“May I come to see you this evening, Phyllis?” He did that four or five evenings a week; they were secretly engaged.
“Yes.”
There was a distinct nuance of tremulous inquiry in her voice. It annoyed Clifford. They had threshed out every detail of this sort. She must keep a stiff upper lip, had promised not to betray any untoward interest in his comings and goings immediately following the robbery. But that was just like a woman, making plain in the tone of her voice the vast relief she felt at knowing that he was free. Wallace didn't like that. It was an indication of weakness, and weakness had no place in his elaborate scheme. Besides, he knew well that Robert Warren was no fool, realized that for all Warren's protestations of belief in his integrity, the bank president already had a detective shadowing him. He had anticipated that and a good deal more. He had expected to spend this night in jail, and perhaps several others. Certainly under observation. This freedom caused elation, but brought about no lessening of caution.
At 7:45 he presented himself at the garage where he kept his modest little roadster, filled the tank with gas and drove down the street. This was a nightly ritual. Straight to the home of Phyllis Robinson he went; it was a rambling two-story structure set well back of a high-terraced front yard, its wide veranda blanketed cozily with honeysuckle—a modest place, one which had seen decidely better days. Phyllis, an orphan, lived there with an aunt. The place was a boarding house. All very discreet and proper.
She greeted him in the hallway. He was irritated by the patent effort of her casualness. He directed their conversation, they chatted about innocuous nothings until they were safely out of the house and in his little car, headed into the country. This, too, was a not uncommon procedure. Cliff was well satisfied with himself. The most suspicious watcher could have found no food for speculation this night. His actions had been the normal actions of an innocent man. He was acting just as he would have acted had he been innocent of the theft of one hundred thousand dollars.
They mounted a gentle acclivity. The broad smooth highway dipped from the crest through a small woods. Overhead the full moon shone benignly over the valley, behind them the city, ringed about by furnaces and steel mills, gems of fire in the setting of silvered night. A red glow in the sky. The man at the steering wheel, calm and self-possessed, eyes focused on the ribbon of road ahead, thoughts busy with the epochal events of the day. Nor did he mention the subject uppermost in his mind until the girl spoke, spoke with a quaver in her voice as her hand closed tremulously about his.
“You—you're free, Cliff?”
“Obviously.” The man was a poser; this was too perfect an opportunity to miss. He wished the girl at his side to be impressed with his own granite imperviousness to emotion. Phyllis shook her head; she loved him despite the fact that she knew his weakness.
“They don’t suspect you?”
“Certainly not. They couldn't. I went in to the old man and told him the money was gone. I didn’t protect myself a bit. Suggested that he had better lock me up. And of course he didn't.” He smiled grimly, pridefully. “The only danger point in the whole scheme has been passed, Phyllis. We're safe.”
“And I’m frightened.”
“Of course. That’s natural.”
“Aren't you?”
“Not at all.” He stopped the car as if to light a cigarette. “You put the money in the vault at the City Trust?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Immediately after I left the office for lunch.”
“You went straight from the Third National to your office?”
“Yes. And the cashier commented on how quickly I got back.”
“Fine! Great! Sooner or later they're bound to connect us in this matter, and when they do they'll investigate your actions. It’ll disarm them to learn that you got back to the office in record time; that you couldn’t possibly have gone anywhere between the bank and your place of business. And now about the vault—you didn't attract any particular attention there, did you?”
“No-o. I’m sure I didn’t. There was a crowd there, and I am sure the old man didn't notice me at all. I put the money in Harriet's box, not mine.”
He patted her hand reassuringly. “You were a trump, dear. And you're not sorry?”
“No-o-and yes. I know that it is wrong, yet—oh, well, we need the money. It means so much more to us than it ever could to that bank. If we're only not caught.”
“We won’t be.” His narrow, rather hard face was set. He argued as though to reassure himself. “The weakness in anything of this sort is preliminary planning. The average man who sets out to steal one hundred thousand dollars”—the girl winced—“makes plans so enormously elaborate that he cuts his own throat, minimizes his chances of getting away with it. For every detail that such a man plants he sows a possibility of detection. He isn't content with the easy, the safe, the normal. In striving for perfection, for absolute safety, he lays traps for himself. Remember this, Phyllis: a detective can make a thousand mistakes and, by doing one single thing correctly, land his man. The criminal cannot afford a single mistake. Understand?”
“Yes.” And then the feminine side of the girl flooded to the surface. “Cliff dear, you're so—so hard!”
That pleased him. He wanted to be hard, cultivated a gelid philosophy.
“Sentiment serves no man well, Phyllis. My hardness has made possible financial ease for us—and consequent contentment. I have no conscience. Neither has the average man. Conscience is the fear of being caught. We are all inherently immoral. It was not wrong for the primitive man to steal. He took what he could get away with. Right and wrong are products of legislation, of artificial ethical culture. They are not part of us; we are inoculated with them. They are utterly foreign to us. In taking this money I have committed no natural crime. By statute only am I a criminal. I am not ashamed of what I have done. I would be ashamed of detection.”
Silence fell between them. The girl shivered as though with a chill.
“You are very convincing, dear. But I'm afraid that I’m terribly a victim to the morality of education. Of course you’ve convinced my intellect. But—since this afternoon—I'm afraid you can never convince my conscience.”
He flashed her a sudden apprehensive glance. “You’re not getting cold feet?”
“No.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s too late for that.”
“But your afraid?”
“Yes. I'm afraid.”
“Then you're silly. We're safe now. The minute you walked through those revolving doors with that hundred thousand in your bag I knew that we were safe. The scheme is successful because of its very simplicity. We are to go ahead in our normal ways. There is to be no variation whatsoever in our way of living. In a year we will marry. A year from then I will get a position somewhere else. And then—and not until then—will we begin to make use of the money which we got to-day. We're safe.”
“From the law—yes. But not from ourselves.”
“Harping on conscience again?”
“Yes.”
“Pff! I have no conscience, no fear of the intangible.”
She sighed. “I must agree with you, dear. I’ve gone too far not to. But I wonder—whether it's worth the price.”
He laughed harshly and the car leaped ahead as his finger caressed the gas lever.
“It’s fortunate, Phyllis, that I’m practical. The thing that counts in this world is what you have—not how you got it.”
They returned to the girl’s