“Ah-h!” Cliff saw a meaningful look pass between the two detectives. “Your fiancée?”
“Yes.”
“Did you personally cash her check that day?”
“Yes.”
“You are positive about that?”
“Yes. I cash all of the pay-roll checks; and besides, I remember talking to her while she was at the window.”
The detectives nodded at each other and Cliff was dismissed. Immediately Jamieson and Burton checked up the movements of Phyllis Robinson on that particular day. They learned that she had cashed the company's pay-roll check as usual and that she had been absent from the office only a short time. Yes, the puzzled cashier was positive of that—he remembered noticing particularly that she'd hardly left the office before she was back with the money. In answer to their query as to whether she had time to stop some where en route to the office from the bank, the little man indignantly protested that he recalled every detail of the morning and that she couldn’t possibly have done so. “I never knew her to get back so quick before, and she never was one to loiter.”
So much for that. The girl had undoubtedly gone straight from the bank to her office. The Jones cashier insisted that she delivered the satchel to him personally. Jamieson and Burton then visited the banks of the city and its suburbs. The Third National was the largest in the district and they went meticulously down the line in the order of importance. At the City Trust they were informed that Phyllis Robinson rented a safety-deposit box. An inspection of her card disclosed the fact that she had not visited the box in two months. Nor had she a box at any other bank. Neither had Cliff Wallace.
News of the investigation, received from the puzzled cashier, via the frightened Phyllis, elated Cliff. He was delighted to know that the two detectives were at work, and supremely confident that they could discover nothing.
But Hanvey did nothing. All day long he lounged about the lobby or sat in one of the cages with his feet propped upon a shelf, surrounding himself with a haze of rancid cigar smoke. And always those blank, stupid eyes were turned upon the cage of the chief paying teller—blinking, blinking.
Wallace did not vary a hair's breadth from the established routine of his daily life. He breakfasted at his usual place at the usual hour, Snatched a lunch as he had always been in the habit of doing, dined at his favorite cafeteria, called upon Phyllis Robinson in the evenings and either walked with her or took her riding in his little car.
On Thursday he drew his monthly pay check—two hundred and fifty dollars. One hundred dollars of it he immediately deposited to his own credit in a savings account. He had done this for years.
On Friday he received a shock. It was a light pay-roll day—not more than a quarter million dollars had been set aside for the pay rolls. In the line was Phyllis, satchel in hand. He greeted her as usual, counted the packages of bills and rolls of silver. And then, as he unlocked the little window of his cage to return to her the satchel, he visioned the ponderous figure of Jim Hanvey lolling indifferently over the shelf; round idiotic eyes fixed unseeingly upon him. Fear flashed into Cliff's heart and the color receded from his cheeks. What was the significance of that? Was it possible—— With an almost hysterical gesture he slammed shut the window. Hanvey's eyes blinked once, slowly; a second time, more slowly. Then he moved heavily away, playing with his gold toothpick.
That night as Cliff was driving with Phyllis in the country—“That was Hanvey standing by the window to-day when I cashed your pay-roll check.”
The girl shuddered. “Ugh! He's horrid. Like a jellyfish.”
“I wonder why he did that? He's never done it before.”
“Did what?”
“Hung over the counter while I was cashing your pay-roll check. I wonder if he suspects——”
“That man! He looks like an imbecile.”
“Looks like, yes. But he is supposed to be a great detective.”
“It’s impossible.”
“He’s getting on my nerves, Phyllis. I can't help but believe that he suspects something. At times I feel a contempt for his obtuseness. Then I know that I’m wrong. He couldn’t be what he is and be the fool he looks. And he doesn’t do anything. He's never questioned me. He's never questioned any one. He just sits there and watches and watches—like—like a Buddha.”
Nor did the weeks which followed alter the situation. Jamieson reported to the bank officials that in his opinion there had been no robbery. Burton concurred. They had arrived at the definite conclusion that the money had never reached the bank. In answer to Cliff’s statement that it had, they admitted that Cliff believed so—but was in error. Cliff refused to be convinced, and thus established more firmly than ever in their minds the fact that he was innocent of complicity in the crime. It was the theory of Jamieson and Burton that in securing the unusually large amount of cash from the District Federal Reserve Bank to meet the heavy pay rolls of that particular day, a miscount had been made at the sending source and the checking up at the Third National had been faulty. True, the accounts of the Federal Reserve Bank showed no surplus of one hundred thousand dollars, but both Jamieson and Burton were optimistic that it would eventually come to light.
Cliff Wallace knew that he had been successful. No hint of suspicion had fallen upon him. The worst that had been said against him was that he had been careless in counting the money as it came into his vaults. He was sorrowful about that—ostentatiously so, just as he would normally have exhibited grief at any suggestion of inefficiency. The bank officials did not blame him. Most of them had climbed the ladder slowly and they were familiar with the nagging routine of the paying teller's cage, the inevitable liability to error. Undoubtedly, they thought, the money would appear eventually. It was absurd to doubt Clifford Wallace. Two detectives had shadowed him meticulously. The orderly existence of the chief paying teller was unaltered. He went his way serenely.
To Wallace it seemed more than worth the trouble. Lying in the vaults of the City Trust was one hundred thousand dollars in cash, an amount sufficient to yield seven thousand income invested with moderate acumen. That meant leisure and ease for himself and Phyllis through life. He did not want anything more. He knew that he would never again be tempted to crime; not that he was morally opposed to it, but because it wasn’t worth the danger.
One hundred thousand dollars was adequate to their needs. He had planned this thing for two years. Now it had been worked successfully.
If it only wasn't for Jim Hanvey, those wide-staring eyes. He couldn’t get away from those eyes, from the insolent indolence of the man, his apparent indifference to the mystery he was supposed to be solving. All day he lounged around the bank; ignorant, bunglesome, awkward, inactive. He inspected no books, asked no questions, exhibited no suspicion of Cliff Wallace. Yet Cliff felt those inhuman eyes focused upon him at all times. And that incident of Hanvey's presence at the cage when he cashed Phyllis' pay-roll check—that was fraught with deep significance.
“He suspects me,” proclaimed the chief paying teller to his accomplice. “He knows that I did it and is just trying to find out how.”
She held his hand between both of hers. “I’m afraid, Cliff. Horribly afraid.”
“If he'd only say something! I wish he'd arrest me.”
“Cliff!”
“I mean it. If he'd arrest me they’d prosecute, and they couldn’t possibly convict. They haven’t a thing on me. I’d be acquitted in jig time. Then he could go to the devil—Hanvey and those fish eyes of his. I’d be safe then—even if they found out later that I had done it.”
“You mean that you couldn’t be tried twice for the same offense?”
“That’s it.”
“Then why not induce them to–to prosecute?”