TEST TUBES

Originally published in Short Stories, March, 1921.

I have seen daisies growing on an ash-dump. I have seen perfumes made of evil chemicals in test tubes. Steel forms itself under slag, in crucibles. Freud tells us we are merely psy­chologically reacting automata, slaves of external stimuli. But some believe in free will. Does anybody know anything? All things are possible.

The chiming of the clock in Peter Brodbine’s library brought the banker to his feet.

“Midnight,” said he. “Let’s be going.”

Lillian nodded. “All right. It’s time we hit the pike!” She stood up and walked into the front hall.

Peter still delayed a minute. He re­mained there, looking round the library. On a rainy November night like this, it in­vited the soul to loaf and be warm. Peter loved his books. When he had been “Tony the Scratcher,” he had always loved to read. He had educated himself behind barred windows. But never until now had he possessed enough books. Much he hated to leave them. In a fugitive motorcar, however, one can’t be loaded with books. Everything would have to be abandoned. That meant pain to the banker. It hurt. In eleven years, a man accumulated so many things!

His eyes traveled in mute farewell round the room where ­in­numerable evenings had been happily passed, where innumerable cigars and pipefuls had been smoked with the men of Rockville. Lots of business deals had been put through there, as well. Now, a smolder of ashes in the fireplace told where many a record of such had perished. Not that any of those deals had ever been crooked. Not one! Honesty had, indeed, been Brodbine’s trump, his joker. But the banker had not wanted to leave any records. Tonight’s deal was to be a cash one. Just cash.

The library seemed, somehow, to have grown into Peter’s heart. That heart wasn’t sentimental. Never had been. And yet—

“Well,” said Peter, and turned off the Wellsbach.

In the hallway, his wife already had her fur coat on, her rubbers, her doeskin gloves. A well-dressed woman. Always had been sty­lish even in the old days. The house listened to the wind and rain. It seemed so empty! Even the fact that Linda, the maid, had been sent away for a two days’ visit in Weavertown, somehow made it feel deserted. And in a few minutes it really would be deserted. Peter didn’t like the thought.

He fished his rubbers from the base of the hat-rack and drew them on. Rubbers would be necessary, tonight, for more than keeping his feet dry. The banker looked a little curiously at his own face, in the hat-rack mirror. One might have thought he expected the single gaslight in the hall to show him some change in that face. But the light was dim, and revealed nothing. An in­consequential thought crossed the banker’s mind:

“Next month I was going to have the new electric light system extended up here to North Rockville, and have lights in the house. But now it won’t be necessary.” That would save money, of course; and yet Brodbine felt sorry he hadn’t had it done.

By the single gaslight, Brodbine could see Lillian, vaguely. The woman was stouter, better-looking, smoother than she had been all those long years ago, when she had been his “moll” in Kansas City. But she still remained essentially the same woman. Determined. Oh, very.

A woman would have to be determined, to live as she had lived for the last eleven years, and never blow the game. To work into and mingle with Rockville. You know—Ladies’ Aid, Rebeccas, and all that. Lillian had done it. The stakes had been high enough to make it worthwhile. More than high enough. Nevertheless, Rockville had galled her. One can’t eternally smoke cig­arettes in the attic and blow the smoke up a stovepipe hole. One can’t eternally put away the lure of the bright places. The old life stretches out such long, insistent ten­tacles.

“God, Tony!” she laughed, and her eyes danced. “I’m glad our time’s up. If anybody ever did an eleven-year bit, we’ve done it. Well, it’s our turnout, now. Nine hundred thousand isn’t such a much, for what we’ve plugged through. It’s only a little more than eighty-one thousand a year. And Lord! what a time we’ve had!”

“Let’s go,” said Peter Brodbine, putting on his hat and coat.

He glanced about the hallway, as if men­tally writing down for the last time all the pleasant, familiar things, from newel post to umbrella stand. His lips looked a little hard. But then, they always looked hard. They had looked hard when he had pulled that final pennyweight stunt in Albany and had vanished from all the world that had known him—vanished, for eleven years.

Brodbine had gray eyes, cold but business­like; he had a voice that penetrated, that awakened confidence. His handshake made men like him. In the old days, his greatest assets in shoving his “scratch-work” had been just those qualities. They had boosted him, as well, since he had been on the level. His personality and his absolute, unswerving honesty for eleven years, had made his word his bond. Luck had favored him, too. Nobody had ever risen up in his path, from the other days. So he had gone ahead, following the chosen game of honesty as a means to an end. Honesty had been hard. Life habits cannot be easily changed. But his wife and he had made up their minds to it as the quickest way, in the end, to a big smash. When one plays for stakes that mean a set-up for life, only one policy is permissible. The copy-books all tell you what that policy is.

“Well” said Brodbine, as he turned off the gas in the hall, “you see I had it doped right. Those other times when I could have connected would have dragged down a good bundle, but they’d have crabbed the big wallop.” As the old life drew near again, the old speech once more enfolded him like a familiar cloak. “You were trying to wolf it too quick, Lil. We couldn’t have afforded to unhook anything till it was ripe. Only a mutt will grab off a hot cent on the avenue, when there’s a cold dollar waiting in the alley.”

“You can’t pull that stuff on me!” the woman retorted. “It was half my frame. I know as well as you do that if you play it square, long enough, you’ll sometime get to bat.”

“Well, we won’t chew on that pill, now. The game’s a winner, anyhow. And honesty don’t drag too hard, either, after a while,” he added. He could see his wife, now, only as a kind of vague shadow at the front door. “It’s not too bad, after you get your second wind. It gets to be kind of a habit, after a while.”

“Like coke,” she laughed, “or the needle. Only the pipe-dreams, this way, are the real bundle.”

“Yes,” said he. “It’s a kind of a habit.”

“And they get to calling you ‘Honest Pete.’ After they start that ‘Honest Pete’ stuff, it’s all over but the fade.”

Peter Brodbine, banker—alias Tony the Scratcher—nodded, and opened the front door. The November rain gusted raw against his face. It was pitch-black, out­side; an ugly night, just the kind they needed. Not a soul would be out, in this straggling suburb. Probably even down­town, they would meet nobody. Brodbine had never done any bank-work, in the old days; but he had dropped phony paper for a good many “box-men,” and he knew their technique. Because of such knowledge he had chosen this night of all nights—a rainy, stormy, Saturday night.

“It looks pretty good to me!” judged Lillian, who once on a time had been Delia the Dip. She too came out. The banker shivered, and buttoned up his ulster under his chin.

“It gets to be kind of a habit—like dope,” he repeated.

He closed the front door. The slight, hollow sound of that closing reverberated in the man’s heart. It seemed like the shutting-up of life. Eleven years in a little town like Rockville, where you know everybody, is a long time.

“Come on!” bade Peter, and led the way toward the garage.

They slid back the door, and got into the machine. Their suitcases already lay in the limousine body. These cases held all they meant to salvage from home. Passengers from a sinking ship take only their best valuables, if anything at all. The Brodbines were taking only theirs—a little clothing, a few toilet-articles, a trinket or two. On a trek like this, planned to carry them half round the world without a stop and to end there in complete disappearance, impedimenta are unwelcome.

Brodbine switched on the lights, stepped on the self-starter and let in the clutch. The car cradled out of the garage and down the graveled way to the street. For a second, the lights touched the rear of the big, com­fortable old house, illuminating the summer-kitchen. Above it, the woman caught a glimpse of her bedroom windows—the room now abandoned for unknown adventurings. Brodbine saw, too, and frowned a little, but the woman laughed.

“So long, shack!” she gibed. Brodbine realized her callousness, and shivered. He swung the car south, toward town, toward the bank he was president of. Save for the stab of the headlights, night had everything its own way. The blue light the streetlamps were making against rain and wind seemed only to intensify the blackness. No­body was stirring. This community was still so old-fashioned that people slept there, o’ nights. Oh, yes, the town had a couple of constables, beside Gilkey, the fat Chief of Police who occupied quarters in the base­ment under the Post Office, where the lock­up was. But the Brodbines, who in their day had outplayed some of the keenest “dicks” in the country, didn’t give the local Law much heed.

“Looks like a cinch, all right,” smiled Lillian. “It’s like taking candy from a kid.”

“Candy is right,” assented the banker. “From—a kid.”

They exchanged nothing more, as the car took them into town. There was really nothing much to say. Everything had been planned, rehearsed, lived over, for weeks. And the whole thing was so childishly easy! Certainly Rockville was not to be feared. Rockville was not expecting or dreading any coup. One doesn’t suspect one’s watchdog of intending to steal the leg of mutton from the icebox.

A watchdog. The watchdog of Rock­ville. That, in a word, was what “Honest Pete” had become. Eleven years of hard, impeccable work had landed him securely in the watchdog role. Nothing could have been worked up with greater skill, or could promise to be more advantageous.

In the beginning, after the successful get­away from that Albany job, Brodbine had faded out of his old name and haunts; and had emerged, another man, in this remote place. He had found a little employment as telegraph-operator at the depot. After that, he had become stationmaster. Any port in a storm, you know; and beside, he still had a few thousand salted. This work had served only as a convenient blind.

By the time he had got pretty well liked by the business men of the town, for his efficiency re freight-shipments and the handling of express, he had conceived the idea of “going straight” for some years and then of gutting the place. All this time he had kept in touch, by letter, with his “moll.” She had approved the plan. He had, at her advice, made a play for a petty job in the Rockville National Bank, and had got it. Then he had realized he needed her as a partner; though he had ceased to love her, he had gone to the woman, and had married her. A wife is a prime requisite in working a small town. He had brought Delia the Dip back with him, as Lillian Brodbine. And she had proved a helpmeet, indeed. A smooth woman. Very. She had been enthusiastic about church activities, and all that. Before long, no Ladies’ Aid fair, no lawn-supper, had been successful without Mrs. Brodbine. The Brodbines had entertained a little, too, and gradu­ally had become popular.

Brodbine’s efficiency, silence, sobriety, and honesty had got him a dead man’s shoes, and he had become teller at the bank. In less than two years more he was looking through the cashier’s window. The bank had prof­ited. Brodbine had introduced up-to-date methods and machinery; new systems, all kinds of improvements. Bank and town had prospered alike. Then had come that forgery, presented by a Cleveland traveling-man. It had got by all the others at the bank. Even old Dowling, president, had been gulled. Brodbine’s professional skill had spotted the fine scratch-work and had saved the institution ninety thousand. That had been a tremendous feather for Brodbine. Dowling had been quietly “let out”; and bank and town alike had rejoiced to make new rosewood furniture for the newly-finished office of President Honest Pete.

“There’s McElroy’s!” Lil nudged her husband, as the car loped past a wide lawn fenced with ornamental wire. A streetlight vaguely outlined a cast-iron stag. Rock­ville still clung to wire fences, iron animals and fountains with iron children holding umbrellas. “The Macs’ll sit up and take notice, after this smash, eh? Mrs. Mac won’t hand out any more of her D. A. R. wallops to the little stranger in our midst—not very quick again, will she?”

“Mac’s a good fellow, though,” said the banker.

The woman laughed, evilly, in the gloom.

“They won’t be living in that big house, much longer,” she opined. “There’s lots of others that’ll take a tumble, too!”

Brodbine only grunted.

“The poor fish!” gibed Lillian. “The mutts!”

Her husband did not answer.

II.

It was easy enough for Brodbine to enter the bank. From his car, which he left in the safe seclusion of an alley off Congress Street, he and Lillian had only to walk one square, turn into Hanover Place, and thus come to the side door of the bank building. Here, under the doorway of the Commercial Insurance Company, he left the woman. There was nobody at all on the dark, rain-swept streets; but still his old-time caution dictated his posting her as a sentinel.

His bunch of keys held everything requisite for him to reach the bank vault and the safe. Of late there had been some talk about putting a time-lock on the vault. Brodbine had apparently fallen in with this plan, but had managed to postpone it. That, of course, would have ruined everything. Now, his keys and the combination made matters simple indeed. He had the combination as firmly in his mind as his own name—or names.

“Cinch is no word for it,” thought the bank-president. “Anybody could open this ‘gopher’ with a jackknife, if it came to that.” He unlocked the side door, and entered the building, snapping back the catch but closing the door behind him.

As he reached the interior, he paused, listened keenly. His caution, his flair for any possible danger—an instinct dormant for years—had returned, as a tame wolf’s hunting-instinct surges back, when the beast is set free in the wilderness. Brodbine waited a moment, peering, hearkening.

Till now, he felt, all had been safe. No­body, so far as he knew, had seen him stop his car in that alley where he had left it with extinguished lights and softly-singing engine. Nobody had seen him enter the bank. Of that he was positive.

And now? Yes, everything still seemed quite safe. Old Joe Spracklin, the night watchman—what danger lay in him? And there was nothing else to fear. Spracklin, the banker knew, had literary habits; he did a lot of reading in the little upstairs room where he spent most of his time. Only yesterday, Brodbine had given him a set of ten volumes of “The World’s Masterpieces of Crime.” That would keep Spracklin busy, all right. True, the old man had to come downstairs once an hour, to punch the watchman’s register. But fully forty min­utes remained, before he was due to come again. And fifteen minutes would more than suffice for the job Brodbine had in hand.

Still, Brodbine—alias Tony the Scratcher—was taking no chances. His return to the underworld life spread his nostrils to the scent of danger. He had not intended to bear firearms, to run any risks of killing, on this job. But now he discovered that he felt empty, lonesome, without a “canister.”

“Well, there’s one handy,” he realized. “I’ll cop it, just in case!”

He walked noiselessly into his own private office. His rubber soles made no sound. He slid open his desk drawer and took out the revolver he always kept there. It was just the same kind of gun that certain other bank-employees had, among them Spracklin, Thirty-two caliber guns, of considerable penetrative power.

The “gat” in Brodbine’s pocket gave him more assurance. He looked toward the vault, ready for business.

“Damn that light!” he growled.

The single incandescent hanging before the vault constituted, in effect, his chief danger. He had long foreseen this danger, but had never thought out any way to dispense with that light. From the street, a barred window gave full view of the vault door. Any passerby might look in. Still, the chances were against anybody being abroad, such a night. If Brod­bine had had to think of only outsiders, he would have extinguished the light and chanced anybody’s noticing it was out and kicking up trouble. But he knew the light shone dimly into the corridor, against the wall. Old Spracklin, from his room, could see that vague reflection. In case the watchman should notice it no longer shining, he would come downstairs at once, to investigate.

The incandescent would have to be left burning. Other dangers, however, were few. The two constables were probably safe at home, and Gilkey was doubtless sleeping. Also, Lillian was serving as “lighthouse” outside. One whistle from her, and Brodbine would vanish into his dark office till the danger should be past.

“Cinch!” he mentally echoed Lillian’s comment. Already a metamorphosis was upon him, like a chemical reaction, an experiment in transmutation of soul-stuff. His mentality seemed slipping back into the sly darkness of the old days. His instincts were retrograding. Honest Pete Brodbine was fading out, growing unreal; and Tony the Scratcher was once more taking shape. Yes, the test tube was boiling nicely now.

“Cinch!” chuckled the man who was now something of both these men, yet who was fully neither one.

Though it was time to be at work, he felt no haste. He desired to stretch himself in this new warmth of lawlessness. To think it all over; to exult. The kill was certain. He wanted to toy with it, a few minutes.

The whole “plant,” from the beginning, had been easy enough for a man with brains and energy. Brodbine had possessed both. He had given them freely to make the Rockville National the sturdiest bank in the county. His bank had become Rockville’s leading institution, just as he himself had grown to be its foremost citizen. His going, annexing close to a million would mean the total derailing of a lot of people.

Brodbine knew this. Somehow, he wasn’t quite enjoying it, now, as he had expected to when he had savored the exploit on the tongue of anticipation. He was thinking about his wife. About how little—outside of this scheme—they really had in common. About how malicious she had become toward Rockville respectability. Men who rob banks should work hard and fast; but Brodbine still kept thinking. He felt so very much at home, in the bank. It all seemed his, in a way.

Wasn’t it his? When he had entered its employ, its capitalization had been only $50,000 and its surplus $65,000. Now it held something like $1,125,000 of Rockville’s and of the county’s money, private and public. Under his administration it had moved from a wooden building on Porter Street, a rented building, to its own three-story brick block, facing Constitution Square. This was the only three-story building in town, and everybody was proud of it and of Brodbine.

He was proud of it, himself. Proud of the way he had boomed the bank. He had absorbed nearly all the town trade, already, and what he didn’t have, was coming. Farmers and traders drove in, these days, from even the far ends of the county, to park their flivvers in Constitution Square, or else to hitch their horses at the iron railings in front of the bank and to do business there. Brodbine had fitted up a room for out-of-towners, where they could trade and gossip. That had brought business to his net. He had got acquainted with everybody. His system had been to know everybody. No funeral or wedding had for a long time been really complete, without Brodbine. Lots of young married couples owed their start in life to him, looked upon him as a kind of godfather. Ever since he had been bank-president, he had always sent a dollar to every newborn child in the county, to start an account with. That scheme had pulled like a porous-plaster. Though not much of a churchgoer—for he knew piety might be dangerous—he had always been “there” when any of the three churches had needed a new organ, repairs to the steeple, or a boost for the Southeast Mozambique Improve­ment Fund.

As Brodbine had farmed the town into renewed growth, he had likewise made the bank grow. That had made his prospects fatten. All his work had been for himself, in the long run. He had nursed and incubated the county like a hen on eggs. And always, everywhere, he had been just, upright, honest. Not even his political enemies had been able to say otherwise. Some had objected to his having two fingers in every Rockville pie, and to his directorships in so many enterprises; but all had been forced to admit that everything Brodbine touched, flourished.

He had made Rockville flourish. He, too, had flourished. He smiled, as he realized what Rockville would do and say, tomorrow.

Lillian’s voice seemed speaking:

“There’s lots of ’em won’t be living in big houses. Lots of ’em will take a tumble!”

Brodbine brought himself to action, with an effort. How long had he been musing? He could not tell. He only knew he had been hugely enjoying himself. He liked that office, just as he liked his home. The way the desk sat, with the light just so, and the view of the Square, and the swivel-chair with the leather cushion—Comfortable. Safe. Box of cigars always in the drawer, too; and people coming in to confer with him, and people asking loans or advice. Handshakes, and a good deal of publicity in the Rockville Telegram. And then, that talk of him for mayor, next year. And friends. Lots of friends. And that house, that library, up there in North Rockville. Dis­connected, disjointed impressions—

Wind, rain and, night, like frightened fugitives, skittered and gusted against the windows. The barred windows. Brodbine shivered.

Brodbine sat down in his swivel-chair, in the black shadow of his office, to think. To ponder, again.

“I hope,” said he to himself, “I’m not going to make a damn fool of myself, one way or the other. Whatever I do, guess I will be a damn fool. Go through, or quit, I’ll always think I was. Which way will be the damndest?”

III.

The man, who was partly two men and wholly neither one, became aware of a presence in the bank. A draught of raw air struck him. A sound, as of quiet feet, tensed his muscles. His hand slid into his pocket, fingered the gun there.

Then he heard a swish-swish of skirts. A very slight sound that was, but Brodbine understood.

He got up, and in silence went to meet the woman who now was Lillian Brodbine, his wife, and who had been Delia the Dip.

She saw him, vaguely; came toward him. Not even the dim light could mask her anger.

“Got the stuff?” she demanded, whisper­ing.

He shook his head.

“What’s the idea? What’s the matter with you, anyhow, you mutt?” she breathed. “You’ve been in here fifteen minutes.”

“I’ve been in here, in this bank, nearly ten years,” he answered. “It’s a good place to stay in, when you think it over!”

She did not understand, but plucked him by the sleeve.

“Long enough to ha’ done it twice over,” she added. “Get busy, Tony!”

“Lil,” he whispered. “Come, let’s go!”

“Well, grab the kale, then, and—”

“I don’t mean that, Lil. Let’s go—home.”

“Home?”

He nodded. The woman stared at him, not understanding.

“It’s not so bad, at that, Lil. And this job, here—”

“Tony!”

“And then, wrecking the town, and all—”

Had she dared, she would have screamed out against him, struck him, reviled him. But fear kept her voice to a rasp and a rattle. Snake-like—that was how it seemed.

“Home! You—you—! Gone straight on me, have you? Cold feet, an’ double-crossed me an’ gone straight?”

“Call it that. It’s just a matter of com­monsense. You see—”

“You won’t, though!” For all her whis­pering, her tones made Brodbine’s heart sick. This was not Lillian’s voice, but Delia’s. It came to him, from the black past, like cold winds blowing out of a night­mare-tempest. “You ain’t goin’ to get away with that, Tony! Not by a damn sight!”

“I’m going to stay here in Rockville,” he answered evenly. “When it comes to being trailed all over creation, for a little rake-off—or a big one—as against this job, why—”

“You quitter!” Her face looked feline. It only made a dim, white blur in the gloom of the bank, but Brodbine could sense the animality of it. “Quitter! Yellow streak, a foot wide!”

“We’ve got a good home, and everything’s safe. We’d be fools—”

“Eleven years o’ this tank-town, an’ now—”

He laid a hand over her mouth.

“Cut it out!” he growled, stirring to anger. “I’m running this deal. It’s all off!”

Furiously she struck his hand down.

“It ain’t all off! This punk town! Think I’m goin’ to stick in the mud here? All right for you, maybe! All right for a mutt an’ a quitter. But nix on that for mine! I know—I’ve got you! Got you hamstrung, you—!”

“Can it, or—”

Brodbine was afraid, now. Anger had swamped the woman’s caution. Her voice was rising.

“Can nothin’! You ain’t goin’ to put this over on me!” Her speech had reverted to the underworld. Her veneer had stripped clean off. “I know that safe combination as well’s you do, Tony. You’re going to make your get, with me! If you don’t—”

Brodbine felt a quivering at the pit of his stomach. He had as yet never struck a woman, but he wanted to, now. He wanted to kill. His nostrils widened. His lips grew even harder than they had been in the old days.

“That’ll do!” he growled. “Nobody ever threatened me, yet, and got away with it!”

“If you don’t go through,” she retorted, still in that rising whisper, “I’ll blow the game. I’ll wise ’em, who you are. That’ll be stir for both of us. I’ll be done, but so’ll you. You’re through with Rockville, any­how. Which way? It’s up to you!”

The banker shivered. He felt sick. Delia, his moll—the wife had vanished—was a terribly dangerous woman. He knew her. Knew she would keep her word. In this moment of something almost like his regener­ation, motivated though it so largely was by realization of the relative values of the crooked path and the straight, the woman stood squarely across his path. Nobody had ever done that, and succeeded.

The touch of the gun in his fingers thrilled him. He half-drew the weapon from his pocket.

“Hey!” exclaimed a voice in the gloom. “Who’s there? Whatcha doin’?”

They both faced round, tensed to silence. The vague form of old man Spracklin adum­brated itself in the corridor doorway. Brodbine retreated, back into his office.

“Plug him, you fool!” whispered the woman to her husband. “Get that rod in your desk, an’ let him have it!” Bold, defiant, she remained there at the edge of the shadow cast by the vault. Her husband was behind her, at her left side, perhaps twelve feet away.

“Answer, or I’ll shoot!” warned the aged watchman. His voice quavered a little, but Brodbine sensed the courage in it. An irrelevant thought nicked the banker’s brain, as such thoughts will even at life’s crises: “Didn’t know the old man had the backbone to fight. I’ll raise his pay—pension him!”

Brodbine saw the watchman’s gun flick a ray of dim light, as it was leveled. Instinct brought the ex-scratcher’s own canister to bear on Spracklin. No man, least of all one with a master’s degree in the University of Crime, likes to face a muzzle without trying to retaliate. Then Brodbine turned his gun aside.

“Plug him, you damn fool!” exclaimed the woman, this time aloud.

Spracklin’s gun coughed. At the same instant, almost, Brod­bine fired. The wo­man crumpled down, with a curse only half-mouthed.

The watchman’s flash-lamp blinded Brodbine. He slid his gun into his pocket, and hoisted both hands.

“Don’t shoot, Joe!” he exclaimed. “And for God’s sake, put out that light!”

Dazed, the old man shuffled forward. He still held the light on Brodbine.

“Why—God’s sakes alive! Your—?”

“Shut up, and put out that light!” commanded the banker. “I’m boss, here. Do as I tell you!”

The light died. Old Spracklin stood there and shivered with a very cold fear. He understood nothing; and the dark, silent blotch of something that had been hu­man, near the corner of the vault, sickened him. His teeth chattered a little, for all that they were false.

“Keep quiet! Come here!”

The watchman obeyed. Brodbine walked a few steps to his wife, knelt, listened at her heart. He unbuttoned the fur coat, with hands that did not tremble, that silently rejoiced.

Still, he realized, the old man was watching him. There was a role to act. So he started, a little, caught his breath, and tragically looked up.

“She—she’s dead!” he gulped, in the dark. “My wife—my wife—dead!”

“No! No, no! Don’t say that!” The gun shook in the old em­ployee’s hand.

“We can’t have news of this get about, Spracklin!”

“No, no, no! But, Mr. Brodbine, what was you doin’ in the bank, this time o’ night?”

“Came down to get some ledgers, for over Sunday. My wife—poor soul—wanted to come along, too. Always that way, Sprack­lin!” The banker’s voice wept. “Always trying to help me, and now—”

“They was two shots fired, Mr. Brodbine,” asserted Spracklin, now recovering a little from his daze. “You fired, too!”

“Well?” sparred Brodbine, for time. He sensed the different tone in the old man’s query. He stood up, confronted Spracklin.

“What was you doin’ with a gun, at night, in the bank?”

“When I saw you with yours, I grabbed mine. No man’s going to stand still and see his wife or himself shot at, without doing something!”

“You could of spoke, sir. Told who you was.”

“For God’s sake, Spracklin! You going to stand there and argue with me all night? With my wife lying dead, here? Dead, shot down by you!”

“I was in my rights, sir!” stoutly asserted the old man. By the dim incandescent in front of the vault, Brodbine saw his jaw tauten, his combative powers return. “Any­body comin’ in here, o’ nights, is takin’ a big chanst! They’re right away under s’picion, an’ if they don’t ’count for themselves, I c’n shoot, an’ not be held li’ble for nothin’. Now, comin’ down to cases, what was you here fer?”

“I told you! Help me get my wife out of here!”

“Was you an’ her plannin’ to monkey with the cash? Hey?”

“Only a fool would say such a thing to Peter Brodbine!” The banker confronted old Spracklin, with tense fists.

“Children an’ fools speak the truth. It looks mighty funny to me! If I was to say—”

“Is the vault open, you idiot?”

“No, it ain’t.”

“It’d go hard with you, Spracklin, if this ever came to court! Remember that!” warned the banker. He gripped the old man by his left wrist. “I—we—had a right here, too. You remember that! My wife was killed here. D’you want it known? Aired in court? D’you know what you’d get?”

“I was in my rights!” doggedly repeated the old man. “It looks fishy to me, ’bout your bein’ here. An’ they was two shots fired! They couldn’t prove I done it!”

The banker shook him, savagely.

“Listen, you old fool!” he growled. “I’m trying to save your skin, and you haven’t got sense enough to know it. We’ve got to get her out o’ here, and home. We’ve got to do something, quick, to clear you, and—”

“Clear you, you mean! That’s more likely!”

“I won’t argue with you, Spracklin. You’re an old man, half-broken and not wholly responsible. If this came to court, your word wouldn’t be ace-high, against mine. But it needn’t ever come to court. It mustn’t! It would raise a horrible row in this town, and kick over everybody’s apple­cart. Everything can be kept quiet. Do as I tell you, that’s all!”

The banker’s voice was crisp, tense. It had become the voice of Tony the Scratcher. Just so had he bossed his “swell mob,” years and years ago. Old Spracklin yielded to the dominant influence.

“I—I don’t understand,” he weakened.

“You don’t have to understand! All you have to do, now, is mind me. I’m boss here, anyhow. You’re my employee. Listen! Clean that gun of yours. Reload it. Keep your fool mouth shut. Shut! Hear me? That’s all!”

“All, sir?”

“No. Here!” He thrust his gun into Spracklin’s pocket. “Here’s mine, too. I’ve got no time to attend to it. Clean mine, too, and reload it, and put it back in my desk. Do it right away! Don’t delay a minute. Understand me? Obey, and it may save you a trip to the chair!”

The old man’s brief flare-up of suspicion and defiance seemed to have been stamped down. Spracklin cringed.

“I’ll do what you say. But you stand back o’ me, won’t you? If anythin’ happens to me—”

“Nothing will happen to you, idiot! That is, if you keep that damned old trap of yours quiet! Now then, help me get my wife out of here. Out, to our car!”

They lifted her, clumsily enough and with a good deal of difficulty, for Lillian Brodbine was even fatter than Delia the Dip had been. Also, she was slippery in her fur coat. The bank door, too, made trouble. And wind, rain, and darkness are not conducive to the easy transportation of the dead.

In spite of all, they got her to the limousine, and into it. Nobody seemed to have seen them. The engine was still singing peace­fully to itself, with all eight cylinders. The downpour drenched old Spracklin’s head, pattering rather absurdly on his bald cran­ium, for he had no hat. Brodbine clambered into the front seat. He felt Spracklin’s hand on his arm.

“I—I fired at the top o’ the safe, sir,” said the old man. “I didn’t shoot to kill. Wouldn’t, the first shot. That bullet must be somewheres in the bank. I’ll find it, an’ make ’way with it.”

“What d’you mean?” demanded the banker. “Mean that I—?”

“Now, now, sir. I’m goin’ to keep my trap shut, like you told me to! But, say—one man to another—it was her as wanted to clean out the bank, wasn’t it now?”

“It’s the chair for you, if anybody even knows she was here! Get back to the bank, now, and clean those guns!”

IV.

Brodbine drove the dead woman home. He felt secure, exultant. “The old man’s safe enough,” thought he. “He’s sharper than I thought, but he won’t dare snitch. He’s sewed up, tight. He couldn’t prove anything, anyhow, I guess a half-cracked old mutt like him wouldn’t have much weight against Honest Pete, if it came to a showdown. But it won’t come to a showdown!”

Then he thought of Dr. Abercrombie, the coroner. Also of fat old Gilkey, the Chief of Police, who must be notified. Hmmm. . . . Yes, those were certainly obstacles. But what were obstacles made for, except to be overcome?

“I guess I can get away with ’em,” thought Tony the Scratcher. “A little bull goes a long way, in these tank-towns.”

“There ought to be no real difficulty,” decided Brodbine the Banker. “The word of a man in my position carries weight.”

The man who was two men drove back home and into the garage. He was glad of the slashing rain that would very soon blur his tire-tracks where they turned from the street into the driveway. Blur them so that, by morning, nobody would be able to see he had taken the car out, that night. On the gravel driveway, the tracks wouldn’t show, anyway. So far, so good.

As he got within his own purlieus, Tony the Scratcher retreated into the background and Brodbine the Banker assumed domin­ance. It was mostly Brodbine who carried the dead woman into the house, via the back door. Yet it was the sinuous strength of Tony’s underworld days that hunched the limp body over his shoulder and got it upstairs.

Brodbine laid his dead wife down on the floor, and pulled all the shades in her room and his own. Then he went after the suitcases. He hung his coat and hat on the hall-rack, carried the cases upstairs and un­packed them, working by gas-jets turned low. As he replaced everything, and put the cases back in their respective closets, he hardly glanced at the body. In the long ago, he had seen too many such, for one more to stir his pulses. Beside, what joy was his that Lil was dead!

“Now for the big smash!” said he, at length, and began operations with the murdered woman.

He got her fur coat off, and her hat, and put them where they belonged. The limp neck of the woman, her lax hands, wax-colored face and dully accusing eyes made slight impression on him. He knew now that he hated her; had hated her for a good while. Knew that he had feared her, too, and that this was one of life’s most free and happy hours. He drew down her eyelids, however. That dull vacancy of seeming re­proach was unpleasant.

He undressed the body, and examined the wound. This was on the left side, about two inches below the axilla. The woman must have had her arm drawn back, when the shot had been fired.

“Not very much blood,” he noted. “I wish there had been more.”

He gathered up all the clothes, and sorted them. Everything stained with blood he laid in a little heap. The rest of the things he put away, carefully. All at once an idea occurred to him. He went downstairs and examined the woman’s fur coat. Yes, the bullet hole showed. He thrust a finger through it, and pondered. Then he carried the coat into the kitchen, and threw it down the cellar stairs.

He returned to the body, got a nightdress—a used one—from his wife’s closet, punched a hole in it with a pair of scissors at the spot corresponding to the wound on the body, and put the nightdress on the dead woman. He wet a towel, sopped her face and hair, washed the wound and dabbled the night­dress with blood. Then he laid the woman in her bed, which he opened and tossed about a little, to make it seem as if she had slept there that night.

“Not quite enough blood,” he regretted, “but it’ll do. Now we’ll work in a bit of brandy. Mustn’t forget that!”

He dropped the wet and ensanguined towel on the floor, then fetched a bottle of brandy from his little stock in a trunk that only the woman and he had known contained any. He spilled brandy on her lips and neck, and left the uncorked bottle on the bedside table.

“Next,” said Brodbine. “We’ve got to have an alibi!”

This was simple. He locked one of the bedroom windows, that looked out over the roof of the summer kitchen. Taking off his rubbers and shoes, he tossed them into his clothes closet, and—lighting a candle—went up into the attic. Here he found and put on an old pair of hunting-boots, with calked soles. Downstairs again, he blew out the candle and set it back on the shelf where he had got it. He went into the kitchen. From the drawer of the kitchen table he took a broad-bladed chisel.

He left the house by the back door, climbed upon the summer kitchen, and with the chisel—working in dark and rain—“jimmied” the window in good, professional style. He now jumped down into a muddy flowerbed, and made deep tracks across a bit of soft lawn. These tracks led to the graveled driveway. Here he slipped off the hunting-boots, and in stocking-feet returned into the house, via the flagged back walk.

He went down cellar, and opened the door of the furnace where a bright coal fire was glowing redly. He had left all the drafts open to permit of the fire burning out quickly after he and his wife had left, so his wife’s fur coat and the hunting boots which he had rapidly cut into strips, once tossed inside, were quickly consumed.

“There!” he exclaimed. “They’ll have to go some to hook me up to it, now. Oh, damn it—those other clothes!”

Yes, he had forgotten the blood-stained clothes. Another trip to his wife’s room and back to the furnace disposed of all these. He shut the furnace door with the satisfaction of an artist who has done a good, trustworthy piece of work.

“Now,” said the banker, in a very happy frame of mind, “now for Abercrombie and Gilkey!”

He undressed, in his own room, after having carefully washed his hands. He put on pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers, and tossed his own bed quite artfully, taking especial care to dent the pillow. Then, lighter-hearted than he had been in months, he went to the phone and called the doctor.

A sleepy operator bothered him a little, so that by the time he had got Abercrombie out of the Land of Nod his voice really showed a good deal of nervousness.

“You, doctor?” he ex­claimed. “This is Brodbine. My wife—she’s been shot! Burglar—and she’s dead! Yes, dead! Eh? In her bedroom. Just now. What? Yes, I’m alone, here. Mustn’t move her? My God, doctor, this is no time for your cold-blooded instructions. My wife—she’s dead, here! And you—all right, I get you! But hurry, hurry! What? Ten minutes? For God’s sake, doctor—!”

Next he called the stuffy little police station, under the post office. Gilkey, of course, was sound asleep. The old man, however, woke up quick enough when he realized that murder—what he would have called “a genu-ine, first-class murder”—had been done in Rockville. Such occasions to shine were rare, for the local police. And Mrs. Brodbine, of all people!

“I’ll be right up!” Gilkey promised. Brodbine could catch the quiver of anticipatory self-importance already puffing the good soul. “Yes, sir, I’ll send my men out—pick up any suspects. Lord, sir, I’m sorry to hear this. But I’ll do everything I can—the murderer, we’ll git him, all right. Be there jest as quick’s I can, sir. My God!”

“Pretty smooth!” judged the banker, as he hung up. “Abercrombie will be here in ten or fifteen minutes. Gilkey can’t make it in less than twenty or maybe twenty-five. He’s ’way downtown, and the doc’s only four blocks from here. That’s all as it should be. Abercrombie is coroner. If I get his O. K. on the evidence, it’s all over but the funeral. And I’ll get it, all right. A country crocus like this one—nothing to it!”

A few minutes now remained before Abercrombie should arrive. Minutes that the banker used for a complete review of the case. He weighed and tested everything, found no flaw. The more carefully he analyzed the evidence, the more iron-bound everything appeared. Only one weak link existed in the chain. That was old Spracklin. And Spracklin, being constrained by a very great fear, would certainly hold his tongue.

“Nothing to it!” judged the banker, again, and felt at peace.

Trrrrrrrrr!

The electric bell in the front hallway startled him a little, in spite of all his assurance. He felt his nerves crisp, as he ran downstairs, flopping along in his slippers. He grew a little sick, and his heart began to cut capers. But this was all right, too. Quite as it should be. He was grateful for this agitation. What could be more natural? “Buck up!” he growled to his soul. “Buck up, and go through!”

He hurried to the front door, and threw it open. The storm wind slapped the bathrobe about his legs.

“Doctor! For God’s sake—!”

“Where is she?” demanded Abercrombie. He came in, shaking the rain off, like a New­foundland. Brodbine shut out the blackness and the cold. A glimpse of himself, in the hat-rack mirror, showed him his mask of anguish was well-painted. “Where is she? Up there?”

Brodbine nodded.

“She—she’s dead!” he gulped, and caught the doctor’s arm. “Come up, quick!”

Abercrombie shed hat and coat. With his little black bag—how useless now!—he tramped grimly upstairs.

“Police notified?” he demanded, in the upper hall.

“Yes. You’re the coroner, of course.”

“Yes, but the police have got to come, too. What Rockville calls the police.” His tone held contempt.

“Gilkey’ll be here, right away.”

“Good! You haven’t moved her, I hope.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“That’s good! That simplifies matters!” He pulled down the nightdress, studied the wound. “Washed it, eh? No use, Mr. Brod­bine. No more than washing her face was, or trying to get brandy into her.” His tone was brutally professional. “Bullet must have penetrated the heart, laterally.” He replaced the nightdress. For a moment he studied the hole in it, thrusting a finger through. “Just what happened, eh?”

“A burglar shot her.”

“How long ago?”

“A little while. Maybe twenty minutes.”

“How do you know it was a burglar?”

“Well, you see—the window’s jimmied. It’s open. Her fur coat, on that chair—I mean it was on that chair—it’s gone.”

Abercrombie walked over to the window, adjusted his spectacles and studied the window. He felt of the marks left by the chisel, and grunted. Then he came back to the bed.

“You called me right away?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Good God, doctor! I didn’t know she was dead! Couldn’t believe it I got brandy—water—! Only when I realized—then I ’phoned you.”

“Yes, yes. Quite so. Very natural. Where were you, when it happened?”

“In bed.”

“Asleep?”

“Yes. I was wakened by a noise. A shot. I sat up in bed, listened, called out. Got no answer. Jumped out of bed, and ran in her.”

“I see. What then?”

“Then I saw her—lying there.”

“Just where?”

“Why, in bed. There.”

“Fallen back, just so?”

“Yes.”

“And she was shot, you say, about twenty minutes ago?”

“Half an hour, maybe.”

“Shot in bed, there, and died there?”

“Yes.”

“By a man at that window?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm! Very odd, Mr. Brodbine!”

“What’s odd?”

“Well, the fact that there’s a little blood on the floor in the middle of the bedroom, for one thing. And then, the fact that the hole in her nightdress was pierced by some instrument, and not caused by a bullet. And thirdly, that the condition of the wound and of the coagulated blood shows she’s been dead certainly three-quarters of an hour or more. And lastly—”

“You’re mistaken, doctor!” put in Brodbine, horribly sick at heart “I was here. I know!”

“Yes, and I know, too!” the old doctor retorted. “Look a’ here, Brodbine! That window, where you claim the burglar stood, is at the right of the bed and somewhat above the head of it. The wound, you will observe, is on the left side of your wife’s chest.”

“But—!”

“Shhh! Don’t you think, just as a matter of common sense and wisdom—don’t you think you’d better give me the whole story? Don’t you think you’d better tell me just what happened?”

V.

The silence that hung between the two men weighted itself with so ponderable a tension that it fairly sagged. From the library, below-stairs, a single chime of the clock announced the half-hour after one o’ the morning. The ticking of that clock seemed measuring out heartbeats of destiny.

“Old Gilkey,” said the doctor, with the gaslight making his ­wrinkles deeper, “will be here any time, now. You’ve got just one chance—the truth.”

“The truth? But I’ve told you the—”

“‘Milk for babes and sucklings; strong meat for men!’ Come clean!”

“Eh? What?” The cant phrase sounded strange echoes in the mind of Brodbine the banker; echoes that reached into the soul of Tony the Scratcher. Brodbine’s eyes were strange, as he peered at the doctor.

“I’m coroner,” said Abercrombie.

“Yes?” Brodbine struggled to read the riddle. Was this threat, or was it offer?

“My verdict will close all investigation.”

“Well?” The banker’s heart was leaping.

“Just why and how did this woman die? Just what is the exact truth?”

Brodbine’s hand gripped the doctor’s arm till the flesh gave.

“The—the truth?” he gulped. He felt dizzy. His pallor spread to the lips.

“Yes. I’ve got to have it.”

“I tell you I’ve given you the truth!”

Abercrombie laughed.

“What’s the use of stalling, any longer?” he demanded. “Why did you kill that woman?”

Brodbine swallowed hard. His hands quivered out, to the doctor.

“I—I—damn it all! It’s the truth I’m giving you! A burglar—”

“Kick in, now! Kick in!”

Brodbine stared. Not all his anguish of terror and defeat could stifle his astonishment. A voice seemed echoing to him from the shadows of the black past—a voice that spoke the language of the Underworld.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“I? Oh, just Dr. Abercrombie. Why?”

“Say!” And Brodbine’s eyes grew nar­row, keen. “You can’t pull that on me! I know the lingo. What’s your moniker?”

“I’ll swap for yours!”

They eyed each other a tense moment, like wrestlers watching for an advantage, before the grapple.

“I’ve got to know who you are, first,” demanded Brodbine. “I’m wise. You’ve hit the trail, sometime or other. Snap out of the bull, doc, and come through! Who are you?”

“Ah, that,” smiled the doctor, “would be an interesting question for you—and Rockville—to determine. Some men are just one man. Some are two, or even three. I, perhaps, have been even more. Just now, I’m Dr. Edwin F. Abercrombie, a highly-respected citizen of this town.”

“That won’t get across, with me!” ex­claimed the banker. “I’m no downy bird. Let’s have it!”

“I perceive quite clearly,” answered the physician, “that the title of downy bird would be a misnomer, in your case. But that doesn’t invalidate my claim to being Dr. Abercrombie. This much, however, I’ll say—perhaps I haven’t always been a doctor. I may have had previous incarna­tions. Your trail and mine may have crossed, in previous spheres. I may very probably have known or heard of—”

“Of me?” Brodbine demanded.

“All things are possible.”

“And you—you under cover—”

“Why involve me?” asked the doctor. “I’m not under investigation, in this matter!”

“You, under cover the same as I am—you’re going to blow me, after all these years?”

“I didn’t say I was under cover,” Aber­crombie smiled. “I don’t admit I am. And I’m quite positive you don’t know me. I’m much older, for one thing. Any—”

“Yes, but—”

“Wait! Any previous incarnation I may have had, may have been when you were only a young fellow. And as for blowing you, to quote your own words, I haven’t made any such threat, either. But I will say this, that I knew a bit about you, prior to 1909. And I haven’t snitched a word of it. So I must be pretty close-mouthed, eh? Perhaps I had my reasons—good ones—for silence. So now, to get back to the main line of investigation and to resume my previous inquiry, why did you kill your wife?”

For a moment, Brodbine could find no answer. Storm beat at the windows; man peered at man, with soul striv­ing to read soul; and on the bed, the murdered woman seemed to listen.

“You’d better be quick,” warned the doctor. “Old Gilkey will be here, any minute now, and I’ve got to report what seems best for all concerned. Are you ready to come through?”

“Yes. I killed her because I had to.”

“To save yourself?”

“Yes, and Rockville. And the county. Everybody!”

“I see. She was forcing your hand, eh?”

The banker nodded. Abercrombie laughed.

“I thought rather she would, in the end,” said he. “It was a very pretty problem in psychology. I knew, or figured, you were making a play for big stakes. I was inter­ested to see how it all would come out.” He tugged his wet beard, and pondered. “A pretty problem in souls. Very, very pretty.”

“You—you don’t mean you knew—?”

“Well,” answered the doctor, dryly, “you’ll notice I never opened an account at your bank. Or rather, after you went to work there, I transferred my account to the Farmers’ Trust Co.”

“What are you? A dick?”

“No. Only an observer of the reactions of human chemistry. A laboratory worker in soul-stuff. Having been in the test tube, myself, I now enjoy seeing other souls under the influence of various re­agents. This is very pretty, indeed! I interpret this experi­ment as one in which the male element reversed its usual role, by becoming con­servative, while the female became radical. Correct, eh?”

Brodbine nodded.

“A man hates to accuse his wife,” said he, “especially when she’s dead and can’t defend herself—and when he’s killed her. But I had to do it. She was bound to go through. I got cold feet on cleaning out the bank, that’s all, and she wanted to go through. She put it up to me that if I quit she’d blow the game, anyhow. That was at the bank, tonight, and—”

“And you figured there was only one way?”

“Yes.”

“You figured right, too. As the subject of previous laboratory tests, myself, I certify that your solution of the problem was 100% correct. Ethically wrong, but practically right. What was your motive for quitting?”

“Pure folly, for a man in my line!”

“Folly? When you’ve saved this whole town and county from ruin?”

“The folly of a man who has no real right to a home, and friends, and a legitimate business, trying to keep all those things! The folly of an Ishmael trying to appoint himself a watchman over society—trying to protect what is logically his prey! Motive? There’s no one motive—they’re mixed—”

“Like all chemical reactions,” dryly re­marked Abercrombie. “I used to be an expert chemist, in a quiet way, and I know. I’m glad you’ve been so frank, Mr. Brodbine. If you hadn’t made it all quite clear, my experiment would have been spoiled and I always throw spoiled chemicals down the sink. As it is, you’ll have punishment enough without my taking any hand in it. The punishment of this community condoling with you over your wife’s unfortunate taking-off in her prime; and of living along in this same house; and of keeping on at the bank. If you’re wise, you’ll take a month or two’s vacation after you’ve dropped your dutiful tears on the grave. You’ll go away and ponder on the sublime super-morality of ‘the greatest good to the greatest number.’ And now—”

Trrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Again the bell summoned, in the lower hall.

“Gilkey!” cried Brodbine.

“Yes, there’s the power of the law,” smiled Abercrombie. “Well, I don’t im­agine either you or I—who’ve been in life’s crucible—feel any great uneasiness about so mild a Bunsen burner as old Gilkey. There’s one thing, though, we must attend to right away.”

“What’s that?” asked Brodbine. His head felt light and strange. His world was spinning, his universe awhirl.

“When’s your maid coming back?”

“Day after tomorrow. We sent her away, so we could—”

“Don’t expound the obvious. The main factor is that she’s gone, and won’t be back for forty-eight hours. Plenty of time to rearrange any furniture we change, now, without exciting comment or suspicion. So take hold here, Mr. Brodbine, and help me lift this bed round.”

“The bed?”

“Yes. That’s the one element necessary, now, to make this experiment a complete success. Remember, your wife was shot here, sitting up in bed. Her wound has got to be on the side toward the window. Help me turn the bed, man—turn the bed!”

Together, one at each end of it, they swung it, lifted it noiselessly around.

“There!” smiled Abercrombie. “Now the mise en scène is perfect. All but that little smear of blood on the floor, I’ll clean that up, while you’re letting Gilkey in.”

He laid a hand on Brodbine’s shoulder.

“Just one word more,” said he. “We, who have been through the test tubes and have emerged, understand more fully than men who haven’t been there, the Socratic method whereby at times an individual wrong becomes a communal right. We’ve got to stand to­gether, in a crisis. But when it’s over, you and I once more know nothing of each other. The laboratory door, re­opened for an hour, must close again—eternally. You understand?”

Brodbine nodded, in silence. Their hands met, and clasped.

The electric bell once more called, in­sistently.

“Go let him in!” bade Abercrombie, with a smile.