A moment later he pulled upon the door and it opened. The solvent had acted instantly upon the metal lock of the door. Garbett waited, straining every muscle in an effort to hear a sound from the interior of the darkened building. There was the bare possibility that Peter Riddick had dropped into the bank for some purpose. But the bank was deserted.
From the adjoining building a strong and untrained masculine voice sang a negro dialect song written and composed by two Jews. Garbett was grateful for the noise; it made him feel safe and secure. He slipped noiselessly through the bank, looking into every room to make sure that a watchman would not surprise him later. Once absolutely convinced that he alone was in the building, he began operations upon the safe.
The bottle of solvent was tilted against the back of the steel safe, and a small stream poured. Then, with the aluminum bar, Garbett dug the now soft and crumbling steel out in a thin line. Four feet to the left he poured more of the solvent, and then a horizontal line that connected the two cavities. He worked in complete darkness, thrusting with aluminum bar, trusting to the messages of his fingers, and he worked desperately fast.
The singer in the adjoining building had now received assistance. A dozen voices joined in on the chorus in an attempt at harmony. Garbett tore and thrust at the crumbling wall of the steel safe, digging a hole that led into the depths of the strong-box. Like a barrier, the wire wall cut off one-quarter of the room, and the long desk were heavy black shadows.
Suddenly, every electric light in the bank flashed into life. Garbett froze, every muscle rigid, one arm elbow deep into the wall of the safe. He had been caught!
One swift glance over his shoulder and hope fell from him like a discarded garment. A huge and well-polished blue steel revolver, with a barrel eight inches long, was being pointed straight at the crook’s back. If he rose or moved that ponderous gun would explode. It was held by a nervous and excited man, whose rubicund face identified him as Pop Gordon, the town policeman.
“Don’t move — don’t you dare move!” ordered Pop, dragging a pair of handcuffs from a sagging pocket of his ancient overcoat. He clicked one handcuff on Garbett’s right ankle, and the other on his left. “Stay right where you are.” He produced another pair of handcuffs, and fastened the crook’s hands behind his back.
Peter Riddick had remained silent; now he put his small automatic back into his pocket. “Young man,” he said, “I am certainly disappointed. I thought you were honest. When I saw you steal that crescent pin from my wife’s hair I was the most surprised man in Velma, Delaware. I didn’t think—”
“I’ll bet he’s a big New York crook,” said Pop Gordon. “Come look at the big hole in your safe, Mr. Riddick! If we had waited—”
Peter Riddick observed the opening with brooding eyes. “That’s remarkable, but — I am sorry this young man made it. In about ten minutes he has—” He turned once more to Garbett. “I recall that your corkscrew — fell to pieces. You are a clever young man” — he shook his head sadly — “but you are not an honest one.”
Garbett knew that the evidence against him was complete and damning. He was helpless and hopeless. So he refused to answer any of the questions that were asked.
Pop Gordon led the crook through the starlit cool night, while the sound of dance music lilted gayly through the air. The huge, long-barreled revolver was pressed nervously against the crook’s side.
“What’d you steal that pin for, anyway?” asked Pop Gordon. “You New Yorkers think you’re smart, but you ain’t! You ain’t smart at all. There was all that money in the bank, and you’d ’a got it, if you hadn’t been so smart. Stealing a two-dollar dingus from Mrs. Riddick’s hair and letting her husband see you. Why, he came right away and got me, and we followed you the whole way from the railroad station back to the bank. And all because of that two-dollar pin.
Garbett sneered, and his mouth twisted in an unbelieving smile. “Two dollars? It’s worth five hundred! Isn’t she the wife of the president of the bank?”
“Yes, sure she is,” cackled Pop, his watery eyes swimming with amusement. “But she ain’t stuck up. She bought that pin when she was a waitress in the Busy Bee Restaurant; bought it from a peddler long before she was married. And she wears it just to show folks that she ain’t stuck up, now that she can afford the real thing. She says the peddler told her the stones were real — were real white sapphires that came from Peru. And you thought you were smart!”
Long after he had heard the whistle of the 9:45 train on its way to Washington, Garbett stayed awake. Pop Gordon was right. He wasn’t smart. He was a fool. Shackled and manacled, locked in the county jail while the New York police were being notified, Garbett realized he was a fool. If he had only been honest—
The Light That Lies
by Pettersen Marzoni
I
Whirling dust devils danced down the sun-baked road. The heat from a brazen sky beat on the head of the man concealed in a clump of summer-dried bushes. The heavy woolen garb of the State prison clung to his bulky shoulders, which seemed to steam under the fierce sun.
Eight hours before, he had crawled into the shelter of the brush, and he had at least eight hours to wait. He was afraid to sleep, had sleep been possible in the overpowering heat. He knew that the chase was on.
There was reason enough to pursue Convict 1836, now free, aside from the fact that in a house without the prison walls a widow mourned a dead guard.
The escape had been planned carefully, and so far each detail had worked out perfectly. Except the dead guard. That had been one of the contingencies considered probable but hoped improbable. However, what was, was, and the man dismissed the thought. He was to be hanged anyway.
The road was empty of traffic. It was a short cut through a mountain pass from the main highway. Rarely used, it was chosen by the man’s friends. That morning at dawn he had drawn back, eyes gleaming hatred and the defiance of a wolf at bay, as he watched a car of guards drive madly down the road in the direction of Bayfield. The convict had lived there, so it was the first place of search. The man almost laughed at the simplicity of their reasoning.
For hours he lay still in his thin cover of brush, fearing to seek the cooler shadows of the scrubby willows he could see in the hollow just below him. The guards might return. He tried to review the details of his further flight. The car would come for him at eight that night; they would detour around Bayfield to Edgewood. He wondered who would drive the car — they hadn’t told him.
But it was too hot to think. He had to find shade. The thin mesquite offered no protection from the sun now high overhead. And those willows looked so cool. He decided to try for them.
Cautiously he began to work his way down through the scrub growth. He was afraid to leave the bushes and to keep behind them he couldn’t rise to his feet. Once he slipped and rolled down a little gully. A sharp flint at the bottom gashed his head.
The blood from the cut mingled with the streaked grime on his face. With oaths he removed the spines of a prickly pear from an incautious hand. The trip of the night before was as nothing to the slow crawl through the all-too-thin fringe of brush.
Finally he slipped into the clumps of willows. Luxuriously he buried his face in the rank grass — growth of the recent Spring rains. He stretched himself at length and reached for his cigarettes. Then he remembered he couldn’t risk a smoke.