The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne, page 18
“As I have the figures here,” Garroway was saying, “we would require $51,090.50 cash on hand to balance the books, on the basis of the bank statement Mr. Thorne had sent over at eleven o’clock Saturday morning.”
Erskine threw open the cover of the box. He examined the notations on a few pages of a small clothbound pocket-size ledger therein, and then withdrew from the box a bankbook with leather cover worn shiny from much sliding through a receiving teller’s window, and a packet of bills and coin which he stacked and counted out.
“Well,” he said, “we have $50,000 of the cash on hand in the vault—in a sealed—” He looked toward Thorne. “—in that envelope—prepared for that—” He broke off hesitant “—that client you spoke of.” Thorne nodded vehemently. “And here, in bills—” Erskine turned back toward the auditor Garroway. “—is $872, which you can count. Here in silver is $19.37.” And he regarded the bank book. “I made a deposit, Saturday noon, of $372.18 and this noon, of $102.50.” He turned to Thorne. “So if you’ll give me the figures, Mr. Thorne, on anything you’ve personally checked out on that, since that time, we’ll have the balance.”
“You say,” put in Garroway, “that you have $50,000 here in a sealed envelope. I don’t see the env—”
“I said it was in the vault,” put in Erskine, curtly. “In my own private sub-vault, in fact.”
“Well, of course—ahem!” said Garroway, to nobody in particular, but evidently to both Erskine and Thorne jointly, “I can’t complete this audit on the mere say-so that a certain envelope contains thus and so. You folks unders—”
“Well, there’s no reason why you can’t complete this one,” pronounced Erskine, firmly. “For the sum in question is in the envelope in question, all sealed up, and locked within my section of the vault.”
Garroway looked at Thorne.
“But of course, Mr. Thorne, we would prefer, in proclaiming a balance, to have at hand all the cash assets—”
“Is this,” Erskine queried suddenly, “some sort of imputation—against my honesty?” He turned to his employer. “I have fixed the envelope—”
“Yes,” interrupted Thorne, soothingly, “according to my directions. I know. Well, gentlemen”—this to the two auditors—“I’m really afraid Mr. Erskine here is a bit sensitive, and feels now that we’re auditing him—instead of the business! So I’ll give you my own personal assurance that the envelope in question contains $50,000 in cash—for I know all about the circumstances under which it was brought together—In fact, I was present—ahem—when it was sealed up, and Mr. Erskine can lay it here with the cash, unopened. Now gentlemen, all of you—will that satisfy your respective egos?”
“It’s all right with me,” pronounced Erskine, a little nettled, for reasons which he could not himself clearly define.
“O.K.!” said Garroway, though a bit reluctantly.
With which Erskine went to the vault, unlocked his own sub—vault, and brought in the envelope. Which Garroway, a bit grumpily, laid, seals down, and clipped, handwritten notation up, atop the money.
“And now what?” he asked, again all business, “has been checked out, Mr. Thorne, since the last bank statement?”
Thorne gazed through his big round-lensed glasses into a broad four-check book which he had opened on his desk. “I have checked out $55, $40.45 and $130, as per checks No. 2509, 2510 and 2511,” he said.
Pencils flew over paper. Riley was the first to speak. “It doesn’t quite balance,” he said frowningly. “There’s a discrepancy in favor of the company. We’re $50 over!”
Four faces studied the figures. Then Thorne spoke. “Of course, Erskine, you didn’t seal up one thousand-dollar bill too few in that envelope there, and, on top of that, forgot to enter a credit of $950 to us on any loan?”
Erskine shook his head emphatically. “No. Absolutely not. I counted the bills three times, very carefully. There is no mistake there.” He paused. “And there is no credit of $950 due to be entered up.”
“But there’s $50 to the good.” persisted Riley. “That envelope, if it were short by a bill, would account for a discrepancy in itself. But you say, Mr. Thorne, you counted its contents yourself—before it was sealed?”
“Well—er—ahem,” stammered Thorne, “I didn’t count them. No. But I’m sure that Erskine would make no mist—” He broke off. “You don’t think, Erskine, that you—still, of course—”
“I counted its contents three times,” said Erskine coldly, “and they are correct. They—”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Garroway, very firmly now, as a man who had been emboldened by a sudden supporting circumstance, to insist upon his rights as an auditor. “We’ll have to count this. This money in the envelope. Yes. If we don’t, we’ll have to go all over our previous figures once more on the adding-machine. That will take a good two hours. I’m a bit foggy, and I may have slipped up on a five in some ten-row.” He paused, frowningly. “Anyway, if we are to give a certified audit, Mr. Thorne, we should actually check up every last bit of cash ourselves.”
“Certainly,” agreed Thorne, now completely won over, or else his resistance beaten down. “After all—you gentlemen are the doctors!”
Garroway had already drawn over the envelope, and was trying to tear off its end. But the stout cloth would not rip. But Thorne was already passing him his own long desk scissors. Ruthlessly now Garroway sliced the end of the envelope off. Opened it gapingly out. Peered in. And then like a man who had come upon a poison snake, he sat back—gazing bewilderedly about him. Thorne spoke.
“What’s the matter, Garroway? Bee sting you?”
But Riley’s mouth was now open. For he had taken the envelope from his associate’s outstretched hand, held forth, for some reason, to him.
“Why—why—there’s something wrong here,” the latter said, peering into the gaping envelope. Unlike Garroway, however, he dumped the contents of the envelope squarely forth on the table. And they appeared, on the instant, to be a small newspaper-wrapped packet surrounded by a rubber band. Swiftly, however, Riley removed the rubber band from it, and shoving it sidewise with a shearing motion, succeeded in spreading it fanwise on the table.
Thorne leaned over, eyes contracted narrowly. Erskine, his own eyes wide with utter unbelief, rose from his seat and peered down too. And there, exposed to the view of all of them, spread fanwise out, was a series of slips of newspaper, each cut to the size of a thousand-dollar bill, and each worth less than even a single pre-Czarist Russian ruble!
CHAPTER XII
A Message Over the Wire
A dead silence filled the room. Every man looked at every other man. Erskine’s mouth, like Riley’s, stood agape. As in a daze, he found himself staring at the white envelope to which was still clipped that bit of green-tinted paper he had written out. Stupidly he reached forward and picked it up—peered into its interior by way of that now open gaping end. Devoid it was, however, of further contents—as might be expected. He laid it down in the same daze with which he had picked it up. And suddenly he became conscious that there were three pairs of eyes riveted on him, waiting for something.
“Why—why—” he stammered, looking up. He pointed down at the opened-out packet of newspaper slips. “It—I did up fifty one-thousand-dollar bills—and now—now they’re gone. I don’t know—I—” He stopped, chilled by the reception of his words.
For Thorne’s face had grown suddenly hard and his eyes glittered through their shell frames like diamond points.
He rose from his swivel chair, and striding over to Erskine seized the latter’s shoulders in strong powerful hands. He gazed into Erskine’s eyes, which gazed back into his own, troubled, dumbfounded, staggered. “Damn you, Erskine, what have you done? So that’s—that’s why you wanted that envelope to go into the audit, sight unseen, eh? Damn Erskine, have you tried to make a cleanup on me? Have you mulcted me? So help me, if you have, you’ll go to the penitentiary for it.” He turned furiously toward the tall, thin, Riley. “Mr. Riley, call an officer. No—don’t. Lock that door.”
Riley got up and turned the lock of the door. He dropped the key into his pocket. He resumed his chair. His own face had grown hard, as had that of his associate. At last Erskine found his tongue.
“So—so help me God,” he expostulated, “I know nothing about—those paper strips. If anybody’s got that money, it’s—it’s not I.” He turned to Garroway. “You—you opened that envelope! You—” But his voice trailed away. “No, you opened it in full view of me.” He slumped down on the edge of his chair. He bit his lips. He could not quite gather his wits together yet. He heard Thorne’s voice speaking down at him as from a long distance.
“Erskine, it’s come to pass—you whom I trusted—whom I was fool enough to put in here and have handle my money like it was your own. You’ve—you’ve mulcted me. You’ve pulled a neat trick; to go to prison for a few years and come out richer by $50,000! Damn it, Erskine, I—I didn’t think it of you.”
“Now—see here, gentlemen,” said Erskine, rising from his chair in his agitation, “I—I sealed up in that envelope $50,000 five—no, six days ago. Obviously it isn’t there now. Mr. Thorne and I are the only ones who have the combination of the main vault. And as for the sub-vault—” He passed a hand wearily over his forehead. “But I tell you it was not I—not I—I did not abstract that money. Did you enter my sub-vault in some way, and—” He gazed at Thorne. “Thorne—are you slipping into bankruptcy? Are you trying to make my bondsmen toss $50,000 into your business—at my expense?”
“Good God, no!” Thorne shot back vehemently. “As for entering your sub-vault, you alone had its combination. You made your own setting on it—yourself—when you came here. And Lord knows how many re-settings since you’ve been here. And as for needing your bond, man, why—it’s run out! It ran out last week. And—I didn’t renew it. And would I pilfer from myself—even if I could have done so here—just for the joy of doing something erratic? Remember, this is no stock company. This is my own business—a one-man company—myself. I can’t abstract money from it and expect any stockholders to suffer a loss to correspond to my profit. What I take from this loan business I simply have to put back into it from my outside holdings. I am the loan company, just exactly as I am Christopher Thorne, individual. Why should I take the money? Even if I could? I’d merely have to go over and sell some of my real estate, or hypothecate some bonds, to the extent of $50,000—and put it right back. Where would I profit?”
Erskine bit his lips. He knew only too well that Christopher Thorne’s statement about the sub-vault combination was correct, and that the reasoning the latter had just set forth was correct, as well; for only the other day had Thorne shown him a recent purchase of a huge South Side tenement building paying 25 per cent net and costing him $100,000 even. An idea flashed into his mind; he discarded it for another—and then in turn he dropped this instanter, for on the heels of his untenable suppositions had come a powerful and very tenable theory.
“Ebenezer Sitting-Down-Bear,” he cried. “He—he could have gotten that combination. By pulling back the door of my sub-vault—for a second—when I turned away—for a second—and I must have, lots of times—and he could have—Yes, and gone on a vacation now! There you’ve got it,” he asserted confidently. “He’s mulcted us all. He’s—”
“Nonsense!” sneered Thorne. “Ebenezer wouldn’t steal from you—even if he could. And—”
“Yes—yes, but I tell you he’d steal your money—from me. It’s—it’s capitalistic money—to him.”
“And I tell you, by God that he wouldn’t!” declared Thorne. He turned to the two auditors. “Why, this fellow we’re talking about is a regular religious nut. He would not steal, I’d stake my life on it.” He turned to Erskine. “There’s nothing in that whole vault that it would behoove me to steal—from myself. You know that. You claim you sealed up the money. In that envelope there. But you lie. You never sealed it up. You intended to skip out—when the proper moment came.” He picked up the envelope and waved it excitedly at Erskine. “Here—here’s your own seals—” He stopped waving it just long enough to survey one of the seals. “Egyptian, eh? Seems to me Alicia said something about—Oh, it’s his seal all right!” Thorne declared vehemently to the two auditors. Envelope now held in both hands, Thorne turned to Erskine, “And you have the gall to stand there and—and try to stall us. You—”
Garroway spoke, now the calmest of them all.
“Let me have that envelope a minute, Mr. Thorne—if you will. Yes, thanks.” He scrutinized its seals, now all turned toward him. Then looked at Erskine. “Erskine, you think somebody has sealed up a dummy envelope, and put it in your—”
“Think so?” cried Erskine, angrily. “I—I damn well know so! I—”
“Well, such things have been done,” pronounced Garroway, judicially, “in the history of crime. But where they have been, there’s always the motive of—” He broke off. “Do you mind stating, Mr. Erskine, exactly how you seal letters—and papers? That is, do you do one seal at a time? Dipping your die in water each time? Are you willing to—”
“I’m damned willing to tell you—yes—and you can all take note of my words. I pour all my blobs of hot wax at once—and then seal them all in quick succession. The block seal I have requires no cooling.”
“Hm. Where do you keep the seal itself?”
“In my sub-vault.”
“Well—er—if anybody could have gotten access to your sub-vault—they could have gotten the seal—is that correct? Is that—”
“Nobody could get access to his sub-vault,” pronounced Thorne dogmatically. “He alone had the comb—”
“If Ebenezer,” interrupted Erskine, “got into it—he could have gotten the use of my seal. However, the seal itself has been lying in my open desk now for weeks. A copy of it could have been made. Or—”
“Well—the point is,” deduced Garroway, “that as long as the seal has been with the envelope—then, the ability to substitute another envelope provides the ability to make a duplicate envelope. For—”
“Of course—of course,” Erskine returned angrily.
“Well, Mr. Erskine,” put in Garroway troubledly, “will you take an envelope—any envelope—and go through the exact motions—presumably—that you use—when you seal? That may—or may not help to clear you.”
“I’m damned glad to,” Erskine blurted out. “I seal invariably in but one way—and that way only.” He took the blank envelope which already Thorne was holding coldly outstretched to him.
He laid it face down upon the desk. And took out his fountain pen. He removed the cap, which was square-bodied—at least exteriorly—and used it to indicate exactly what he did, in the process of sealing.
“I always stamp the center-most blob of wax first,” he stated. Pressing, as he spoke, the square end of the fountain pen cap against the paper. “And—in a case of a currency-transmitting envelope going by registered mail, as we sometimes have occasion to remit money—I use five blobs, to seal every junction of paper with paper. I fixed this envelope the same way, even though it wasn’t intended to go in the mails. All right. From that center blob, I go on up to the upper right blob. So. Without turning anything. Then I turn the envelope to be sealed around 90 degrees—yes—each time I seal.” He went through the motions. Turning the envelope in front of him with his left hand, and operating the fountain pen cap with his right, till the blank envelope had been revolved a full 360 degrees. “And that,” he said, with an air of finality, “is the way I seal.”
Garroway was looking at the envelope in question—the one, that is, carrying the actual seals.
“And that,” he pronounced, “is precisely the way in which this one has been sealed. And in the very direction you demonstrated. For the last blob—that being the hottest wax, and the metal seal at its warmest at that point—is the least clearly delineated.”
With those words he tossed it over. Erskine picked it up. He stared at the sealing wax. Fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a tiny stub of wax. Compared them. They were the same, he saw. He knew now that he was in a complete daze. And heard Thorne speaking.
“Devilishly clever this man,” the latter was saying to the auditors. “Tying himself up 100 per cent to the scheme of sealing. That bears out his unique story of a clever safe-robber. Myself, no doubt—or the dumbhead Indian who works here.”
Erskine turned to his employer.
“Yes—the dumbhead Indian, Mr. Thorne. That’s exactly who it was. My wits have come back to me now. And I want to beg your pardon for even intimating that you would steal from your right hand with your left—for only an insane man would do that. I realize that now. But Ebenezer—Ebenezer Sitting-Down-Bear—he’s gotten the combination of my sub-vault—in some way—oh, yes, he could have done it if he’d been laying for it—and he’s skipped with the money. God knows what he thinks he’ll do with the money. But I always said he was no fool—and the fact that he sealed up that No. 10 envelope in the identical way I do—well, that proves it to me. And I’ll warrant you won’t catch him, for all of his dark skin—if he was that foxy!” He paused. “Well—that’s all—all I can say, I guess.”
But Phillip Erskine saw plainly, from the profound silence following his words, that they were not received with any degree of credulity.
In fact, Garroway, rubbing his pudgy hand over his bald head, looked toward Thorne. He waved the other pudgy hand toward Erskine.
“And you—you say you’ve let his bond lapse?” he asked sorrowfully.
Thorne nodded glumly. “He was only bonded for half the amount. And I even let that lapse last week. Why—I had perfect confidence in him.”
