The Man With the Mole/Chapter 1

AZEDLY JACK SPERRY stared at the pink slip in his hand. He turned it from the front, where his stepfather’s clear signature—Simeon Cairns—appeared as drafter of a check for ten thousand dollars, to the back, where showed the endorsement of John J. Sperry in handwriting so like his own that it staggered him. The check was payable to the same John J. Sperry.

The three men grouped on the side of the desk opposite to him gazed at him uncompromisingly. The one in the central chair, Simeon Cairns himself, spoke.

“That is your signature on the back of the check, is it not?” The aggressiveness of the tone brought Sperry a little to his senses.

“It looks very much like my writing, sir. But it cannot be. I have not endorsed any check of yours for any such amount: none at all since the last payment of my allowance.”

“Indeed? This is a check bearing my name, bearing a number considerably in advance of the last issued by me. I find it has been torn from the back pages of my check book, kept by me in the drawer of this desk, as you are well aware. You know this gentleman, Mr. Hilliard, president of the Agricultural National, of Longfield, and Mr. Burnside, cashier of the same institution.” The speaker looked expectantly at the bank president.

“This check,” said Hilliard in a dry, commercial voice, “was presented to our junior paying teller, Mr. Remington, yesterday morning by this young man. He is well known to Remington and to the rest of us, as your stepson. No question was raised of identity, or of the authenticity of your signature, or of the amount of the check. Your stepson intimated to Remington that he was going into business on his own account, and that this sum had been advanced, or presented to him, as his working capital. A majority portion of it was to go toward a partnership, I understand.”

Sperry gasped and then broke into expostulation. Cairns interrupted him.

“You shall have your say in a moment. Go on, Mr. Hillard.”

“There is little more to say. The cash was paid out, as desired. Ordinarily the irregularity would not have been noticed for another twenty-four hours had you not requested the exact amount of your balance early this afternoon, Mr. Cairns. Upon your declaration that this check must be a forgery, we came up to see you immediately after closing hours. I understand you do repudiate this signature?”

“It is cleverly done, but it is not mine,” said Cairns.

“Naturally the bank does not feel inclined to sustain this loss. We are compelled to protect ourselves, to guard ourselves against such attacks. We are, however, inclined to view the matter with an leniency equal to your own, Mr. Cairns, providing, of course, the money is restored.”

“Do you hear that, Jack?” demanded his stepfather. “Restore this money, and, for your mother’s sake, as well as for your own”

“But I did not cash that check,” said Sperry. “I”

The cashier’s voice struck in, coldly metallic.

“You did cash a check in the bank yesterday?”

“I did. But it was one of my own. I have a balance of two hundred and fifty odd. Wait.” He produced his own pocket check book while the others looked on cynically. “My balance is two hundred and sixty-three dollars. I drew a check for twenty-five dollars. There is the stub. Remington gave me two tens and a five. Look for yourselves.” He flung the check book on the big library desk. No attempt was made to pick it up.

Burnside went on:

“Your balance is exactly two hundred and eighty-eight dollars. Remington states that you presented only the one check, this signed by Mr. Cairns, and took the money in five one-thousand-dollar bills and ten five-hundred-dollar bills. I am sorry for you, Sperry, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against you.”

Sperry’s eyes flashed and he pounded the desk with his fist. “Do you mean to insinuate that I forged the name of Simeon Cairns and tried to appropriate ten thousand dollars? Why, there is a hundred thousand dollars held for me in trust by my mother under my father’s will.”

“And not available until you are thirty, five years from now. Unless, in the meantime, your mother and her advisers become convinced that you are capable of successfully applying the sum to business methods,” spoke up Cairns. “And, unfortunately, she is not so convinced. You have been sowing wild oats. Jack, and this is the harvest, my lad. Why didn’t you come to me frankly and own up to your entanglement?”

“All that is a lie,” cried Sperry. “I am in no entanglement. You have attempted to prejudice my mother against me. You have magnified little things into wild escapades. And you would have been the last person for me to apply to for aid.”

“There is no use talking that way, Jack,” said Cairns with a shrug of his shoulders. “I am glad your mother is away for the present. The issue is, are you going to restore that money? If so, I will say nothing more of it. Mr. Hilliard has expressed his will toward leniency. If you will not do the honest, repentant thing” He shrugged his shoulders once again.

“I haven’t got it!” e&claimed Jack. “I never had it!”

Hilliard got up, Burnside with him.

“We cannot waste time in this matter,” said the president. “We are still willing to give twenty-four hours for the return of the ten thousand dollars. If not, we shall be compelled to adopt the usual course. One way or another, the penalty must be paid. Aside from the financial loss we have no real right to countenance crime.”

Jack Sperry, feeling like an animal that has suddenly found itself in a trap, looked at the three men. They were utterly aloof from him, unsympathetic. It was evident they believed him guilty, that he was in peril of arrest.

“For the sake of Mrs. Cairns, the unhappy boy’s mother,” Cairns said, “I will make good the loss to the bank. I do not wish a prosecution. If other means fail, I shall send you my check the first thing in the morning.”

“Very well,” said Hilliard coldly. “That closes the incident. Remington, of course, has been discharged. He should have detected the forgery.”

“That hardly seems fair,” said Cairns. “It is excellently done. But I suppose discipline must be maintained. I shall see what I can do for the young man. He should not suffer from another’s crime.”

Hillard and Burnside took their leave formally, Cairns seeing them to the door of his library, while Sperry, boiling with resentment, awaited his return to the desk.

The Cairn’s household was a divided one. Jack Sperry’s mother had remarried, and Jack had not approved the match, though he did not voice his opinion openly, understanding somewhat of his mother’s nature, essentially feminine, demanding some one upon whom to lean. He had tried his best to get along with his new relation, but he resented the dominant aggressiveness of Simeon Cairns, disbelieved in his easily assumed suavity, and objected to his assumption of parental authority, his complete reorganization of the household.

Jack Sperry was twenty-five, and his own master: or he would be When fairly launched on his own career. After college he had taken up civil engineering in earnest, serving an apprenticeship with such success that he had been, offered a partnership. The capital for this he had looked to, under the terms of his father’s will, as mentioned by Hilliard, from his mother. The hundred thousand dollars was his rightful heritage, leaving ample for his mother during her lifetime: an equal sum, in fact, that would supposedly revert to Sperry on her death, being meanwhile excellently invested.

Since Mrs. Sperry had married Cairns, the latter’s masterful ways had, by devious methods, blocked Jack’s ambitions, or so the latter fully believed. Cairns affected to treat him as a headstrong boy, using a bonhomie that Jack merely believed a cover to his true personality. And his mother, somewhat an invalid of late, seemed more and more inclined to accept as infallible her second husband’s wisdom.

More, Cairns had made the most of certain affairs, particularly one in which Jack had aided a fraternity brother to get out of a serious scrape. He had managed to imbue Mrs. Cairns with the idea that her son was still unsuited for the responsibilities of business and the handling of capital. All in all, the two rubbed together no more smoothly than do a coarse file and a rough casting. Jack’s mother was wintering in Florida, and the friction between the two had been more open of late. Now had come this astounding accusation, leaving Jack gasping, like a fish in a net, at the meshes of evidence surrounding him.

Cairns came back to the desk with a frown on his face.

“Don’t be obstinate, Jack,” he said. “If you can’t get the money, if you’ve applied it elsewhere, confess it to me and I’ll advance it temporarily.”

“You’ve always hated me,” said Sperry. “You have tried to estrange me from my mother: you have tried to run my affairs as well as hers. This thing is a lie, a trick, and you know it. Somewhere or other you are back of this infernal business!”

“Are you accusing the president and cashier of the Agricultural Bank, together with the paying teller, who has been forced to give up his position: together with myself, of trying to fasten a crime upon you that will, I sadly fear, break your mother’s heart if not jeopardize her health?”

"You leave her name out of it,” said Sperry fiercely.

“You forget that she is my wife, the woman I love,” said Cairns with a certain dignity. “She cannot be left out of it. If you persist in your denial of this thing I shall restore the money but, after that, I shall wash my hands of it. It is not to be expected that this young—er—Remington will accept his forced loss of a job quietly. There will undoubtedly be publicity. I shall see your mother immediately in order to break the news to her as softly as possible.”

“I shall see her first,” broke in Sperry.

“I think not,” said Cairns softly. “I had a letter from her this morning. She has left the Royal Poinciana and gone—elsewhere. Under the circumstances I do not feel justified in letting you know where that is. I shall wire her tonight of my departure, and I shall see,” he went on blandly, “that whatever mail comes for you from her is, temporarily at least, withheld. Since you are resolved to stay hardened, I also remind you that your presence in this house, from this moment, is not to be tolerated.”

Sperry glared at him. He believed that his stepfather’s eyes were full of mockery and malice.

“You have no right,” he cried hotly, “no right to hold my mail! You have no right to throw me out of my mother’s house!”

“I think I should not be considered an usurper,” answered Cairns. “As for yourself, you have no rights. A felon forfeits such things. Your appeal to the law might prove unfortunate. This is my house. Your mother has made it over to me in exchange for other matters.”

A glaring light seemed to break through Sperry’s brain, still confused from the charges, the crushing evidence against him.

“And you seek to have me disinherited,” he said. “I am on to your crafty game now. It is you who are a criminal, a sneaking”

Simeon Cairn’s usually pallid face flamed crimson. He struck Sperry with his open hand, a resounding blow that left the mark of livid fingers on the latter’s cheek.

Beside himself, reeling back, Sperry clutched a heavy inkstand of glass and hurled it at his stepfather. He saw it strike, saw the ink cover Cairn’s face and, as the latter fell to the rug, saw crimson well out and mingle with the black of the ink. Cairns lay prone, his eyes staring. Sperry heard footsteps in the hall and realized that their voices had mounted in the rapidly culminating quarrel. “Felon!” The word surged in his brain. Now he was fairly in the mesh of circumstances.

He sprang to the door and encountered Peters, the butler with whom Cairns had supplanted the former functionary, as he had all the original servants. Peters, heavy, inclined to stoutness, grasped for Sperry and the latter drove home a blow with all his weight to the butler’s stomach and floored him, breathless, agonized. Snatching his hat and coat from the rack, Sperry raced out into the gloom of the early evening.