I STARED AT George Larsen and he did the same to me. I said, “April Fool’s Day is a long way off.”
He didn’t say anything. Neither did the other two immaculate, chastely-garbed gentlemen who worked with him. They tried to keep their expressions impassive, but they weren’t having much success. After all, a hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money. They looked at it all day long, but that was impersonal. When it actually belonged to someone they knew . . . that was different.
I said, “I give up. And I’m asking the sixty-four-dollar question: Where would I get one hundred thousand dollars?”
George smiled bleakly. “You might have held up an armored car,” he suggested with what he fancied was hot humor.
“I didn’t. I didn’t make this deposit, either. I saw it entered on the statement which was waiting for me when 1 got home last night. I came in to kid you fellows because I knew it was a mistake. I still think so.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” he said gravely. “So far as we’re concerned, it’s yours, subject to your check.”
I sat down. So did George and so did his co-workers. We pulled our chairs into a little circle and somebody passed a pack of cigarettes around, forgetting in the excitement that there was a shortage on. I said, “Tell me more.”
“There isn’t much to tell. We were unusually busy that morning. A messenger came in and asked for me—”
“A uniformed messenger?”
“No. Just a man. I knew he was a messenger because when he gave me the package, he also handed me a little book to sign.”
“What did he look like?”
“I’m sorry, Kirk. I haven’t the faintest idea. I was all messed up with a lot of papers and three people were waiting to see me. It was a plain, ordinary, bulky parcel wrapped in brown paper. I didn’t know what was in it or who it was from. I left it sitting on my desk until I’d finished what I was doing. That took about half an hour. Then I opened it.”
“What did you find?”
“Money. Lots of money. Fifties and tens and twenties. There wasn’t any sequence to the serial numbers—a banker notices that instinctively. The bills weren’t packaged. It looked like money someone might have won in a crap game, if you know what I mean. Not new; not old. Nothing to make it look different from any other hundred thousand we might scrape together. With it was a note from you.” He fished through a batch of papers and tossed me an 8½ × 11 sheet with typewriting on it. The note was short:
Dear George—
I can’t drop by personally, and I don’t want to carry this much cash around with me. Will you be good enough to deposit it to my account?
I’ll be buying you a drink next week. Until then—
Bestest—
KIRK DOUGLAS
I said, “Why should I sign it on the typewriter?”
“Why shouldn’t you? It might be unusual, but it isn’t impossible.”
“What happened then?”
“I sent the money to one of the tellers. It added up to the penny. Your account was credited with that amount. The money was spread around in the cash drawers.”
“In other words, there was nothing about it that would enable you to separate it from other currency?”
“Not a thing.”
I mopped my forehead. The thing was getting under my skin. I said, “Look, George—you’ve known me a long time. You know where I work and approximately what I make. Didn’t this strike you as odd?”
“Brother, you said it. I telephoned your office. They said you were out of town. So I did the only thing I could do. Legally—or technically—whichever way you want to look at it, the money is yours.”
I said, “I didn’t write that note, George. I didn’t send you the money. It isn’t mine, and I don’t want it.”
“You’re stuck with it, just the same.”
“What do you mean: I’m stuck with it?”
He explained patiently. “The whole thing was unusual. I had no choice but to follow the directions in that note. It never occurred to me that you hadn’t sent it, and it was perfectly good money. The note sounded like you. I certainly couldn’t be expected to detect anything wrong about the situation. Lots of queer things happen in any branch of a big bank like ours. I had tried to check with you. No soap. There’s no way now of identifying a single one of those bills. If you wanted to draw against it right now, we’d have to honor your check. And that’s the picture.”
“The more you talk,” I said, “the crazier it gets. If somebody wanted to present me with that much money, why did they do it this way?”
“I wouldn’t be knowing that. Just as I didn’t know whether you’d suddenly hit it rich.”
“What do I do now?”
“You can put it in a separate account, if you wish. Or leave it where it is until you find the answer. Meanwhile, one of the ace detectives of the Bankers’ Protective Association happens to be with the chief right now. How about telling it to him?”
I nodded. One of the three men walked away, and a few minutes later a man-mountain hove in sight. I was introduced. They said his name was Hanvey. Jim Hanvey.
Hanvey didn’t look like a detective. He didn’t look like anything except a man who had eaten too much for too long. Large as he was, his clothes were even larger. He had a round face, pink cheeks, sparse hair and a pleasant smile. He had eyes like a fish: gray, dead, sleepy-looking eyes. He took a chair and listened while George Larsen did some explaining. And all the while he fiddled with a gleaming golden gadget that hung suspended from the hawser-like watch chain which spanned his vest. The thing fascinated me until he explained that it was a solid gold toothpick. I decided immediately that I had at last found something I could give my worst enemy for Christmas.
Hanvey was a good listener, although I wasn’t sure he was listening. It looked like 6-2-and-even that he was asleep. Larsen finished talking, and then for quite a while there was a lot of silence. Then Hanvey asked, in a slow, drawling, patient voice, “You got no ideas, Mr. Douglas?”
“No. The thing makes a lot of no sense.”
“I wish somebody would play a trick like that on me.” He gave vent to a tremendous sigh. “I’d buy me a little place in the country and raise chickens.”
That didn’t seem to call for an answer. He gave me plenty of time, and then he said, “I reckon you want us to look into it for you, huh?”
“Yes.”
“You understand that it’s your business and you can keep it that way if you want.”
“I’d rather lay it in your lap.”
“It’s a big lap.” He chuckled. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Go ahead.”
His questions were simple enough. My name, age, profession, salary, habits, friends. When I finished, he gazed fondly at his golden toothpick and said, “We’ve missed something somewhere. This thing wasn’t accidental. Your name wasn’t picked out of a hat. It was somebody who knew you. They knew you had an account here and they probably knew you were out of town, so there couldn’t be a quick check-up. You say that note sounds as though you could have written it?”
“Yes. There’s not much style to it, but what there is, is mine.”
“And you have no rich friends who might like the idea of playing genii to your Aladdin?”
I haven’t any rich friends. And if they wanted to give me that much money, they wouldn’t do it that way. What’s more: I don’t like it.”
Hanvey looked me over deliberately. “You’re a big guy, Mr. Douglas. You don’t look like someone who would scare easy.”
“I still don’t like something I can’t understand.”
He asked a shrewd question: “Could you use a hundred thousand?”
“Who couldn’t?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, have you got any special iron in the fire? Have you got some scheme on tap which you could put across if you had that much dough?”
“You mean, have I any special use—at this moment—for a large sum of money?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No.”
“Suppose it was really yours. What would you do with it?”
“Leave it in the bank, I suppose. Buy war bonds. I don’t need extra money, if that’s what you mean.”
Hanvey said, “It’s the screwiest thing I’ve ever run across. Want me to plug on it?”
“If you will.”
“Let’s let it ride as it is for a while. Mr. Larsen will pass the word around to watch carefully all checks bearing your signature. Though it isn’t likely that anybody would try to withdraw that money with a forged check. Meanwhile, just forget that you’ve got it.”
I shook my head. “Fine chance. Could you?”
“Nope. But I could try.”
We talked a little more, and then I want back to the office. I chatted with my bosses and, in the course of our conversation, asked them whether they’d made a deposit to my credit while I was away. The senior partner said, “No. Why?”
I tried to pass it off as a joke. I said the bank was crediting me with more money than I had. I didn’t say how much. I left the impression that it was a small sum. They both laughed and one of them said something about this being my lucky year. I wasn’t so sure he was right.
It was Saturday, and I drifted into a picture show with the idea of forgetting what had happened. I was tired of thinking in circles. But I kept on doing just that. I still don’t know what the picture was about. At five o’clock I dropped a nickel in the slot of a pay phone and dialed Dana’s number. Her voice gave me the usual thrill. I asked if I could come by her apartment and she said she’d been waiting two hours for just that.
Dana lived in a simple, inexpensive two-room apartment. She had a part-time maid, but she was alone when I got there, which was swell with me. She was wearing a crepe housecoat of black with a broad red stripe down the front. She had on black satin mules, and her toenails had red polish on them. She looked pretty as seventeen dollars’ worth of lettuce, and didn’t appear to mind my attempts to spoil her lipstick.
Never before had love struck me as so goofy. What a probably excellent picture had failed to do in two hours, Dana accomplished in five minutes. I forgot everything except how lovely she was and how I wished I was married to her. It wasn’t until later that I remembered what I had come for.
I sat her down alongside me and told the story. She let me finish without interruption. Then she said, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”
I agreed with her. She said, “Have you had any fresh ideas since you finished talking with the fat detective?”
“No good ones.”
“How about ones that are not so good?”
I said, “Ricardo?” and finished with a rising inflection. Her answer was, “Why?”
I said I couldn’t figure why. It was scarcely the act of someone who didn’t like another person, but if it was part of a scheme to cause trouble . . .
Dana shook her head. “It doesn’t come out right anyway, darling. Ricardo hasn’t got a dime.”
I was puzzled. I knew the act was drawing down fifteen hundred dollars a week. Deducting ten per cent agent’s commission, that left $1,350. It was Ricardo’s act—his personal property. He paid Dana three hundred dollars a week, and the rest was his, minus income tax. I figured that at a thousand a week gross income, a man could be pretty well heeled.
Dana shook her head. “Gambling,” she told me. “He’s always believed that he’s smarter than the horses. Now that they’ve shut down all American race tracks, he’ll find some other way of losing his money. Maybe by placing bets for the Havana and Mexican tracks. But he’ll lose it. He always has, and he always will. Besides, I can’t figure any reason why he should put a hundred thousand dollars in your account.”
I said, “I can’t figure why anyone would. That’s what worries me.”
We tossed it back and forth and got exactly nowhere. The more we thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. She said, “So when we ate steak last night, we weren’t pretending. You really are worth a lot of money,”
“It doesn’t make me feel good.”
“What will you do about it?”
“Wait. I’m bound to find the answer sooner or later. I can always hope it was a mistake, although I’m sure it wasn’t. Whoever it was can have his fortune back any minute he wants it.” I leaned forward and my voice tightened up. “But this much I’ll promise, my sweet: when I do find the person who did this, I’ll also find out why.”
She said, “That’s a very grim expression you’ve got on.”
“It’s the way I feel. The more I think about this, the more I don’t like it.”
“Meaning what?”
“Not trying to be melodramatic, but it seems to spell trouble.”
We both laughed. Which is something we wouldn’t have done if we could have looked ahead a few hours.