Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Daphne nodded dreamily. Her eyes had a far-away look. She made a pretty picture sitting there in her big racing car, white gloved hands on the wheel. As one or two cameras clicked she seemed suddenly to come back to earth and a smile rippled over her face.

“You know I’m getting horribly conceited, inspector!” she said. “I just love all this!”

“Well, you deserve it, Miss Wrayne!”

“Do I? I wonder.” Then knitting her brows: “That six hundred pounds that we found — who gets them?”

The inspector hesitated. He was obviously puzzled.

“The executors may claim them on behalf of Wollstein’s estate.”

Daphne shook her head.

“Their title’s bad. A contract based on an illegal act is a bad contract.”

“You mean that we ought to pay them to Pendlebury?”

“If I were his lawyer, I should make him sue you for them if you didn’t.” A smile came over his face.

“Now you mention it,” he admitted, “there are one or two nice little legal points arising out of it.”

As the car drew away Daphne was smiling deliciously.

“There are, my friend,” she murmured thoughtfully, “and even you don’t know how nice they are! But when you find out, as I suppose you will — though I sincerely hope you won’t — that all those notes are amazingly clever forgeries—”

As she steered her car through the traffic she was still smiling.

Pursuit by Don H. Thompson

Far down the muddy road he saw the eyes of an approaching car, blinking through the rain as it snorted its way toward the farm.

I

Cyrus Steep took off his frayed alpaca coat, hung it in the steel locker, donned the shiny blue serge and threaded his way through the great marble lobby of the First National Bank. The gilt hands of the clock over the doorway pointed to four. Cyrus gave them a quizzical glance over his shoulder and his narrow, pinched face took on a look of triumph.

“No more watching the clock,” he gloated to himself. “No more slaving for half what I’m worth.” His bony hand strayed to his hip pocket and touched a package resting there. “Fifty thousand dollars. And safe — safe as a church.”

He came abreast of the railing that surrounded the heavy mahogany desk of the dignified Horace Winston, president of the institution, who was, at that moment, sitting with his long nose deep in a litter of papers.

“The old fish,” muttered Cyrus. “Ice water for blood he’s got.”

Winston looked up jerkily. His cold gray eyes affixed themselves upon the person of Cyrus Steep like twin gimlets. Then he nodded and said in a dry metallic voice:

“Good day, Mr. Steep.”

“Good day, sir,” said the teller, and passed out through the archway and into the swirl of the homeward bound thousands, the blood pounding in his wrists and temples, his mind a riot of confused thoughts.

“Why did he look at me like that?” Cyrus demanded of himself. Then, with a sudden, sputtering fear: “Suppose he knows? Maybe he is having me watched. No! He couldn’t know. It’s safe — safe as a church like I said.”

Steep drifted along with the rush of the traffic, a drab little man who looked and acted just like dozens of other beaten workers in the scurrying mob. For twenty years he had been employed at the First National, stuck in a cage like a monkey in the zoo, handling vast sums of money for a monthly pittance that provided him with a furnished room, enough to eat, and an occasional cigar.

He had seen, in his time, at least twenty younger, and, to his mind, less competent men promoted over his head, while he had languished at the same old job, doing the same old thing day in and day out.

“A dependable man,” Mr. Winston had said of him. “Honest, hard-working, and dependable. But no punch. No initiative. I’m afraid he’s as far now as he’ll ever get.”

Steep had overheard that estimate of his abilities. He laughed a dry laugh like the rustle of seared leaves as he thought of it now.

“No punch, eh?” he said grimly. “I wonder how he’ll take the knock-out?”

It was a pleasant thing to speculate upon. Cyrus grinned as his mind enacted the scene. Fifty thousand dollars gone. Cyrus Steep, the old dependable teller, missing.

Lord, Winston would throw a fit. He would tear his hair and yell for the police. He would offer a reward, and a reward would draw a flock of sleuths to the money trail.

“If he hadn’t been so tight,” quavered Cyrus, “this wouldn’t have ever happened. But no, he had to grind me down. Keep me on the job for nothing. Promote the slick-haired kids. He’s getting just what’s coming to him.”

Cyrus stopped and stared into a window filled with shoes. Indecision held him there, wavering. He could take the money back. Nobody would ever know. He would be right where he started. It wasn’t too late.