letting him worry.”
“I was for telling him, you may remember.”
“Yes, I remember.”
It was quite a while after that before either of us said anything. All that time my mind was going around like a squirrel cage, trying to reconstruct for myself what was going on in that vault. She must have been doing the same thing, because pretty soon she said, “Dave?”
“Yes?”
“Suppose he does put the money back?”
“Then — we’re sunk.”
“What, actually, will happen?”
“If I find him in there, the least I can do is hold him till I’ve checked every cent in that vault. I find nine thousand more cash than the books show. All right. What then?”
“You mean the whole thing comes out?”
“On what we’ve been doing, you can get away with it as long as nobody’s got the least suspicion of it. Let a thing like this happen, let them really begin to check, and it’ll come out so fast it’ll make your head swim.”
“And there goes your job?”
“Suppose you were the home office, how would you like it?”
“...I’ve brought you nothing but misery, Dave.”
“I — asked for it.”
“I can understand why you feel bitter.”
“I said some things I didn’t mean.”
“Dave.”
“Yes?”
“There’s one chance, if you’ll take it.”
“What’s that?”
“Charles.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It may be a blessing, after all, that I told him nothing. He can’t be sure what I’ve done while he’s been away — whether I carried his false entries right along, whether I corrected them, and left the cash short — and it does look as though he’d check, before he did anything. He’s a wizard at books, you know. And every record he needs is in there. Do you know what I’m getting at, Dave?”
“Not quite.”
“You’ll have to play dummy’s hand, and let him lead.”
“I don’t want anything to do with him.”
“I’d like to wring his neck. But if you just don’t force things, if you just act natural, and let me have a few seconds with him, so we’ll know just what he has done, then — maybe it’ll all come out all right. He certainly would be a boob to put the money back when he finds out it’s already been put back.”
“Has it been?”
“Don’t you know?”
I took her in my arms then, and for that long was able to forget what was staring us in the face, and I still felt close to her when I left.
VIII
For the second time that night I went home, and this time I turned out all the lights, and went upstairs, and took off my clothes, and went to bed. I tried to sleep, and couldn’t. It was all running through my mind, and especially what I was going to do when I opened that vault at eight-thirty. How could I act natural about it? If I could guess he was in the vault, Helm must have guessed it. He’d be watching me, waiting for every move, and he’d be doing that even if he didn’t have any suspicion of me, which by now he must have, on account of being out that late with Sheila. All that ran through my mind, and after a while I’d figured a way to cover it, by openly saying something to him, and telling him I was going to go along with it, just wait and see what Brent had to say for himself, in case he was really in there. Then I tried once more to go to sleep. But this time it wasn’t the play at the vault that was bothering me, it was Sheila. I kept going over and over it, what was said between us, the dirty cracks I had made, how she had taken them, and all the rest of it. Just as day began to break I found myself sitting up in bed. How I knew it I don’t know, what I had to go on I haven’t any idea, but I knew perfectly well that she was holding out on me, that there was something back of it all that she wasn’t telling.
I unhooked the phone and dialed. You don’t stay around a bank very long before you know the number of your chief guard. I was calling Dyer, and in a minute or two he answered, pretty sour. “Hello?”
“Dyer?”
“Yeah, who is it?”
“Sorry to wake you up. This is Dave Bennett.”
“What do you want?”
“I want some help.”
“Well, what the hell is it?”
“I got reason to think there’s a man in our vault. Out in the Anita Avenue branch in Glendale. What he’s up to I don’t know, but I want you out there when I open up. And I’d like you to bring a couple of men with you.”
Up to then he’d been just a sleepy guy that used to be a city detective. Now he snapped out of it like something had hit him. “What do you mean you got reason to think? Who is this guy?”
“I’ll give you that part when I see you. Can you meet me by seven o’clock? Is that too early?”
“Whenever you say, Mr. Bennett.”
“Then be at my house at seven, and bring your men with you. I’ll give you the dope, and I’ll tell you how I want you to do it.”
He took the address, and I went back to bed.
I went to bed, and lay there trying to figure out what it was I wanted him to do anyway. After a while I had it straightened out. I wanted him close enough to protect the bank, and myself as well, in case Sheila was lying to me, and I wanted him far enough away for her to have those few seconds with Brent, in case she wasn’t. I mean, if Brent was really up to something, I wanted him covered every way there was, and by guys that would shoot. But if he came out with a foolish look on his face, and pretended he’d been locked in by mistake, and she found out we could still cover up that book-doctoring, I wanted to leave that open too. I figured on it, and after a while I thought I had it doped out so it would work.
Around six o’clock I got up, bathed, shaved, and dressed. I routed out Sam and had him make me some coffee, and fix up some bacon and eggs. I told him to stand by in case the men that were coming hadn’t had any breakfast. Then I went in the living room and began to march around it. It was cold. I lit the fire. My head kept spinning around.
Bight on the tick of seven the doorbell rang and there they were, Dyer and his two mugs. Dyer’s a tall, thin man with a bony face and eyes like gimlets. I’d say he was around fifty. The other two were around my own age, somewhere over thirty, with big shoulders, thick necks, and red faces. They looked exactly like what they were: ex-cops that had got jobs as guards in a bank. One was named Halligan, the other Lewis. They all said yes on breakfast, so we went in the dining room and Sam made it pretty quick with the service.