The Red Book Magazine/Volume 19/Number 5/An Appearance of Evil

In which a bank cashier becomes the plaything of the fates

by

Raymond S. Spears

R. ABNER SHELL was a good, patient, honest man. From the day he was born, he was dignified. In childhood, his playmates left to his judgment problems of right and wrong, and never by scowl or act disputed his decisions. Unflinching, exact, constant, never would he willfully inflict upon any man an injury. His respect for property was so sacred that nothing could shake it—not even the acts of legislators and the decisions of the Supreme Court.

When his bank said to their faithful cashier, “Go now and take your vacation!” he went, and as he went, he picked up his suit-case, which stood right where he had left it, for in the course of events his vacation would come due on that day and he was prepared. On reaching his room in the quiet summer resort beside a little lake in the Adirondacks, he proceeded to discard his black coat, his black tie, and so on, in favor of conventional, dignified summer-resort costume. Having freed his arms, his neck and, in some measure, his mental precision of its harness, he unbuckled his suit case, unlatched it and threw it open.

It was full of bank-notes! No shirt was in it, no outing flannel suit, no Oxford ties, no clean collars—not one of the things that one puts in a suit-case to spend a few days beside an Adirondack lake in a respectable, dignified summer resort. There was nothing but bank-notes—two-dollar, five-dollar—tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds, and worst of all, rectangular blocks of thousand-dollar bills.

Mr. Abner Shell, for twenty years the faithful servant of the Mixlan National Bank, had walked away with a hundred thousand—maybe two hundred thousand dollars. He made a hasty appraisal of the contents of the suit case; there was certainly more than a hundred thousand dollars.

He stared at the money with fixity and respect; and then he slid over to the door and locked it, returning to gaze at the money with natural awe, which increased, for he had never had so much money in his possession before, much as had passed through his hands. When he had handled large sums of money before, it had always been within the protecting cage of the bank, where there were witnesses in the persons of other employees and officials.

He closed the suit-case and examined it. It was exactly the same as his own suit-case—buckles, latch, strap, handle, stitching, and all, except that, now that he made a critical examination, the leather was a shade darker, and there was a slight stain on one side. Of course, it had been purchased at the Buck Leather Co. store in Mixlan, and was, no doubt, one of the famous local products.

He wondered where he had picked it up, whether on the trolley, in the railroad station, or somewhere on the train. He traced his way from the bank to the summer resort, step by step, and the more he thought, the clearer it became that the change had not been at any stage of the journey from the bank to the room. Then he traced his course from the boarding house to the bank, but he had had the case in his hand every step of the way—except when he stopped to talk to Mr. Luther Crume, who was just returning from the metropolis that morning. Mr. Crume had a suit-case.

The thought made Mr. Shell start with astonishment; what was Mr. Crume, the venerable deacon of his church, doing with that money? Mr. Shell shivered as he thought what people would say about Mr. Crume when it became known that he had traveled around with a hundred thousand or so of good money—good? With suspicion, Mr. Shell picked up one of the packages of money and ran practiced fingers through it. It was good money; no possible doubt about that. Really, if Mr. Crume had all that money, how did he get it?

Of course, there had been some talk around when the Crume Manufacturing Company failed that there were circumstances that seemed suspicious, but Crume had sold his house and his wife’s jewelry, and was living in his son’s rented house—yet here was more than a hundred thousand dollars, and Crume had had a suit-case! Poor Crume; how absurd to accuse him! How could he have exchanged with him? It was impossible. Then who could it have been?

Suddenly, his blood ran hot through his arteries. It was Faxe! Absolom Faxe, president of the bank, had packed up that money, ready to abscond, and Shell had taken it by mistake. Faxe had a Buck Company suit-case exactly like Shell's. Shell’s eyes bulged; of all people, Faxe! And yet he was just the one to do such a thing as that; he had a wife who liked pretty dresses. Faxe was exemplary in every respect, too: everybody trusted him and he was the great leading citizen of Mixlan, regarded with awe and admired by everyone.

Shell shook his head sadly; Faxe had mentioned large business interests that would take him away for some time. He had gone away about the time Shell had started.

Fate is exceedingly unkind to swindlers and absconders. Shell pitied Faxe. He had now to perform the unpleasant duty of exposing the president of the bank. Mr. Shell’s train of thought stopped abruptly in a collision with itself. His hair crinkled when he suddenly realized that he, Shell, was the only one who could be exposed. He had the money and they would ask him how he got it; he couldn't even give it up with out condemning himself.

Then Shell shivered as he thought of what people would say about him. Here he was, a Sunday School superintendent, a faithful bank cashier, with all this money belonging to some one else. Then his mind leaped to what they would do—the Law! He rushed to the telephone.

“That’s out of order—tree fell across it somewhere, probably!” the hotel clerk told him calmly.

Mr. Shell returned to his room, alarmed, rebuffed and tormented. He pulled down the curtain to his third story window, although it was not yet dark and no prying eye could possibly have looked in. The cold sweat gathered on his forehead.

He was not brave; he was warped by years of routine and perfect sequence. He had enshrined the perfection of System, and deviation from the regular order of things not only startled and shocked him, but it left him helpless and amazed. A bird driven to flight in the dark of the moon—nothing could be more helpless than Mr. Abner Shell, in to whose hands Fate had thrust a fortune that did not belong to him.

He marshaled his scattered wits for an attempt to see clearly what had happened. All that he could see was the jeopardy in which he stood. Even if the president of the bank had planned to escape with the money, the president could now shift the blame onto the shoulders of the cashier—whatever had happened, there was no escape for Abner Shell!

Escape! The word now became the beacon of Mr. Abner Shell, cashier of the Mixlan National Bank. Fate had treated him shabbily, Providence had treated him unfairly—and the Devil was laughing at him.

All down the fenced and circumscribed lane of his life, he saw the mile-stones of his temptations—the allurements of social games of cards that lead to gambling; the smiles of ladies, that lead to dancing; the sweet cider, that leads to strong drink. He had resisted everything, and in him passion and inclination had given way to the Ten Commandments, the straight edge of appearances, and, above all, to the Banking Laws; and here he was, through no will of his own, with—he wondered how much there really was.

He slid over to the suit-case and went down through the packages one by one. He unpinned them, counted the bills, and then pinned them up. With a pencil he jotted the amounts on a slip of paper, and when he had swiftly and with great precision, counted it all, and the paper ties and the pins were in their exact places, he knew what he had, for he footed up mentally, as he went along.

There was exactly $145,000!

The day before he would have shuddered and nearly fainted had he even dreamed that he would question the Banking Act, the Ten Commandments, the Rules of Evidence, or God. Now he searched his mind for an oath—a real, genuine, Simon-pure swear-word, and it dawned on him, as his failure became more and more pronounced, that he was lacking in much of the comfort and resource which are the common property of the wicked. He felt badly about it, and he determined that the next time he had a chance, he would remember the proper sequence of swear words, and thus fortify himself against any future emergency.

“Damn—Damn—Damn—” he whispered, with horrified glances around him. “Dear me! What does come next?”

The diversion, however, was only temporary. He was obliged to return to the matter in hand—the matter that was out of place—the $145,000 that was hanging in his clutches, padlocked to him, and a burden of—he thought of the word “sin” at first. but somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to the point of accusing himself of sin, whereas he was not conscious of having sinned. But man would never believe, the courts would never believe, that he had not taken that money with the intent to steal it. The chance that God would perform a miracle in favor of a mere bank cashier, when so many bank presidents had gone to jail on circumstantial evidence, seemed remote indeed.

In all his mature life—and he had matured early—Mr. Abner Shell had never been angry. He had been righteously indignant a number of times, but such was his code of life and morals, that as long as things were as they ought to be, he could not be angry. Wrong was wrong, right was right, and wrong is met by a certain procedure, as in the case of the young man who had tried to pass a forged check on Mr. Shell. In the Church there had been dissentions [sic], but these had been settled with precision and tact. Mr. Shell had always been right; his judgment had been perfect. None had disputed it—but now!

Righteous indignation was no name for the feeling that after a time surged through the dry and usually cool system of the bank cashier. He had tried to remember swear-words, and failing in that, he had tried to divine some, and now, with all the circumstances before his logical and precise mind, he fell into a rage. He said nothing. He sat perfectly still. He stared at the suit-case full of bank-notes all the time. He did not even open his mouth, but he did clench his teeth so hard that they ached for hours afterwards. Thus he went through a stage, common enough not to be an adventure in ordinary men, but a tremendous experience for the man on whom Fate, or something, had strapped $145,000 that did not belong to him, aggravating the matter by circumstances and occasions that were not merely suspicious, but a circumstantial certainty.

The bell summoning the patrons of the inn to dine started Shell from the satisfying luxury of his bitter anger against his unhappy predicament and the responsible gods. When he shook himself loose from that emotion, he had a lurking dread that perhaps it would give him dyspepsia, but he locked the door on the outside, having tucked the suit-case in the bureau drawer, and went down to eat. Physical habit and bearing prevented him from displaying to any fellow patron the idea that he was suffering any unusual circumstances. He ate and talked to the other two at his table with neat interest in golf and tennis and sitting on the porch, and other Woodland Inn sports.

Immediately after dining, however, he retreated to his room again, and applied his mind to the problem that confronted him. If Fate had been so very unkind to a faithful and clean-minded man, then that man must make the best of it. Mr. Shell set about wondering what would be the best of it. It was no easy task.

He thought of going right back to the bank and telling his story—but what good would that do? President Elijah Faxe would listen to the explanation grimly, with conscientious regard for the safety of the money entrusted in his bank’s hands by the three thousand depositors. He would agree that Mr. Shell’s story seemed perfectly plausible—was undoubtedly true, in fact—but, “It is essential that bank cashiers not only avoid evil, but the appearance of evil, as well!”

If, as seemed likely, the detectives were already on his trail, he would be arrested even as he descended from the train, or as he entered the bank—Horror of horrors! A detective might already be on his way to that peaceable little Adirondack inn. What meat it would be for the gossips, to tell how he had been tapped on the shoulder in a quiet, unobtrusive way, and told that he was under arrest. The detective would follow him—there was a later train than the one he had taken. The detective might—the detective almost certainly would—arrive on that train. He might be already on the way through the woods in the automobile stage, which would be due in half an hour.

Mr. Abner Shell went down to the office, paid his bill and called for a livery launch to take him to the foot of the lake, where there was another hotel, and a road that led to another railroad. He explained, with a wrench to his conscience, that his asthma had begun to bother him. He went in the launch to the other hotel, caught a stage to the railroad, and in two hours he was on a train bound north to Canada. He had dented in his hat, dusted his black coat, and otherwise disguised himself. He tried to swagger as he walked, and almost stumbled over his own toes as went to the cooler to get repeated drinks of water.

Suddenly, he heard the two men in he seat behind him discussing the Canadian customs rules, and the examination of the baggage of passengers. That meant that they would open his suit-case—they would see the bills in their neat packages! Perhaps they had already been tipped off to watch for him!

His time table showed that the next station ahead was the Northern Cross Roads. There he slipped down from his train, and after a night in the hotel—a sleepless, bitter night, without prayer at either end he took the train for the West. He went through Watertown, and on to Niagara, and from there slipped across country, because he had seen a man looking at him curiously, and felt that he was suspected.

He went to Chicago, Milwaukee, and down the Upper Mississippi on a river packet three days of comparative peace. At St. Louis, he registered in a hotel as Max Witherheim, and then glimpsed a National Bank Inspector in the corridor. He fled precipitately to the river again, and took the New Orleans packet. He changed at Memphis for the railroad, and went to Little Rock, Arkansas, fled back to Batesville, and up to Springfield, Missouri, and then back-tracked to Evansville, Indiana, and down to New Orleans—driven all the way by the glances of men he thought watched him intently.

Mr. Abner Shell had never given the thought of flight a moment’s consideration in all his precise life in the banking business. Flight was for the indulgence of the lawless and the wayward. Now he searched his mind with frantic efforts to imagine some way of covering his trail too deeply to be traced. He grew whiskers on a face that had never been unshaven two days since his whiskers sprouted. He bought sporting checks, and then discarded them with horror, for somber browns and neutral grays. His panic selection of a red necktie in St. Louis gave way to the panic realization in Memphis that red was the headlight of danger—that it focused the eye unforgettably.

The further he fled, the more horrible and vivid grew the sensation that he could not escape, that the prison doors would clang upon him, and he would be buried in stone and steel for five—ten—he could not guess how many years. He did not want the money—he hated it—he would have thrown it to the four winds, only he was alarmed and dismayed, and, besides, he knew that absconding clerks and cashiers were sometimes forgiven their sins if only they returned the precious money that they had stolen.

He fled, his heart protesting against the monstrous event that had driven him out into that first flight down the lake. His thoughts had little time to marshal themselves coherently, for on all sides were the unusual and the strange, the unexpected and the threatening. He wore himself into tatters of mental distress, thinking of the hard, cold fact known to all men, irrespective of place and condition, that there is in the end no escape for the wicked, for the sinner, for the wrong-doer.

His panic permitted him no coherence, no consecutiveness of plan or scheme. He fled through a score of states, and in not one of them did he discover any let-up in the thing that haunted him. He carried his own pack-load of furies—and they broke him down. They were worse than any possible combination of stone and steel bars could ever be.

In New Orleans, in his room where he overlooked all that famous street whose beauty and gaiety and attraction and opportunity are famous throughout the world of weakness and woe, he gave up. He was whipped. He was overtaken, even before he was pursued—he realized it now. His first thought was to go to police headquarters, and give himself up. Then he decided to go to the agency of the detectives who were employed by the bankers to guard against their faithless employees and raiders.

He had trouble finding the office, and before he reached it, he decided to return home, and take chances of being arrested as he stepped from the train—the horror that had afflicted him all the way on his flight. He could divine, unimaginative as he was, the sensation his arrest would make, and the eager stares of the witnesses. He hoped, and if his faith had not about vanished, he would have prayed, that the arrest be a quiet one, just as grooms pray for quiet weddings.

He looked at the calendar, and saw that he had been gone twenty-five of his thirty days vacation time. His heart sickened as he considered the home-coming that he had expected, and the home-coming that was to be! However, he neither weakened in his determination nor faltered in his execution of the plan. He bought a steamboat ticket home—he had always hoped to take a sea voyage sometime.

He had lived his life, and now he was to expiate the pleasure he had always had in doing precisely what he ought to do.

In his pride, he had said that no man need sin! The world was saying that no man could escape punishment if he merely seemed to have sinned. He who had never felt sorry for any man—he who had never even pitied himself—now discovered a certain regret and sadness, as he considered the tragedy of his own perfect life. The world could not get him by direct evidence, and so it had rigged up a perfect case of circumstantial evidence. He saw that if he had instantly returned home with the suit-case, he might possibly have come through merely slightly blemished; but now—now it was too late.

He sat, prey to a thousand melancholy reflections, in the waiting room at the New Orleans levee, ready to take the steamer home. On all sides of him were other people. Then, suddenly, he saw President Faxe of the Mixlan National Bank—a face and figure unmistakable, but exceedingly jaunty in bearing. President Faxe was away from home. His black tile [sic] was replaced by a fine Panama, and his conventional black suit was displaced by a gay traveling suit of pale shades, red necktie and striped shirt. Shell was inexpressibly shocked, too, to see that of the party President Faxe was engaged in piquant conversation with a most charming woman.

At the feet of Faxe was a suit-case, exactly like the one at Shell’s own feet. Faxe, then, was the man with whom he had exchanged suit-cases. Shell now had but one thought—to exchange again. In his month of crafty flight, Shell had become quick of wit, and vengeful. He saw that President Faxe was too busily engaged, talking to the handsome middle-aged woman, to notice what went on. The cashier slipped across the aisle, and set his burden down, waiting for an opportunity in the crowd to change the suit-cases. That would put the burden where it belonged, Shell thought.

He skirmished around several minutes, keeping behind the bank president, and finally, slid into a seat almost exactly behind that gesticulating and enthusiastic gentleman. Very cautiously, with his foot, Shell tried to shove his burden under the president’s hand, and slipped the other suit-case along side the seat where he was sitting.

He straightened up with the suit-case in his hand, to start away, when President Faxe turned around, suddenly.

“Well, I declare!” Mr. Faxe exclaimed. “How are you, Shell! Came down to the Convention, too? Funny I hadn’t seen you before.”

There was a glitter in the eye of the president, Shell thought, and his face twitched as a slight flush mounted the President’s face, but Shell looked him in the eye, and was as cordial as the President himself. There were introductions and hand-shakings all around, and then the group broke up. Faxe explained that he had to go to Morgan City to look over some timber lands whose bonds he was investigating, and would have to return North on the cars, foregoing the sea trip. “Funny thing about this suit case!” Faxe remarked socially, as he picked up the one Shell had slipped to him. “It’s locked and I haven’t been able to open it since I started with it! Had to get another one!”

“Really?” the charming lady remarked. “Let me give you a hair pin!”

Shell retreated. Faxe and the lady had heaved a sigh of relief into him, the biggest he had ever known.

Shell, grimly, went his way on board the steamer to New York. He felt that he had at last rid himself of the nightmare that had made Hades of his vacation. Faxe could do the dodging now, and make the explanations. Shell, his conscience relieved by the passing on of the burden to the shoulders where it belonged, grinned sardonically as he returned to Mixlan. Arriving in New York on Saturday, he reached Mixlan on Monday morning. He stopped at his boarding place, where he left the suit-case containing the various disguises he had purchased. The other suit-case, he carried down to the bank and swung into the building at his accustomed hour. There were the other employees, making ready for the day’s work, sorting out the mail, getting out the blanks, and filling ink wells, as usual.

“Good morning, Mr. Shell!” the assistant cashier greeted him with a nod. “Glad to see you back—you’re looking fine!”

Shell nodded, not finding words to answer, and hastened the suit-case into the vault. On the vault deck was a suit-case of identical appearance. To Shell’s nervous eyes, all suit-cases of dark tan leather with nickle [sic] hasps were alike, however. He brought out the day cash box and made things ready for his own work.

Soon the money was floating through his hands, and after a minute’s unaccustomed fumbling, he was back in his own automatic stride. If sometimes he had to count the money three times instead of twice, it merely proved how infallible is the fallibility of the human mind.

Then appeared Faxe, President Faxe, coming out of his office. Shell did not look up, but out of the corner of his eye, he that Faxe was walking—slightly sideways and had on his countenance a furtive expresion, amazed and apprehensive. Before either could make up his mind just how to greet the other there was a different note in the frigid monotone of the bank’s procedure. Hon. C. Frank Alution, a boss politician, came booming in, bringing an air of genial warmth with him.

“I’m after that suit-case, Faxe,” he remarked. And then: “See you're back again, Shell!”

“Yes!” both officials answered, like popping corks, and Shell dashed precipitately into the vault, and returned with the suit-case he had brought from New Orleans. Again, through the corner of his eye, Shell noticed the mingled emotions on Faxe’s face.

Alution took the suit-case, and Faxe retreated to the President’s office, mopping his forehead. Shell, with perfect composure, resumed his money thumbing and, apparently, paid no attention to anything save the work of cashiering.

In half an hour, Alution came in again, on the jump, bringing a suit-case with a broken lock.

“What’s this mean?” he yelled, showing a suit-case full of shirts, camera, plates, outing flannel, gay neckties, etc., all Faxe’s own, in readiness for the vacation and business not yet over.

Shell eyed them coldly, asking:

“Eh?”

Faxe appeared, and glanced at the thing, fascinated. Shell maintained an outward air of composure and questioning.

“A mistake?” he asked. “There’s another suit-case inside—perhaps—”

He went after the other suit-case, while Faxe leaned against the depositors’ desk, licking his lips. Shortly, Shell returned with the other suit-case and, coldly, handed it to Alution, asking:

“Is this it?” watched, calmly, expecting to see more clothes.

“That’s something like!” Alution exclaimed as he opened it. It was the suit case Shell had carried ten thousand miles. He could not mistake those bundles of demoniac bills.

“Well, I’ll be—I’ll be confounded!” Shell whispered with low emphasis, and Alution straightened up with astonishment at that profane eloquence.

“You see,” Alution explained, “it’s a State job—couldn’t have it on the books any where—understand?”

Shell nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Faxe retreated again to his office, sighing deeply. When Alution was gone, a great comprehension came to Shell, and no little satisfaction, too, for he believed that he could really swear at last.