The Victorian Mystery Megapack (72 page)

“Why, you see, sir,” he replied, “if he hadn’t come in, the first time, and I had not been quite sure he was the thief, and would return, the time would have seemed long. But, as it was, I being dead certain of my man, the time seemed pretty short.”

THE CROOKED TELLER, by J.P. Buschlen

The clerks of the P—— Bank, town of Mullin, were lounging in their rooms above the office, after hours. They were discussing an absconding incident reported in a city paper, and generalizing thereon.

“Seems to me,” remarked the accountant, a man of perhaps twenty-two, “that the bank is taking a big chance on some of us fellows.”

The junior looked up quickly.

“Take Russ, for instance,” he said, grinning at the ledger-keeper—

Russel Kane interrupted him with: “You fellows would be surprised to know that I
was
in a mixup once.”

The teller, a pale-faced, dark-eyed individual, glanced at the speaker, but said nothing.

“Did you get away with anything?” asked Carlaw, the junior, soberly.

“My reputation,” smiled the ledger-keeper.

“Tell us about it,” said Muir, the accountant.

Kane laid his pipe aside and began.

“It was in our Hamilton office. The clearing was heavy, and the paying-teller had received a bunch of parcels. Being a sort of general swipe and utility-man, I was called on to lend—let’s call him Jones—a hand. He put me on the parcels. Well, to make a short story shorter, I found one of them shy a hundred bucks. They had five one-hundred dollar notes listed, and there were only four in attendance. I called Jones’ attention to the fact, and he seemed surprised. He said it wasn’t often parcels were short. However, he reported the matter to the accountant, who charged the branch through head-office branch-account with the hundred. In three or four days we got a letter from the manager of the branch, calling our attention to the fact that the parcel had been checked by their ledger-keeper.”

Here the teller and Kane exchanged glances, and Kane continued:

“Several letters went back and forth, and finally head office made the two tellers put up the loss between them. This naturally got me in wrong with Jones, who, I felt, suspected me. In fact, I felt as if the whole office suspected me. It worried me a lot until one day I noticed the branch-teller’s resignation in the staff circular. I went to our manager with the circular, and he assured me that the last ounce of suspicion had been taken from my shoulders.

“That’s all,” concluded the ledger-keeper, taking up his pipe again.

The teller, Williams, who had not yet spoken, blew a ring of smoke.

“Rotten!” he said, suddenly. “When a fellow gets mixed up in these things he may be in bad, for all he knows, as long as he is a bankclerk. Head office will be keeping its eye on him.”

“Yes, sir,” observed the accountant, seriously, “that’s about how it goes. If anything ever reflected on me I think I’d quit and be done with it.”

“You might quit,” said the teller, again, “but you wouldn’t be done with it. Resigning would only make you look guilty.”

“Well,” replied Muir, “what’s a fellow to do? One thing’s certain—you’re not in close enough personal touch with head office to live down the disgrace.”

Williams suddenly changed his viewpoint.

“Maybe you’re right, at that. I suppose it’s hard enough plugging, under ordinary circumstances, without having to work against—”

He was searching for a word. Carlaw accommodatingly supplied it.

“The wind,” he suggested.

Kane laughed, and looking at Muir remarked:

“Aren’t you proud of our junior, Ed?”

Carlaw shot a rubber-band into the speaker’s face, and then there was a scramble and a scuffle. Heated from his exertions, the junior at length decided he would take the air, and Muir thought he would go home and read. Muir alone roomed out of the bank.

“Russ,” said Williams, when they were alone, “I was afraid you were going to mention the fact that I was the ledger-keeper who checked that parcel you were telling about.”

Kane laughed.

“Don’t worry, Walt,” he replied. “It doesn’t do a fellow any good to get mixed up in gossip about these things. I experienced the sensation myself and it made me careful about saying anything that might reflect on the honesty of others.… But isn’t it hell what a responsibility we take on these invisible salaries of ours?”

“Worse than that,” thought the teller.

They came by degrees to the discussion of a subject that always occupies the thoughts of town bank-men late in the evening.

“She seems to be drawing nearer to you, Walt,” observed the ledger-keeper, referring to one of the town girls.

“Do you blame her?” Williams’ peculiar smile was apparent.

“Can’t say that I do.” Kane was in the habit of saying about Williams that a fellow couldn’t help liking him any more than the girls could.

When the ledger-keeper thought of turning in, Williams said he felt more like going for a walk and suggested (after Kane had thrown off his shoes) that they go out together. But the ledger-keeper was sleepy, and Williams went out alone. He walked to the end of the asphalt, up the main street. While resting against an electric-light post boasting a ten candle-power lamp, he drew a letter from an inside coat-pocket. After reading it he cursed a party by the name of “Max,” then put the letter back in hiding. By the time he reached the bank again both ledger-keeper and junior were snoring.

Williams’ smile travelled from the face of his sleeping-companion, around the room, and finally down the shoot-hole in the floor, through which the vault light cast its bright reflection.

A few days later the teller received a parcel of five thousand dollars from Toronto. It came during the morning rush and was laid aside for a while. The accountant went across to one of the other banks. It was while Muir was away that Williams opened the money-parcel and turning to the ledger-keeper remarked that the notes ought to be counted at once, as the till was nearly out of fives.

All ledger-keepers like counting money. It makes them feel that they are soon to be promoted. Kane persuaded the junior to take care of the ledger while he ran over the parcel from Toronto.

“Have
you
counted it yourself?” he asked the teller.

“Not yet,” answered Williams, “I’ve been too busy.”

Kane went through the fives and found them all right. But he could not make the tens what they were listed. He asked the teller to run over one package that seemed to have only forty tens in it. Williams counted the package.

“By heavens!” he cried, “there are only forty!”

The manager was notified, and came out to the cage. He counted the parcel, and found it one hundred dollars short. Immediately he wrote a letter to the Toronto office.

When the accountant came in Williams accosted him at his desk.

“Ed,” he said, in a semi-whisper, “did you ever have anyone try to slip it over on you from the city offices?”

“No,” replied Muir; “why?”

The teller told him about the shortage.

“All the time I was on the cash I never had anything like that happen me,” said the accountant, and there was a mystified expression on his face. “They keep a mighty close tick on out-going parcels down in Toronto, Walt, and I don’t understand how a short one could get through.”

“It’s got me going,” returned the teller; and after gazing absently ahead of him for a while, he turned and walked toward the cage.

Meanwhile the ledger-keeper was working over his ledger with a burning face and a pair of stinging ears. He stood it for quite a while before going into the manager’s room.

“Mr. White,” he began, “I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes.”

The manager asked him to sit down; he did so and related the story he had told the boys some days since as they sat in their rooms over the bank.

“This affair,” he said in conclusion, referring to the present shortage in the parcel, “will get me in bad again. What would you advise me to do?”

The manager rubbed his chin and replied:

“Wait until Toronto writes. And don’t worry, my boy; these things can’t be helped.”

Kane felt relieved. The same night Williams, without being invited, went up to the accountant’s rooms and found Muir at home.

After they had talked a while, the teller asked, bluntly:

“Did you ever have reason to suspect Russ?”

The accountant showed immediate surprise, but spoke only after a minute’s reflection.

“No, Walt. What makes you ask? Surely you don’t think—”

“I hate to think it,” Williams replied quickly, “but I can’t get over that story he told us the other night.”

The accountant put down his pipe.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, half to himself. Then, “I’d forgotten about that. But surely Kane wouldn’t—”

The accountant hesitated.

“You don’t hate to think or say it worse than I do,” Williams declared; “why, Russ is practically the only fellow I’ve gone around with, to any extent, in this town.”

That was true; the accountant nodded in silence, and seemed greatly depressed. The teller talked on.

“Ed, whatever you do, don’t hint—not even to the manager—what I’ve told you. If the suspicion ever got out on Russ he’d be as good as done in the bank. You know how expert H.O. is at putting two and two together?”

“Naturally I won’t speak of it,” replied Muir.

Suddenly changing his manner he said: “Well, let’s not think about it until Toronto office writes. There surely must be some mistake.”

In a day or two the Toronto letter came, accompanied by a memo from head office. The branch teller and the man who checked the parcel were to share the loss between them. The manager summoned his ledger-keeper.

“Mr. Kane,” he said, “head office states that an assistant-accountant checked that parcel when it went out, and you and Williams must stand for the shortage at this end.”

Kane reddened.

“Surely I’m not suspected!” he cried.

“I’m afraid they may look at it that way down in Toronto,” said the manager; “but I don’t think you guilty.”

The ledger-keeper’s face lost some of its color.

“I’ll write my father tonight,” he said, quietly. “I don’t think he’ll let me stay in the bank after this.”

After hours Kane did write to his father, and the next afternoon a telegram arrived. It said: “Leave at once—you are your own bondsman. I have a job for you.”

Kane took the telegram to Muir, but the accountant manifested little interest in it. He was not himself, for some reason. The ledger-keeper’s blood rose. He closed his fists and faced Muir.

“By the gods!” he cried, excitedly—

The manager stood in the doorwav leading from his office to the main office.

“A wire from the general manager,” he announced, “instructing Mr. Kane to report at head office for interview.”

The teller had stopped his work and was listening. Kane looked angrily at the manager and answered:

“Telegraph the G.M. that he can go to hell!”

“Easy,” counselled the manager, good-naturedly. “Don’t take it so hard, old man. We don’t—”

“I’m not so sure,” interrupted Kane.

Williams came out of his cage and stood beside the ledger-keeper.

“Well, Russ,” he said quietly, “it’s even worse for me than for you, yon know. I’m dependent on them.”

Kane felt the force of the teller’s argument. He experienced sudden pity for Williams, who, after all, had taken this medicine with better grace than he himself had done.

“I suppose there’s no use getting sore,” he agreed. “But I swear I won’t talk to the G.M. I’m done right now.”

With that he walked away, and went above the bank. After hours the accountant joined him.

“Russ,” he said, apologetically, “I’m sorry if you think I mistrust you.”

Kane looked at him coldly.

“Well, let’s say no more about it,” he answered.

Muir was silent. By and by he looked up from his revery.

“I imagine,” he remarked, “that a sort of suspicion will rest on all of us on account of this affair.”

“That’s the way it goes,” returned Kane, rather indifferently. “Suspicion is a rotten stench that spreads fast and sticks a long while.”

He began to pack his belongings, whistling as he did so. The accountant watched him with a cheerless countenance.

“Russ,” he said, at last, “I do wish this thing hadn’t come about. I hate to see—”

The teller came through the doorway from the hall.

“Not going so soon!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, Walt,” was the reply. “I might as well leave them in the soup while I’m at it.”

And he did. Moreover, he left town without bidding anyone good-bye. He hated, for the time being, everything and everybody that was associated in his mind with clerkship at Mullin branch.

After he had gone the teller and accountant sat talking. Naturally Muir wondered if Williams were not implicated in the loss of money. But he caught himself thus wondering and suspecting, and remembering Kane’s observations on the hatefulness of suspicions, decided to banish them from his mind. There must have been a mistake at the Toronto office, as the manager had said. This was a sample of the drawbacks in the business which a man must, for the sake of contentment, forget.