Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 20 Classic Mysteries!

A bell began to clang. A gun blasted. A female employee screamed. Mr. Darcy Featherstone made a dull noise as he fainted and keeled over again.

Henry was vaguely aware of being in motion, the shrill yells still coming from his lips. He had a strange object in his hand which he’d scooped up from the shelf below and inside a teller’s cage. He curled his forefinger, pointing the object, and the bank resounded with the blast of gunfire.

Then half the building seemed to fall on Henry’s right shoulder. The process was instant. He blacked out.

Henry returned to the realm of consciousness with a wince, a groan, a slow opening of his eyes. A doctor, a nurse, and Mr. Joshua Tipton, bank president, were hovering beside his hospital bed.

“Welcome back, Henry,” Mr. Tipton said as if speaking to a son. “Did they...”

“They didn’t, Henry,” Mr. Tipton said. “When their deal soured, they broke and ran. Both got caught. Unfortunately for them, they were stranded on foot. When she heard the commotion, the blonde woman bolted in the get-away car. In her panic, she ran into a bridge abutment. But she was the only fatality.”

“Better let him rest now,” the doctor said.

“I’ll give him something to rest on,” Mr. Tipton said. “When you come back, Henry, you’re through as a teller.”

“I am?”

“The most miserable showing of Darcy Featherstone in a crisis has convinced me that he’s not quite the man for the v-p post. Your experience and length of service, along with proof that still waters do run deep, qualify you for the job, I think.”

“They do?”

“Welcome to our ranks, fellow executive. Mr. Vice-President!”

“Hmmm,” said Henry. He squinted one eye in deep thought. In five years, he realized, he had come to like the bank. Except for that shrimp Darcy, the other employees were pretty nice. And Mr. Tipton... why, the old man had unsuspected emotions behind that leonine exterior!

“You have the personal interest we all must share in the great responsibility entrusted to us,” Mr. Tipton was saying. “Even I, Overby, must take a lesson from your courage and intense personal devotion to our fine bank.”

“You must?” Henry inquired. His thoughts skittered briefly on a tangent. After all, bank vice-presidents do belong to country clubs. They do buy imposing homes, being in a position to ferret out a bargain. A v-p can invest, handle his money wisely, even purchase a fine car, and court a slightly snobbish fruit off a fine old family tree, although she may be a bit plain.

Henry’s ambition began to leap and dance. The mere thought of filching from the vault seemed puerile. Certainly it was unworthy of Henry Overby, vice-president, who in a few more years would very likely occupy the very office in which now Mr. Tipton reigned.

“Yes, Overby,” Mr. Tipton’s tone was an oratorical flourish. “We are proud to have a man with your sense of duty, your very personal regard for our noble institution. You expressed it fervently, Judkins reported, even if somewhat abstrusely.”

“I did?” Henry said cautiously.

“Certainly, man! Don’t you remember? As you went down under the gunman’s bullet, you were yelling it at the top of your lungs. Overby, the heroic words you uttered were, precisely, ‘You can’t have the treasure out of my vault... my vault... my vault...’”

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , January 1966.

Marco tingled with excitement and pure delight when Timothy Watkins came to him in a moment of extreme trouble. Marco didn’t reveal these feelings. Instead, he ushered a disheveled Timothy into his apartment on a drizzly midnight with a show of concern and sympathy that appeared genuine.

After all, he and Timothy were supposed to be friends. Timothy’s money, purchasing a chunk of Marco’s foundering business, had bailed Marco out of deep financial difficulty. And like a true friend and honest man, Timothy had come straight to Marco when it appeared Miss Sharon Randall, a lovely brunette, preferred him over Marco.

When he opened his door on the man whom he secretly hated, Marco took in Timothy’s appearance at a glance. Timothy was wet and muddy. His face had lost all color. His eyes were glazed, stricken, not quite in complete touch with reality.

Timothy, Marco knew, had had a dinner invitation from Miss Randall. Marco had spent the evening seething at the thought of the two of them alone in the intimate seclusion of her lakeside cottage.

A big, expansive sham of a man, Marco helped Timothy to the couch.

Timothy began mumbling a garbled apology. “No one else I could think of — had to tell someone; better leave...”

Timothy started to rise, but Marco pushed him back. “No nonsense, now,” Marco said. He was so eager to know the nature of Timothy’s trouble he would have locked the door to keep him here. “You did exactly right. Just relax and tell me what it’s all about.”

Timothy was incapable of relaxing. Marco crossed the room to the buffet, poured a stiff drink, and brought it to Timothy, who gulped gratefully, shuddered the liquor down straight, and a bit of color came to his face.

“Marco,” he said in a whisper of suffering, “I’ve killed a man.”

“What!”

“A stranger. A man I never saw before. Never knew he was there, hardly, until the car hit him.”

All the bitterness went out of the evening, as far as Marco was concerned. He put on a front of gravity and trouble. He dropped beside Timothy and put his hand on the wiry, sandy man’s shoulder. “Better tell me about it from the beginning, Timothy.”

Timothy was miserably reluctant. “I don’t want to involve...”

“More nonsense,” Marco said, giving him a slight shake. “What are friends for, anyway?”

Timothy’s need was so great and Marco so kind and understanding that Timothy’s slate-gray eyes misted. “Miss Randall and I... We had cocktails before dinner and a couple drinks afterward. I left there pleasantly mild. Not drunk, but not completely sober either. Not knowing that a man’s life would be in my hands...” He closed his eyes and shivered briefly.

“You were returning home from Miss Randall’s, Timothy?”

“Yes, driving along, thinking of her, of our evening. I saw the truck stop at the intersection far ahead. It pulled away, and I know now that the driver had let a hitchhiker out. The truck was going no closer to town than the intersection. The hitchhiker was headed on this way.

“I... I didn’t see him until I was through the intersection. He was just there, all of a sudden. On the edge of the road, flagging me for a ride.

“I slammed on the brakes and the car skidded slightly. Felt like it was going to flip over. I hadn’t realized how fast I’d been driving.

“I jerked the steering wheel. The car slewed off the edge of the pavement, and I heard a bump, exactly like cold metal slapping meat and bone.

“When I managed to get the car stopped, I got out but I didn’t see the hitchhiker. It was as if he’d been a mirage in the rainy night, an impression of a thin, slightly stooped guy in jeans and out-at-the-elbows jacket.

“Remembering the sound of that bump, I began to shake all over, I tell you! I grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment, ran up the road...”

“And found him?”

“Yes,” Timothy mourned, his head in his hands. “In a thicket down the embankment beside the road, his head all bloody — I knew he must be dead.”

“How did you know? Did you go down and examine him?”

Timothy lifted his head slowly. “No, I — come to think of it the sight of so much blood — I panicked, I guess. Don’t remember anything else clearly until I got here. But he couldn’t have been alive with his head battered so badly.”