One Endless Hour (21 page)

    Harris had gagged Thelma Barton. Dahl dumped Ellen to the floor where she sprawled three-quarters out of the blanket, then marched over in front of Ellen's mother. "What the hell kind of a parent are you?" Dahl demanded. "Don't you know where your kids are nights? Don't you care?"

    Thelma Barton's features turned purple from the intensity of the abortive effort she made to reply. Dahl turned away. Harris drew me to one side. "Mrs. Mace wants to talk to you privately," he said. "She says it's important."

    "Bring her outside, then. And get the tie-cords off Barton and Mace and onto the kids."

    I went out into the basement proper. Harris led out Shirley Mace and then went back inside. The woman wasted no words. "There's a burglar alarm at the bank in the writing desk just inside the side door," she said. "You'll have to keep everyone away from it."

    I couldn't help thinking that never in my life had I had more cooperation from such unlikely sources. First the bank manager's kids, now the assistant bank manager's wife. "You have a reason for telling me this, of course."

    Her eyes met mine levelly. "I do. You're a ruthless man. I want you to kill Rachel before you leave. You can make it look like an accident."

    "Well, now-"

    "You'll be doing everyone concerned a favor," she insisted. Her tone turned acid. "I've spent twenty-two years in slavery because of George's truckling to his conscience. I don't propose to do it any longer. I've given you information which might easily make the difference in your getting away or not. You owe me a favor."

    "We'll see," I said in the manner of a parent speaking to a petulant child, avoiding the outright "no" because of fear of the resultant emotional explosion. "Get back inside." She hesitated as if there were something more she was about to say, then led the way.

    Barton and Mace were on their feet, rubbing their wrists. Everyone else except Shirley Mace was on the mattress floor, bound wrist and ankle. Harris speedily added her to the lineup. Ellen had thrown off her blanket and was staring defiantly at her family. Sometime since I had seen her on the bed in her room, either she or Dahl had removed her panties. The girl was as naked as Rachel.

    "More bare pelt on the loose around here tonight," Dahl commented, seeing my expression. I kept a grip on myself. This was no time for a discourse on adult juvenile delinquency. For an instant I debated the wisdom of leaving Dahl with the group. I had committed myself to Harris, though. The gambler would be disturbed by a last-minute reversal of roles. "Harris and I are leaving now with these two," I told Dahl, nodding at the men. "Hold the lid on here till we get back. We'll take Mace's Rambler and leave your rental job in the driveway. If we're not back by nine twenty, go for yourself."

    "I read you loud an' clear, cousin," he declared.

    We climbed the basement steps with me in the lead, Barton and Mace in the middle, and Harris bringing up the rear. "Do you have your key to the bank's side entrance?" I asked Mace.

    "It's on the Rambler key ring," he answered.

    "Make sure of it," Harris warned. "You wouldn't like what happens to the people downstairs if it isn't."

    Neither Mace nor Barton said anything. I wasn't sure that they caught the bloodthirsty reference to the hostages. We went out to the street. It was getting light. I put the two men in the back after Mace made sure that the bank key was on the key ring. Harris sat in front, watching them, although I think both he and I were convinced by that time there was no fight in either.

    "I did the right thing!" George Mace burst out as I pulled away from the house. "She was mine! She
is
mine! She's my responsibility! How can your wife say we should have put her in a home, Tom!"

    Barton said nothing. He looked like a man who had his own troubles. I drove through the quiet streets to the downtown area and parked Mace's car in its usual slot on the bank parking lot.

    "We know there's no burglar alarm on the side door because the cleaning people have to get in at odd hours," Harris told Barton and Mace. "But the first man who makes an unexplained move inside has had it."

    It was still dark enough so that I doubted anyone on the street could see us as we approached the bank. I handed Mace the Rambler key ring and motioned to him to open the bank door. Harris had his hand inside his jacket on the butt of his gun.

    Mace unlocked the door. We all filed inside, our footsteps echoing cavernously in the stillness. I watched closely, but neither man made a move toward the alarm switch in the desk just inside the entrance about which Shirley Mace had warned me. "Take them into their offices and tie them up again," I said to Harris. "Each in his own office."

    When he led them away, I stationed myself where I could watch the parking lot and the approach to the side door. Nothing moved in the steadily increasing light. "There's a coffee percolator all loaded and ready to go in Barton's secretary's office," Harris reported when he returned. "Should I make coffee?"

    "If you like. Don't forget the sign for the front door."

    "I'll get it up in time." Harris glanced at his watch. "I wish we didn't have this long a wait."

    I wished it, too, but there was nothing we could do about it. I explained to Harris the necessity for keeping incoming bank personnel away from the desk near the entrance. I didn't tell him how I knew about the alarm. We checked the space available, and decided to place the bank employees in a lounge just off the rest rooms as fast as they appeared for work. The lounge had only one entrance and a door that could be locked from the outside.

    Then there was nothing to do but wait.

    We divided up into thirty-minute shifts the task of keeping an eye on the side entrance approach to prevent surprise. During my off periods I sat in one of the smaller offices. The sight of a roll of Scotch tape on the desk reminded me of something I had intended to do previously.

    I rummaged around in the desk until I found an empty box of medium-stiff cardboard of the type in which new checkbooks are mailed out, and a sheet of wrapping paper. I folded the paper several times and slipped it into my jacket pocket. In that desk and the one in the adjoining office I found address labels, a pen that wrote with India ink, loose stamps, and the roll of tape. I tore the top label from the pad and printed an address on it: DR. SHER AFZUL, STATE HOSPITAL, RAIFORD, FLORIDA. In one corner I added FIRST CLASS MAIL. I put label, stamps, and tape in the box, then put the box in my jacket pocket along with the wrapping paper.

    I settled down to wait again.

    

    

    At eight thirty A.M. I released Barton from the chair into which he was tied and took him into the lobby. Using Harris's dog chain, I fastened Barton by one ankle to the leg of a heavy customers' desk. All employees entering the bank would see Barton standing there and assume that everything was all right until the instant that either Harris or I intercepted them and put them into the lounge.

    At 8:35 Harris took up a position just inside the door, behind it so that he would be invisible each time it opened. At 8:41 there was the sound of a key in the lock. The uniformed bank guard whose duty it was to unlock the side door each morning entered. With him was a white-haired woman carrying an umbrella. "Good morning, Mr. Barton," she called across the lobby as the door closed behind them. "Nice to see-" Her voice deteriorated to a choked gasp as Harris stepped out with his gun leveled.

    He took them to the lounge. The guard put up no opposition. I took Harris's place just inside the door. Three more people arrived at 8:44. I took them to the lounge while Harris took my place at the door. After that it was a shuttle service. We took them in groups as fast as we could make the round trip. I took time out only to send Harris to the front entrance to tape up his sign: BANK EXAMINERS HERE. OPEN AT 10:00 A.M. TODAY.

    At 8:58 the rush was over. "You take it here," I told Harris. "I'll take Barton and Mace to the vault. Lock this door each time you have to leave it. Latecomers will think somebody forgot the latch. They'll rattle the door, which will give you time to get back to it. Now give me your knife."

    He handed it over. I released Barton from the leg of the table and took him with me while I cut Mace free from his bonds. "No mistakes," I said as I walked them to the door of the vault. "You both have more riding on this than I do."

    Mace rubbed his hands together nervously. Neither man said anything. There was a red light on above the vault door. I watched it. At eight seconds after nine by my watch the red light went out and a white light came on. I didn't need to say anything to Barton. He stepped up to the vault door with its huge combination dial. He spun the dial once right and once left with his body shielding his movements, then backed away. Mace moved in and did the same, then took hold of the door handle and tugged. The massive door slid open silently on its oiled tracks.

    "Inside," I said to them. I followed them into the steel-lined room. A metal cart with seven canvas sacks on it was just inside the door. It was the cart we had seen used for unloading the armored car two weeks in a row. I dug my toe into the sacks. Three were heavy, obviously filled with coin. I pushed them off the cart onto the vault floor. The others I slit with the knife near the wax-impressed seal on the locked cord around the necks of the sacks, just enough to get my hand inside. Two sacks contained bundles of canceled checks, two contained neatly wrapped packages of greenbacks. I shoved the sacks with the cancelled checks onto the floor. "Is this vault vented?" I asked.

    "Yes, it is," Barton replied. It was the only thing I'd heard him say since we left the Barton home.

    "Then relax until they come and get you here."

    I pushed the cart outside, swung the monstrous door closed, and spun the dial. I rolled the cart through the lobby to where Harris was still waiting just inside the side door. "One latecomer still due or else there'll be an absentee today," he reported. He eyed the cart. "That's it?"

    "That's it. Skip out and drive Mace's station wagon alongside this door."

    It took him only a moment. I pitched the two sacks into the station wagon. It was a critical moment if anyone walked around from the front of the bank, but nothing happened. I kicked the cart back inside, set the latch so no one could get in without a key, and slammed the door. Harris drove us out of the bank parking lot. My watch said 9:08.

    I fumbled around inside a sack until I found two packages of fifty-dollar bills, each wrapped a hundred bills to the package. I showed them to Harris before taking my prepared box and wrapping paper from my jacket pocket. "Paying off a bill," I explained. He nodded, his eyes swivelling back to the roadway. It wasn't until later that I realized he thought I meant the Schemer.

    I crammed the bills inside the box, wrapped it in the paper, sealed it, applied the address label and the stamps, which covered one whole side, and Scotch taped the whole thing again. I dropped the parcel in my pocket. When I looked up, we were within a block of the Mace house. "I'll get Dahl," I said. "You switch the sacks into the rental car and leave Mace's car in the driveway."

    "Right," Harris said. He parked in front of the house, leaving the driveway unobstructed.

    I walked up the driveway and went in the back door. I knew something was wrong the instant I entered the kitchen. The basement door stood open, and I could hear a feminine voice talking in the front of the house.

    I drew my gun and crept through the dining room and living room. In the front hallway, Ellen Barton, nude, was gabbling into the telephone. "-Barton's daughter," she was saying. "They must be at the bank.
Bank,
do you understand? Stop telling me to speak more slowly! There were three of them."

    She hadn't heard my approach. I reached her in two jumps and sapped the back of her pretty neck with the butt of the gun. A corner of my mind wondered if I would recognize this girl with clothes on. The telephone receiver clattered and banged to the floor as she fell forward in a loose-limbed sprawl over the telephone table, then slid to the carpeting, unconscious.

    I sprinted toward the basement stairway. At the foot of the stairs the stockade door stood wide open. I slid to a stop in the entrance. Thelma Barton, Shirley Mace, Tommy Barton, and Margie Barton were still lined up in a row against a wall, tied wrist and ankle.

    Rachel Mace was not.

    The four against the wall stared bug-eyed at the naked idiot girl crouched above Dick Dahl's prostrate figure, her hands at his throat. She was crooning softly to herself. Dahl's face was blue-black. To one side a tilted camera tripod and a smashed movie camera indicated how he had been spending his time.

    Rachel looked up at my entrance. She drooled at me as I charged her. She fastened a hand like a steel claw on my ankle. With fantastic strength she began to pull me down onto the mattress. I swung the gun at her head. It crashed against her temple and she crumpled. The steel claw fell away. I took a closer look at Dahl and changed my mind about trying for a pulse indication. Dick Dahl was gone.

    I couldn't remember if there was anything incriminating on his film aside from what he'd been shooting here. With Dahl one never knew. I grabbed up the smashed camera, jerked out the film cartridge, jammed it into my pocket, and threw the camera down. "Don't leave us here with her!" Shirley Mace screamed at me as I started for the door. "She'll kill us all!"

    I kept on going. I knew the police would be there before the idiot regained consciousness. And after the police saw what had happened, Rachel Mace would be someone else's responsibility from that day forward, not the Maces'.