The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mysteries!

Heist in Pianissimo

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1964.

Judy put her hands over her ears. “I won’t hear another word of it Davie! We’re not criminals, you know.”

In the moonlight beside the lake, she was a lovely, petite brunette. I took quick steps after her as she flounced her skirt and moved toward my jalopy, which was parked nearby.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Just pretend I never opened my big mouth.”

I held the door for her to get in the car.

“The very idea, Davie, the two of us robbing the bank! Why, we come from decent respectable backgrounds. We’ve never had a mark against us, even when we were in our teens. We’re about the last pair of young people anybody in town would associate with a bank robbery.”

I went around the car and got in. “I know,” I said. “So forget it will you?”

She sneaked a look at me as I started the car, turned it around, and headed back toward town.

“Davie...” she said in the murmuring tone that indicated a mountain of thought behind a single word. Davie anticipated it.

“Uh-huh?”

“Whatever gave you the thought?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just wishing you and I could make with life while we’re still young, I guess. Maybe it was looking at old man Peterson, your boss at the bank, or Mr. Harper at the hardware store. Tomorrow morning, for example, they’ll be standing not six inches from the spot where they started standing thirty or forty years ago.”

“Both our bosses are nice people, Davie. They’ve bought homes, raised families...”

“...And seen the same faces, talked the same talk, moved through the same routine day after day. They might as well be vegetables, Judy. One day or a million days adds up to the same for them. Because they’ve never lived. They’ve just existed in a kind of vacuum. Now it’s too late for them. A few more years of the same malarkey and they’ll be planted out in a marble orchard and somebody else will have moved into their same dull spots.”

“It’s best not to think about those things, Davie.”

“Sometimes you can’t help it,” I said. “Not if there is somebody special that you want special things for.”

She reached forward and turned on the car radio loud enough to drown out my voice. But we’d ridden less than half a mile when she turned it down again.

“Now mind you, Davie,” she murmured. “I’m not planning on doing anything so crazy, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we woke up tomorrow morning or the next day and had fifty or sixty thousand dollars?”

“That’s what I tried to point out, there at the lake,” I said. “It isn’t like we were turning into pathological criminals. We just do this one thing. We keep right on about our business until the furor over the robbery dies down. Then I tell Mr. Harper one day that I’ve got an offer of a job in California. We get married. Our friends give us a going-away party. We promise to write, but somehow we never do. You know how those things go.

“A few years from now, we won’t even remember what this grubby mill town looks like. Instead, we’ll have bought a business of our own, worked hard, and retired by the time we’re thirty-five. Then we swim in Miami Beach, or play golf in Pasadena.

“I sure don’t intend to squander the money, Judy. Just a break, the opportunity to get started, to make it for ourselves while we’re young, that’s all I was thinking about. It’s no worse than the old financial barons who conspired to take oil lands from the Indians, or who entered political deals to use public domain for railroad right of way.” I peeped at her without turning my head, and sighed. “’Course, I guess it was wishful thinking, like we all do at times, and I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“It would be nice,” Judy said. “Yes, it really would.”

“If we had a kid or two, we could give them a decent chance, too.” We rolled through the edges of town, toward Judy’s house.

Suddenly, she reached and touched my hand. “Don’t make the turn, Davie. I don’t feel like going in. Let’s go to the Jiffyburger and have a sandwich and a malt.”

“Okay,” I said.

At the drive-in, I found a spot not too close to other cars. We munched on hamburgers without saying anything for a while.

Then Judy stirred in her seat as if her muscles were cramped. “Davie—”

“Uh-huh?”

“It’s true that about seventy-five thousand dollars will be in my cage Friday, because of the Landers Mills payday and all their payroll checks.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s one thing that got me thinking.”

“Well, I’m certainly not taken with your thieving ideas, Dave Hartshell! But... just making believe... how would you get the money out of the bank without the guard arresting you before you reached the front door?”

I slouched in the seat and took a big pull at my malt straw. “Oh, I’d pull the heist in pianissimo.”

“In what?”

“Pianissimo, Judy. That’s a music term. It means very softly. I’d take the money so softly the guard would smile as he held the door for me to leave the bank.”

She pulled upright, leaned over to have a closer look at me.

“Davie, how would you go about keeping a bank robbery pian-whatever-it-is.”

“I’d prepare the Friday morning deposit from the store a little earlier than usual,” I said “I’d bring it over to the bank just like always, in the leather and canvas money satchel.

“I’d pass the deposit over to you, Judy, like any other morning. Only when you got all through, I’d stroll out of the bank with the satchel crammed with the biggest denomination bills in your cage.”

She jerked erect, bumping her head on the top of my jalopy. “Of all the nerve, Davie! Asking me to risk my reputation, everything...”

“You wouldn’t risk a thing, honey,” I said. “All the tune’s in harmony, like in pianissimo. We fix up a note in advance, printed with crayon on a sheet of dime store paper, which we’re careful not to get any fingerprints on. Except yours. You’ll have to handle it.”

“Davie, I do believe you’ve taken to secret drinking!”

“Just an occasional beer,” I said. “This note, which you’ll carry into the bank with you Friday morning, says, ‘Hand over the money or I’ll kill you on the spot’

“After I’m out of the bank a half hour or so and the place starts getting crowded, you let the note flutter to the floor. Then you keel over in a real bad faint.”

She was to the point now where she stared at me like she was helpless to move her eyes.

“I faint” she said finally.

“And right at first when you come around,” I said, “you’re kind of vague. Then it begins to come back to you. You get excited, and scared, and darn near hysterical. Since I’m young, slender, and dark, you ask them if they caught the middle-age, medium-built, ruddy man. Then they have found the note on the floor of your cage, and they say, ‘Which man?’ And you say, ‘He slipped his coat open to show me a gun he was carrying. I put the money in a sack he handed to me. He slipped it under his coat. I tried to raise the alarm, but a terrible, empty blackness was rolling over me.’”

“A terrible, empty blackness,” Judy said.

“You’re the one girl I know who can really cool it, Judy. Then you leave it lay at that point Not too complicated. Not too much description.”

“There’s just one thing wrong with it, Davie. You remember the bank robbery a few months ago over in Conover?”

“Sure, That’s what gave me the idea of...”

“The teller had to take a lie detector test, Davie. It’s routine. They’ve anticipated the kind of thing you’re planning.”

“And I have anticipated them, doll,” I said, feeling pretty good at the moment.

“Have you really?” Her voice was cool, and just a little pitying.

I didn’t let the womanish attitude nettle me. Merely patted her small, sweet hand. “That’s where Mr. Eggleston comes in,” I said. “Eggleston?”

“An old gentleman I met in the Wee Barrel.”

“Davie! I’ve practically begged you to stay out of that tavern on your way home from work!”

“This Eggleston is quite a guy,” I said, warming to the subject. “Neat, unobtrusive man, with impeccable clothes. Never see him with a gray hair out of place.”

“Well, I don’t care to know any of the hangers-on in the Wee Barrel.” Judy stuck her nose in the air. After a few seconds, it lowered slightly. “When did you fit him into your plan?”

“After I found out he’d once been a metaphysical therapist in Los Angeles.”

“Sounds like he was a quack.”

“But definitely, Judy. They finally ran him out of town. He’s also rigged stock deals, sold salted mines, and headed up drives to raise funds for non-existent charities.”

“You seem to know him quite well, Davie,” she said, a note of warning in her voice.

“Yeah, we got to be pretty close friends after he found out my girl friend worked in the bank.”

“I guess you’ll have to get the rest of it out of your system before you start the car, Davie. And it’s too far for me to walk home.”

“This Eggleston,” I said, “when he was in the business of treating nervous and emotionally troubled people, he used a lot of hypnotism. He’s really great with it Judy. You should see some of the stunts he pulls in the Wee Barrel. One night he gave Shorty Connors the post-hypnotic suggestion to stand on his head. And darned if Shorty didn’t try to upend himself five minutes after he came out of the trance, just like Eggleston had told him.”

“I begin to see the light,” Judy said thinly.

“Sure, hon. That silly lie detector machine won’t mean a thing. You’ll face it under the influence of post hypnotic suggestion. The cops will hunt a non-existent robber and never suspect that...”

“I,” she said, “am not the slightest bit interested.”

She called me at seven-thirty the next morning, a half-hour earlier than usual.

At five-thirty that afternoon, we entered Mr. Eggleston’s hotel room together.

Mr. Eggleston made a small bow when I introduced him. “David, she is every bit as lovely as you stated. It is indeed a pleasure to know you, my dear Judy. May I call room service and get you anything? Perhaps an aperitif?”

“No, thanks.”

“No need to be nervous, my dear. The process is painless. You will in fact, feel more relaxed than you have in quite a while.”

“Let’s just get it over with,” Judy said, worrying her small handbag in her hands.

“Quite.”

Mr. Eggleston crossed the room, partially closed the blinds, and motioned toward a big easy chair.

Judy sat down like she was forcing her knees to bend. Mr. Eggleston stood smiling and quiet before her.

“To be wholly successful, my dear, I must have your total cooperation. Put yourself in my hands completely.”

Judy gulped slightly. I thought she was going to back out. But she must have thought of all the money that would be in her teller’s cage tomorrow.

Mr. Eggleston’s manner was gentle and comforting. He drew a light occasional chair close to her and sat down. From his pocket, he took a shiny piece of metal about the size of a quarter.

“Focus your eyes on the coin. Judy, and blank your mind... Relax completely... Offer no resistance... It is so pleasant to relax...”

He continued to talk soothingly. Judy’s lids began to droop.

“You are sleepy, my dear... So gently and delightfully sleepy... Sleep... You are going to sleep... How pleasant to sleep... You are asleep, Judy... deeply asleep... very deeply, Judy.”

Mr. Eggleston began to draw away from her slowly. “You are in a deep, deep trance, Judy. You will remain in this trance until I count to three and snap my fingers.”

My throat was starting to get a little dry. I evenly shifted from one foot to the other.

Mr. Eggleston glanced at me. “She’s a most interesting subject, David. A very wonderful subject. Proof of her intelligence. The moron cannot be hypnotized, you know.”

He returned his attention to Judy. “When at last I count to three and snap my fingers, Judy, you will awaken from the trance immediately. Your conscious mind will remember nothing. To your conscious mind it will seem as if you have merely drifted off for a few seconds. But your subconscious will retain everything that is done during the trance to prepare you psychologically and physiologically for what is ahead. Is all this clear?”

“Yes, it is.” Judy’s voice was so everydayish and normal that I wondered for a second if she was faking the trance. But I knew better. There’d be no point in it. And I remembered how natural Shorty Connors had sounded while Mr. Eggleston had him under.

“Now, Judy,” Mr. Eggleston said, “there are a few things we must understand and make clear at the outset. There is nothing magical or supernatural in what we are doing. I can merely assist you. I cannot force you to do anything which you are absolutely determined not to do. For example, I could not force you to remove your clothing in the public square unless you had, in the secret depths of your personality, an exhibitionist urge to do such a thing. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“If you could stretch a moral point and obtain a great deal of money without injuring anyone, would you do so?”

“Why not?”

“Would you tell a straight-out lie for ten dollars?”

“No.”

“A hundred dollars?”

Judy didn’t hesitate. “No.”

“A thousand dollars?”

Judy hesitated.

“Fifty thousand dollars?” Mr. Eggleston persisted.

Judy rushed the answer: “Any day in the week! Just any old day!” Mr. Eggleston glanced at me with a satisfied smile, which I returned rather weakly while wiping beads of perspiration from my face.

Then Mr. Eggleston returned to his subject: “Judy, since you are a bright and intelligent girl, I’m sure you know the basic principle of the lie detector. When a person tells a lie, he or she experiences a slight rise in pulse rate, heart beat, blood pressure. The graph registers these changes and the operator of the machine determines if a person has told the truth.”

“I understand,” Judy said.

“Good. The reason for these physiological changes lie in the psyche, the subconscious. Mind over matter, so to speak.”

“I understand,” Judy repeated.

“But that is a two-way street, my dear. Isn’t it? If the subconscious can control the pulse rate, the subconscious can also ignore it. Tomorrow you will tell a lie in police headquarters. Your conscious mind will recognize it as a lie. But to your subconscious, in that instant, it will not matter. That is the whole crux of the thing, Judy. It’s simple. Very simple. Your subconscious will not care one whit whether or not you have told a lie on that single subject.” Mr. Eggleston’s voice became a soft, but insistent lash. “Your subconscious will experience a momentary moral lapse when you describe the man who robbed the bank. Hence, you will exhibit none of the physiological symptoms for the graph to record. Repeat after me, Judy: It will not matter whether I am lying about the description of the bank robber.”

“It — will — not — matter—”

“You must accept this thought in such a way as to be comfortable, Judy. Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now we shall awaken. One... two... three...”

I started slightly when his fingers snapped.

Judy opened her eyes, gazed at me blankly a moment, then looked at Mr. Eggleston.

He was paying her no attention. “David, tomorrow night at ten, I shall call at your rooming house for the five thousand dollars you’ve agreed to pay me.”

Judy said, “I must have dozed off a second. When do we begin with this hypnotism?”

“We have finished with it,” Eggleston smiled.

She frowned. “Is that true, Davie?”

I nodded.

“But I don’t feel any different,” Judy said. “Are you sure?”

“Positively,” Mr. Eggleston said. He patted me on the shoulder. “And it’s a brilliant idea, my boy, one I might have come up with myself!”

I woke the next morning, Friday, with about two hours’ total sleep during the preceding night. My stomach was jerky, and I nicked myself while shaving. I had a cup of coffee for an indigestible breakfast.

I walked around the block twice, waiting for the hardware store to open. Inside, I had the bank deposit prepared in record-breaking time. I had to kill several minutes arranging a display of fishing gear for the simple reason that I didn’t think it wise to be the very first customer in the bank.

Feeling as if every eye in the grubby factory town was focused on me, I forced myself past the glass and brass doors of the bank. The guard, Mr. Sevier, was looking directly at me.

Normally, Mr. Sevier appears to me as a kindly middle-aged man with an elfin sort of face and tufts of white hair in his ears. Today, he grew horns; his skin was a threatening purple; there was brimstone in his slitted eyes.

“Good morning, Mr. Sevier.”

“Nice to see you, Davie.” He slapped me on the back as I passed.

Behind her teller’s wicket Judy gave me a warm smile. She appeared to have slept quite well, and I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have let Mr. Eggleston put me under also.

I handed the heavy leather and canvas bag to Judy. She opened it checked the deposit.

Nobody paid any attention to my lingering at Judy’s window. There was just enough early business to keep the other employees occupied. Anyhow, everyone in the bank knew that Judy and I were collecting pennies in a joint account toward the day we could be married.

With a nod that no one else noticed, she finally returned the satchel to me.

My heart started going like sixty. I felt as if the weight of the bag were pulling me to one side, making me walk out of the bank at a crazy angle.

I was almost at the doors when Judy called my name quietly.

I had to stop right beside Mr. Sevier.

“Don’t forget lunch, Davie,” Judy said.

“I won’t.”

She blew me a little kiss. Mr. Sevier chuckled fondly as he gave me a little punch on the shoulder.

I went to the parking lot half a block away and collapsed in my car.

I tugged my collar with my finger, got a lungful of air, started the car, and drove casually to the hardware store. By the time I parked behind the store, I’d transferred the money to the heavy brown paper bag and stuffed it under the seat of the car. I was practically twitching with nervous eagerness to count the money. Driving along with commonplace innocence, the important work taking place with my free hand below window level, I’d caught only glances of the neatly banded money. But I knew there was plenty. I’d never seen so many stacks of fifties and hundreds in one place in all my life — except in the bank. I was certainly grateful to Landers Mills for paying but twice a month, on the first and fifteenth.

I started to lock the car, then decided against it So far, everything was perfect. I’d driven directly from the bank, in plain view of the town. Judy and I were experiencing a routine, commonplace day. I wasn’t in the habit of locking the jalopy this time of year. The money was safely out of sight I went into the store.

Fortunately, there were customers to help pass the morning. Even so, I had to make three trips to the gent’s room inside of an hour.

Then at ten fifty-six by the clock on the far wall, which had a pendulum behind a fly-specked front that advertised Maney’s Merrygrow Manure, the waiting was all over.

Like a well-fed, full-bosomed turkey with a gray topknot, Mrs. Threckle came to the door of the office, spoke my name, and motioned to me frantically.

I hurried to her. “What is it, Mrs. Threckle?”

“Terrible thing...” she gasped, “terrible... a bank robbery... They’ve got Judy at police headquarters...”

I had to grab the office door framing to keep from folding to the floor like a collapsing letter Z. This part wasn’t an act, either. I thought wildly: They’ve caught her, and she’s trying to protect me, going it alone...

“You poor, dear boy!” Mrs. Threckle said. “You must get down there right away. I’ll explain to Mr. Harper.”

I could think of several other directions more preferable. Then Mrs. Threckle saved me from a nervous breakdown.

“She hasn’t been hurt Davie. There was no shooting. They’ve merely taken her down to get a description of the robber.”

Several minutes later, a jalopy full of holdup money was parked in plain view in front of police headquarters. Inside the building there was turmoil. Each time I tried to stop a hurrying policeman, he would jerk his thumb over his shoulder, pointing deeper into the building. “Busy, bud.”

Finally I spotted old Silas Garth ambling placidly from a doorway.

Silas has been on the force just about as long as the town has had a charter. He paused in the corridor, more intent on picking something from his teeth than picking up a bank robber.

“Mr. Garth...

“Oh, hello there, Davie. Guess you’re looking for Judy.”

“Yes, sir. Is she...”

“Simmer down, son. She’s fine. Come on back in the squad room and we’ll have a game of checkers until Hoskins and Crowley and that lie detector technician are through with her.”

Poor Judy, I thought. Going through hell, that’s what.

“What happened, Mr. Garth?”

He shrugged as we walked down the corridor together. “Yegg came walking in, let Judy have a peep at a gun, gave her a second to read the note he shoved in her hand, and walked back out with about sixty-five thousand dollars in a brown paper bag.”

“Yowie!” I yelped. “Sixty-five thou... Is there that much money in the world?”

“Shore is, Davie. And I’m feared this hoodlum made it out of town.”

“How come you say that, Mr. Garth?”

“Judy — bless her darling heart — was so paralyzed with fright she couldn’t give the alarm right away. And when she realized she was in no danger of the gun, she fainted dead away.”

“But you said she was fine!”

He laid his hand on my arm. “She is now, Davie. Take it easy, will you?”

“Was she able to give them a description of the robber?”

“General is all. Middle-aged, ruddy, medium height, sort of heavy set. My opinion is, he’s an old pro at the robbery game, Davie.”

“How come you say that, Mr. Garth?”

The old man started putting checkers in their proper squares on a board that rested on a rickety card table. “We got ways of lifting prints nowadays from surfaces like paper. The note he handed Judy had no prints on it but hers. Reckon he knew his prints would identify him.” Mr. Garth shook his head. “Be frank with you, Davie, lots of these yeggs get away with it, at least for one or two outings.”

“You don’t think they’ll catch him?”

“I wouldn’t make book on it, son. His chances decrease all the time, of course. Next time out, he may get caught and we’ll break our case then.”

“Mr. Garth, if you don’t mind, I couldn’t keep my mind on a checker game right now.”

“Sure, Davie.” He flung his arm about my shoulders. “We’ll go upstairs, son, and see if we can’t make it easier on that poor girl.”

We went upstairs, and I sought a gent’s room while Mr. Garth disappeared into an office. I was pacing the corridor when he opened the office door and came out behind Judy.

She ran straight to me, and I folded her in my arms.

Mr. Garth clucked affectionately. “Judy didn’t stretch none of the details of the description, according to the polygraph, Davie. Now you take that girl down the street and buy her a cup of coffee.”

I said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Garth!”

Judy and I were still slightly delirious when Mr. Eggleston knocked on my door at ten o’clock that night.

He slipped in quickly, and I closed the door. He looked from me to Judy, a smile dividing his lean, hawkish face.

“Well, kids, we pulled it off!”

“We sure did, Mr. Eggleston, and your five thousand dollars is ready for you.”

His eyes went frigid. He pulled a short-nosed gun from his side coat pocket.

“Wh-what is this, Mr. Eggleston?” It was the real thing.

“I’ve waited all my life for the really big one,” he said. “Do you think I’d let a couple of hick kids stand in my way? Now get the money!”

“But Mr. Eggleston...”

“All of it! Now! If it hasn’t occurred to you, none of us can squeal without implicating himself.”

I was unable to move or think for a second. “But if you shoot that gun, Mr. Eggleston, somebody will hear it.”

“And you’ll be dead. I’m offering you a deal, Davie. Two lives for the money.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“No — and don’t let the money destroy your sanity, kid. If I shoot the gun, I’ll have a good chance of getting away. You won’t have any chances, period. I’m willing to make the gamble, Davie. I’m too old, I’ve waited too long to let this final chance slip away from me.”

His cheekbones began to turn white, and he added: “I’ll give you ten seconds to make up your mind, David.”

I didn’t know Judy had risen. Now I felt her pressing against me. She shivered. “Davie... he is a little mad. He means it!”

“Sure I do,” Eggleston said cold-bloodedly. “Six... five... four... three...”

“Give him the money, Davie,” Judy sobbed, holding onto me wildly.

“In the closet,” I said numbly. “The small valise.”

Everything around me had a kind of swimming quality. Mr.

Eggleston floated to the closet, the valise floated to his hand. He flipped the catch, peeked quickly inside, pressed it closed with his left hand. The gun still on us in his right hand, he floated out the door.

Judy didn’t have to work the next day, it being Saturday. I called the store and reported I was too sick to work.

But I was there bright and early Monday morning. There’s no better way to impress an employer than being prompt, when you finally decide you’re going to be stuck in a job for a mighty long time.