A Good Story and Other Stories

Sinner or Saint

Everyone agreed that the Reverend Mister Wimple, the new minister, had done wonders for the town, none of them more wondrous than the taming of Miss Grace Pettigrew, who had been known to argue with the grocer over the price of Dixie cups. At the age of seventy-four, she still mowed the entire length and breadth of lawn surrounding her rundown manor, employing for the task a handmower badly in need of repair, to save herself the expense of hiring a boy to do the job, and she could have easily shattered the Lanesville Merchants and Farmers Bank, as she often threatened to do, simply by closing her account. It was even rumored that Miss Grace Pettigrew had been so softened by the good Reverend that she was about to make a handsome donation to the new hospital building fund, Reverend Mister Wimple’s pet project ever since he had first arrived in Lanesville some eight months before. The wildest rumor of all had it that Miss Pettigrew’s donation was to be the famous and almost priceless Pettigrew diamond, valued at something over one and a quarter million dollars.

The rumor was quite true. At this very moment, old lady Pettigrew (as the coming generation referred to her) sat quietly and patiently in the Reverend Mister Wimple’s office, her hands folded demurely in her lap, a pious, gentle look on her crotchety old face. In the purse on the floor beside her chair lay a cigarette box of the flip-top variety, containing a lot of stuffed cotton and, in the very center of all the cotton, a large and flawless diamond, the family diamond, named for the Pettigrew who had first smuggled it out of Africa and into Baltimore some two hundred years before. Miss Grace Pettigrew, three score and fourteen, had reformed.

The Reverend Mister Wimple came to his office and paused on the threshold, smiling beatifically at the diamond-toting sinner before him. The Reverend Mister Wimple was a tall man, stocky, well-upholstered though not fat, rosy-cheeked and bulb-nosed, bristly-eyebrowed with gentle eyes and a great shock of white hair rising above and to both sides of a high, shining forehead. His well-scrubbed hands were folded across his full stomach; he had pleasant laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, and upstairs in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom there was a bottle of white hair dye.

Reverend Wimple stood unnoticed in the doorway behind Miss Pettigrew, and his eyes rested absently on the purse Miss Pettigrew had set on the floor beside her chair. Reverend Wimple knew what was in that purse, knew what Miss Pettigrew was about to say to him and what he was about to reply, and it was the culmination of almost a year of difficult and heart-breaking labor. Reverend Wimple paused in the doorway, smiling and elated, allowing the warm feeling that comes from success to spread through his body like alcohol, and in his mind he traveled backward in time and space to two men speaking in hushed tones in a cool and quiet library in a cool and quiet state penitentiary, and he smiled the more broadly.

The two men were prisoners and partners. The taller, heavier and older of the pair was named Joe Docker and his profession was that of the confidence man. He had sold gold-mine stock, oil-well stock, pension plans, municipal statues and methods for beating the horses in every state of this broad and fertile land except Alabama. It wasn’t that he had anything against Alabama. He just hadn’t happened to go there yet.

Joe Docker’s partner in crime was named Archibald (Lefty) Denker, and he was a jack of all trades. Through the years, many of them lean ones, Lefty Denker had unfortunately developed a quirk of the eye and lip which could only be called shifty, a circumstance which handicapped him in the confidence man trade, where the operative word is “confidence.” No one trusts a man who looks like Lefty Denker. Nature, however, moves in devious ways, and always makes up for a handicap by replacing the loss by a special skill of some sort. Lefty, his friends swore, could get into Fort Knox with a used toothpick. His hands were living creatures, and locks, pockets and all kinds of machinery were known and conquerable.

And so the team of Docker and Denker prospered. Where Docker’s voice and looks could not obtain entry, Denker’s hands could. It was only due to the negligence of a menial in an auto rental agency, who had neglected to fill the gas tank before renting a sedan to Joe Docker, that the car had stopped in the middle of a four-lane highway with five state police cars in hot pursuit. The pair had found themselves wards of the state, with a mailing address at the big house and a future that suddenly looked rather drab.

Joe Docker was a man devoted to his job, and he refused to allow himself to become disheartened. He had long known that a good confidence man is a good conversationalist, and that a good conversationalist is a man who is well read. On this conviction, Joe began to haunt the prison library, where he read everything he could find, books, magazines, old newspapers, everything. He spent so much time in the library, in fact, that he was soon made a trustee and an assistant librarian. This post was due, in part at least, to Joe’s long and pleasant conversations with the chief librarian, a hatchet murderer named Simpson, a tiny, bespectacled gentleman who blinked constantly and had the Dewey Decimal System memorized, including his own improvements thereon.

Lefty, meanwhile, in order to keep his own hand in, got himself assigned to the prison machine shop, where he wiled away the idle hours in building and dismantling locks. Occasionally, he and Joe would get together in the library, the only place inside the prison where one could safely whisper, and Lefty would plead, sotto voce, “Joe, let’s get outa here. I been studyin’ the locks.”

Joe would smile and shake his head. “Lefty, you’re too eager. Take it easy. You’re eating well. You’ve got a bed. Why complain?”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Joe. I been studyin’ the locks and I could get us outa this joint with my fingernail. Not only that, I been busy down at the machine shop. I made myself a coupla tools. Little things, you know.”

“That’s not good, Lefty. What if the bulls find them?”

“Joe, what am I, a beginner? I could hide a tank so these bulls wouldn’t find it.”

Again, Joe would smile. “Pride,” he would say, shaking his finger in mock sternness, “pride, Lefty, has been the downfall of—”

“Joe, let’s scram outa this place. I don’t like state pens.”

“Patience, Lefty. Wait till we have somewhere to scram to. Wait, in a word, until we have a plan, a motive, a reason, a goal.”

“I got a goal. I wanta get outa this joint.”

And so the idle months passed, Joe improving his mind, Lefty improving his hands, until one day Joe read a notice in a pictorial published by one of the smaller religious denominations. Joe pocketed the notice and continued to putter around the library beside Simpson, whose conversation was almost totally limited to a mumbled string of numbers. Each time Simpson looked at a book, he automatically and unconsciously placed it in the Dewey Decimal System and just as automatically and unconsciously spoke the appropriate number aloud. Libraries being by nature full of books, and Simpson being, by job, normally in the library, his unconscious was kept pretty busy saying numbers, and poor Simpson had a sore throat he couldn’t explain.

Eventually, Lefty came down to the library for the normal afternoon chat, and he and Joe sat down at one of the tables.

Joe smiled and handed Lefty the magazine, opened to page fifty-two. “Look at that,” he said, pointing at a small, black-encircled notice near the bottom of the page.

Lefty read the notice, an announcement of the death of the pastor of the Lanesville Rural Church, concluding with the remark that a replacement had not as yet been made, and then he looked at Joe, a puzzled expression on his face, and he said, “So what?”

Joe leaned forward dramatically, thrust out his lips, and very carefully pronounced, “The Pettigrew Diamond.”

Lefty clicked his fingers. “The old lady! The one that called the FBI.”

“Fortunately,” Joe said, reminiscently, “gold-mine stock is not a Federal affair. By the time she had contacted the proper agency, we were well away from Lanesville.”

Lefty grew serious. “You thinkin’ of tappin’ her again?”

“This time,” Joe told him, “I want the diamond. Nothing less. The diamond.”

“She’ll remember us.”

“She never saw you.”

Joe said, “I’ve been racking my brains all morning. Think, Lefty. Who was I then in Lanesville? Wasn’t it then I had the black moustache and the black hair?”

“The monocle?” asked Lefty.

“No, I don’t think so. I think the moustache.”

Lefty thought. “You’re right. The moustache.”

“Now,” said Joe, “think about this. Clean-shaven, white hair, round spectacles — like Simpson’s, there.”

Lefty looked at Simpson, over by the main desk, blinking rapidly and mumbling digits. He nodded.

“It sounds good,” he said. “Who are you? Broker? College president?”

“Don’t be silly.” Joe tapped the magazine. “I’m the new minister.”

When they broke out they found a closed gas station about a mile from the prison. Lefty bent over the door for a moment, then pushed it noiselessly open, and he and Joe slipped inside just as the sirens began to wail behind them. Lefty whispered, “They know we’re out.”

“No,” said Joe. “They know we’re out of our cells, that’s all.” He closed the door behind them. “That’s the advantage of relocking doors. It takes an extra second, but it gains an extra hour. First they’ll look inside, then they’ll look outside.”

Lefty had found a flashlight. He turned it on, but Joe said, “No, Lefty! The place will be full of cops.”

Lefty doused the light. “We gotta see, Joe,” he said.

“We’ll see,” Joe told him, and he turned on the lights.

Lefty let out a screech. “What are you doin’?”

“We’re opening for business.”

The fluorescent lights flickered on, and Joe headed for the main switches. He turned on the lights out at the pumps, the lights in the rest rooms, the lights in the tube shop. Within seconds, the area was flooded in light, and Lefty stood blinking in the center of it, panic-stricken.

“Lefty, go unlock the pumps, will you?”

Dazed, Lefty went out and unlocked the pumps, then came back shaking his head. “Joe, you got gall,” he said. “You got lots and lots of gall.”　

“Here’s a new Chevy in the wash rack,” Joe told him. “Go on into town and get us some clothes, will you? And get me my white hair dye.”

“Where’s town?”

“I don’t know. Let’s take a look at a road map.”

Together, they bent over a map and found out where they were. Then Lefty backed the car out, and Joe called, “Be sure you fill it up this time.”

Lefty blushed and filled it up. Joe took a look in the cash register, which was empty, and called Lefty back in. “Open the safe here, will you? I may have to make change.”

“Sure thing,” said Lefty. Once the safe was open, he got back into the Chevy and drove off. Joe sat down behind the desk and counted the take from the safe.

Business was relatively brisk. One of the customers, obviously a local resident, looked curiously at Joe. “When did Dick decide to stay open late?” he wanted to know.

“When he hired me, I guess,” Joe told him. “Good amount of trade at night.”

Fifteen minutes later a state police car pulled in and two troopers sauntered over to the office. Joe stayed seated behind his desk. He waved as the troopers entered, and said, “Hi, boys. What can I do for you?”

“Seen two suspicious-looking characters wandering around tonight at all?”

Joe thought. “No. Afraid not. What’s up?”

“Couple prisoners escaped from the state pen.”

“Thought I heard the siren a while back.”

“Better keep a wary eye out. They’re desperate, will be needing money and transportation.”

Joe looked worried. He got to his feet. “Maybe I better close up.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Thanks for the warning, boys.”

As the troopers drove away, Lefty drove in. He got out of the car looking frightened and wary. “Wasn’t that a cop?”

“Uh huh. Dropped by to let me know two convicts broke out of jail tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Desperate men. Maybe we ought to close up.”

“Yeah,” agreed Lefty. “Maybe we oughta.”

They changed clothes, and Joe spent some time in the men’s room with the bottle of hair dye. Finally, they turned off all the lights, locked the door and the pumps, climbed into the Chevy and, with the aid of a commandeered road map, headed toward Lanesville, Joe driving, Lefty squirming in the seat beside him.

Lefty was worried. “What about road blocks?” he wanted to know.

“What about them?”

“You can’t talk your way through a road block, Joe. You ain’t got a driver’s license.”

“I don’t intend to talk my way through road blocks. I don’t have to.” Joe tapped the road map on the seat between them. “Look at all those blue lines. One of them will get us to Lanesville.”

“You’re the boss,” Lefty said doubtfully.

“I’ve been thinking about a name,” Joe said thoughtfully. “What about Amadeus—”

“Who?”

“Amadeus.”

“What’s the first name?”

“That’s the first name. Amadeus. And for the last name, how about Wimple? Amadeus Wimple. How does that sound?”

“Cheez, Joe—”

“The Reverend Mister Amadeus Wimple.”

Lefty thought about it. “It does sound kinda-impressive,” he admitted.

“I thought so.”

“What about me?” Lefty wanted to know. “Who am I?”

“I don’t know. My son? No, not my son. Something... something in keeping with the role of minister.”

“Maybe I could be assistant minister?”

Joe glanced at Lefty, noticing again that unfortunate quirk of eye and mouth that branded the poor man as one of civilization’s undesirables, and he regretfully shook his head. “No, Lefty, I’m sorry. No one would ever believe you had the call.”

“Okay, so what am I?”

Joe clicked his fingers. “I’ve got it! You’re a juvenile delinquent.”

“A what?”

“The court paroled you to me at my request. I have undertaken to rehabilitate you.”

Lefty shrugged. “Okay by me,” he said. “Just so I don’t have to get a newspaper route.”

Ahead of them were lights across the road. A road block. Joe stopped the car. “Let’s see the road map, Lefty. We’re about to switch to another blue line.”

The Reverend Mister Amadeus Wimple brought himself back to the present. Here he stood, in the doorway of his office, in his home next to the church, and waiting for him was Miss Grace Pettigrew and the fabled Pettigrew diamond. Reverend Wimple folded his hands across his belly, resisting the impulse to rub them together, and paced slowly and deliberately into the room.

Miss Pettigrew turned as the minister’s shoes squeaked his arrival. Her face softened to a blur of joy and she purred, “Good morning, Reverend Wimple.”

The minister smiled. “Good morning, Miss Pettigrew.” Pausing behind his desk, he gazed benignly out the window at the garden between his cottage and the church, a garden maintained by the Ladies’ Aid to supply flowers for the church. “A beautiful sunny morning,” he said. “A lovely morning on which to be alive.”

“Amen,” said Miss Pettigrew reverently. She bowed her head.

Reverend Wimple seated himself behind his desk. He spread his arms wide and rested his hands at the edges of the desk blotter. Beyond Miss Pettigrew he saw Lefty peeking through the doorway, and for a fraction of a second a cloud of annoyance came across his sunny face. Almost immediately, the cloud withdrew and Reverend Wimple beamed on Miss Pettigrew. “What can I do for you this beautiful morning?” he asked.

“You remember, Reverend Wimple, that we discussed the new Municipal Hospital a few days ago.”

The minister nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

“And you showed me the architect’s plans and the estimates.”

Reverend Wimple sighed. “Yes. Almost three million dollars. I don’t know how we’ll ever do it. The Ladies’ Aid has been a great help. White elephant sales. Cake sales. Card parties. Bingo. Lawn parties. But it isn’t enough. It just isn’t enough.” The minister shook his head sadly. “I don’t know if we ever will have enough.”

“Reverend Wimple,” said Miss Pettigrew, “since you first came to this town, you’ve done wonders. Everyone agrees about that. You’re a good, fine, honest man, interested in the people around you. You’re the first minister this town ever had who made me want to come to church.”

Reverend Wimple raised a disclaiming hand. “Oh, Miss Pettigrew...”

“No, it’s true. I hate to say anything bad about a man of the cloth, but as far as the other ministers we’ve had here were concerned, I wasn’t a person at all. I was just one big donation. You’re different. You’re completely unselfish. And you see people in terms of themselves, not in terms of the collection plate.”

“Oh, Miss Pettigrew, you’re far, far too harsh.”

She subsided somewhat. “Perhaps. But I’m right about you. This hospital you’re trying to build. That’s the kind of thing I mean. So completely humane, unselfish. The ministers before you tried to raise building funds, too. But not for hospitals. They all wanted to redecorate the church or some da — some such thing.”

“I wouldn’t call redecorating a church a selfish act, Miss Pettigrew,” the minister said gently.

“Still, there’s a difference. Well, maybe you won’t like this — I know how modest you are — but I’ve written the Archbishop about you.”

Reverend Wimple’s eyes widened for just a fraction of a second. Then he gripped his chair arms and fought with his facial muscles. They wanted to move his face from pleased serenity to hysterical shock, but he wouldn’t let them. He continued to look bland and pleasant, though he was fighting too hard to be able to speak.

Miss Pettigrew continued, “I wrote him and told him all the wonderful things you’ve done since you arrived in Lanesville. And I told him about the hospital, and that I was going to make a donation.”

“You — wrote the Archbishop? I don’t know what to say.” Reverend Wimple looked embarrassed, modest and boyishly pleased. “I hope you didn’t overpraise me.”

“I really don’t believe that’s possible.” Miss Pettigrew reached for her purse. Opening it, she took out the cigarette package. “I wrote to the Archbishop that I was making a donation for your hospital, what I was donating and why. And I told him that what this world needs is a few more ministers like you Reverend Wimple.”

The minister ducked his head, blushing. “Please, Miss Pettigrew. No more flattery.”

She was opening the cigarette box, pulling cotton out of it. Finally, a small, glittering stone appeared. Miss Pettigrew picked it up gingerly and set it down on Reverend Wimple’s desk. “Here,” she said, “is my donation. The Pettigrew diamond.”

The Reverend held tightly to his chair arms and gazed at the gleaming stone in the center of his green desk blotter. He could not speak.

“It is worth,” said Miss Pettigrew, “one million, three hundred thousand dollars. It is one of the twelve largest diamonds in the world. I hope it will help you get your hospital.”

“Miss Pettigrew,” gasped the minister, “I’m speechless. I’m overwhelmed.” He surged out of his chair, his face a portrait of pure joy. “Oh, Miss Pettigrew! The hospital — We will have it! We will have our hospital!” Rounding his desk, he held her hands tightly. “Thank you,” he said softly, and it seemed he might cry from happiness. “Thank you, you dear lady.”

Miss Pettigrew felt her own throat tightening. She looked away and pulled her hands out of his grip. “Nonsense. A donation. It’s a worthy cause.” Hastily, she rose and gathered up her purse. She put the cigarette package and the cotton on his desk. “You can keep it in that. I–I have to shop.”

Reverend Wimple stopped her at the door. “Miss Pettigrew,” he said, “I want you to know how much I appreciate — how much this means to me.”

“I know. Yes, thank you.” Then it occurred to her that it was silly of her to thank him. She was getting flustered, and Grace Pettigrew hated to be flustered. “I... good morning. I’ll find the door. You’d better put the diamond in a safe place. Good bye.” She hurried out into the sunlight, and Lefty slipped by the Reverend and leaned in awe over the diamond lying on the desk. “You got it,” he whispered. “She walked right in and handed it to you!”

“Beautiful,” said Joe Docker. “A masterpiece.” He looked at Lefty. “Lefty, I should have gone on the stage. I am Reverend Wimple.”

Lefty shoved the diamond into the cigarette box, packed cotton in after it, and said, “Let’s get packed and get outa here.”

Joe looked surprised. “We can’t leave yet.”

“What? Why not? We got the rock.”

“Lefty, be sensible. We leave now, sell the diamond to a fence, we get maybe forty per cent of its value. It’s hot, and the fence has to cut it up into smaller rocks. That’s a beautiful diamond. I’d hate to see it cut up. More than that, I’d hate to get a lousy forty per cent.”

“What else can we do?”

“I’m about to sit down and write a letter to a reputable diamond dealer in New York. I’m the Reverend Mister Amadeus Wimple, and I was given the Pettigrew diamond as a donation. It’s for sale. At full value. After he buys the diamond, then we can leave.”

Lefty shook his head. “Nix, Joe. We can’t do it. I was out there listening. The old broad wrote the Archbishop. He knows he didn’t send any Reverend Wimple down here. There’ll be cops all over the place.”

“Maybe. We’ll just have to take the chance.”

“The chance?”

“Lefty, a guy in the Archbishop’s position, he’s got a secretary. Maybe two secretaries. They’re the ones who read all the mail. There’s, a good chance the Archbishop will never even see that letter. And if he does, will he remember he never sent a minister named Wimple out to this two-bit town church? He didn’t remember the church needing a minister, did he?”

“Joe, I hate jail.”

The Reverend Mister Amadeus Wimple folded his hands across his belly. “Archibald,” he said, “I’d like some coffee. I’m going to write a diamond merchant now. Would you make the coffee for me?”

Lefty considered further argument, but finally gave up with a shrug. He slumped out of the room, headed for the kitchen. Joe Docker opened the cigarette box and withdrew the diamond. He held it in the palm of his hand, gazing lovingly at it. Finally, he put it away again, sat down behind his desk, and wrote a letter.

Reverend Wimple had been pacing back and forth in the front hall, going over his sermon for the coming Sunday, when the doorbell chimed the first line of “Rock Of Ages.” Opening the door, the Reverend found himself looking at a burly, crewcut, scrubbed-clean young man in clerical garb, and his first thought was, The legitimate replacement.

“Reverend Wimple?” asked the young minister.

Wimple nodded.

“How do you do? I’m Paul Martin, your assistant.” Noticing the strange expression on the pastor’s face, Reverend Martin added, “Didn’t you get the Archbishop’s letter?”

“Letter? No... no, I didn’t.” Recovering himself, Reverend Wimple stepped aside and said, “Come in, come in. Excuse my rudeness. You surprised me.”

The young minister smiled as he stepped over the threshold. “I imagine so. I wonder what happened to the letter? Well, things are in their state of chaos in the Archbishop’s office. You know how it is.”

“Yes, of course. Come on into the parlor. You say you’re my assistant?”

“That’s right.” The two ministers walked into the parlor and sat down in easy chairs. “Someone at the Archbishop’s office suddenly realized,” Reverend Martin explained, “that the size of the congregation here warranted a pastor and an assistant pastor. I wonder if things will ever get straightened out at the Archbishop’s.” He smiled. “I was assigned there once. Spent four months. You’ve never seen such a madhouse. They have an archaic filing system dating back to the Catacombs. It’s a wonder they ever get things straight.” He leaned forward confidentially. “As a matter of fact, did you know they’ve lost your records?”

“They have?”

Reverend Martin nodded. “Every last one. You’ll probably be getting a letter from them on it one of these days. Unless they find the records again, of course.”

“Of course.”

“By the way, my luggage is still at the station. I walked up. Would you have a car, by any chance?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. But I’m sure I can get your luggage for you.” Joe Docker was recovering and Reverend Wimple was beginning to run smoothly again. “I think you’ll find this one of the most pleasant congregations you will ever run across,” he told his new assistant. “None of those theological battles that keep pastors shifting from one congregation to another, none of the radical youth element that can be so plaguing and embarrassing. A very pleasant congregation. I’m sure I can call some of my flock to pick up your luggage.”

“Thank you very much.”

Lefty walked into the room then, appearing as shifty, guilty and generally undesirable as ever, and Reverend Martin looked at him with obvious surprise.

“Ah, Archibald,” said Reverend Wimple. “Come meet the new assistant pastor.”

“The what?”

“Archibald Denker, Reverend Paul Martin, my new assistant pastor. Archibald,” said Reverend Wimple to Reverend Martin, “is a poor unfortunate youth, originally from New York, who was in almost constant difficulty with the police. I came into contact with him in a bus station, where he tried to pick my pocket.” Lefty scuffed his foot and looked guilty. “I convinced the court,” Reverend Wimple continued, “to place him in my custody, and I have done my best to rehabilitate him. I actually believe I have had some limited success.”

Reverend Martin offered a comradely smile to the unfortunate youth. “How do you do, Archibald?” he asked.

“How are ya?”

“Archibald,” said Reverend Wimple, “would you show Reverend Martin to his room? I think he’d like the room to the left at the head of the stairs.”

“Sure thing.”

“You go on up now, Paul, and freshen up. I may call you Paul, mayn’t I?”

“Why certainly, Reverend Wimple.”

“And I am Amadeus. Now, you go on upstairs and freshen up. I know how tiresome traveling by train can be. When you’re ready, come on down and we’ll get to know each other over a cup of tea.”

“That would be very pleasant. Thank you very much.”

Reverend Wimple watched his new assistant follow Lefty upstairs, and then he collapsed on the sofa and began to chuckle weakly. He was still there, sprawled on the sofa, a foolish grin on his face, when Lefty came back downstairs.

Lefty scurried into the room, sat down beside Joe, and said, “We gotta lam outa here.”

Joe said, “Huh, huh, huh, huh.”

“Who is that guy?” Lefty wanted to know. “Who is he?”

Joe pulled himself together, and Reverend Wimple answered, “He’s my new assistant, Lefty.” He looked at Lefty and tried to suppress a grin, but he couldn’t help it. “He’s my new assistant. And he used to work in the Archbishop’s office, and he was telling me that things are in a mess down there. Confusion and chaos everywhere. Lefty, do you know what a mess they’re in down at the Archbishop’s office?”

Lefty shook his head.

“They’ve lost my records! He told me so. They’ve lost every one of my records. Isn’t that a panic?”

“You mean they think you’re legit?”

“Legit? Why, Lefty, they’ve sent me an assistant!”

Upstairs, Reverend Martin stood in the bathroom, reflectively drying his face and hands. “God, he’s good,” he thought. “He looks more like a minister than most real ministers do.” Reverend Martin left the bathroom and trotted downstairs. He looked at the bogus minister sitting in the living room, and he smiled. “I’m ready for that tea now, Amadeus,” he said.

There was no trouble with the representative from the diamond merchant. He came with a certified check, and he left with the diamond. He was a gray little man with a black briefcase handcuffed to his right wrist. He was a dour, sour little gray man who squinted at the Pettigrew diamond through a jeweler’s glass, said, “Huh,” and handed over the check. He was a grim, unsmiling little man dressed in gray who refused an offer to break bread with the pastor and his new assistant and who drove off in a brand new but quite naturally gray car without having said twenty words all the time he was there.

Lefty found Joe in his bedroom, sitting on the bed and holding the check with both hands. Joe was staring at the check with positively the strangest expression Lefty had ever seen on any face anywhere. It was a look of triumph and a look of pleasure, but it was at the same time a wistful look of something lost, something gone, something dead and destroyed. Lefty stood in the doorway, awed at the expression on Joe’s face.

Joe looked up, and said, “Close the door.” He spoke very softly, as though he were in a cathedral.

Lefty closed the door.

“Look at it.” Joe held out the check. “Look at it,” he said, in a whisper; and in the same exultant whisper, he added, “We did it, Lefty.”

Even Lefty could tell it was a charged moment. “Yeah,” he said huskily.

“Lefty,” said Joe, in an awed and hushed voice, “Lefty, we’re immortals. The size of this job— We’ll be the biggest names in the annals of crime. Bigger than the Brinks job. Bigger than any of them. The whole world will remember the Docker-Denker Caper.”

“Maybe they’ll call it the Pettigrew Caper,” said Lefty.

“Who cares what they call it? It’s the top. The Yellow Kid Weil, Richardson, none of them, none of them never pulled a con as big as this. Lefty, the biggest con haul in history, and it’s ours!”

There was a soft knock at the door. The two immortals looked at each other, then Reverend Wimple got to his feet and opened the door. Reverend Martin was standing there. He said, “I’ve got to go downtown for razor blades. Would you like me to put the check in the hospital account at the bank for you?”

Reverend Wimple smiled. “Thank you, but to tell you the truth I want to reserve that pleasure for myself. You understand.”

“Of course. This must be a great moment for you.”

“Oh, it is. It is.”

“The hospital a reality after all. You know, Amadeus, I’ve been assigned one place and another, here, there and everywhere, for the last four years, and I want to tell you sincerely and honestly that you are the very best minister I have ever seen. No, that’s not flattery, I mean it.” Reverend Martin’s face bore a puzzled expression as he spoke. “I want you to know,” he said, “that I intend to pattern my ministry after yours. You have been a wonderful education for me.” Embarrassed, Reverend Martin turned away.

Joe Docker stood in the doorway, listening to the sound of Reverend Martin trotting down the stairs, and he felt a great loss, a great ache, and a great emptiness, and he had to remind himself that he was about to become the most famous con man in history, that he was now immortal.

Lefty said, “We gotta pack.” He pushed by Joe. “Come on, Joe, start packin’. We gotta be gone by the time Paul gets back.”

Joe made a sudden decision. “Lefty,” he said, “you pack and get away. I’ve got one more thing to take care of. Remember that diner we stopped at on the way in?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll meet you there. If I’m not there by sundown, I’ll meet you at George’s in Detroit just as soon as I can.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“Lefty, this is only half of it, only half the take. The rest is downtown, in the bank, in the hospital account.”

“You goin’ after that, too?”

Joe Docker laughed. “Sure, I’m going after that. We don’t want to leave anything behind, do we?”

“Why can’t I go with you?”

“Lefty, I usually know what I’m doing, don’t I?”

“Yeah, sure, only—”

“Well, I know what I’m doing this time, too. Now you get moving. I’m going down to the bank.”

“Okay.”

Lefty trudged away toward his room, and the Reverend Wimple, looking very solemn, very intent and perhaps a bit frightened as well, left his home and turned toward downtown. He walked all the way, graciously refusing rides from various members of his congregation, and arrived at the bank long before closing time. He filled out a slip, took it to a window, and deposited the check in the special hospital account. Then he walked across to where a short, pudgy gentleman in a wrinkled suit was filling out a withdrawal slip, and said, “You’ve been following me for the last three weeks. Would you like to walk with me this time?”

The pudgy man looked surprised. He considered denial, but then shrugged. “Okay,” he said.

“Fine.”

As they walked out of the bank together, the pudgy man said, “Make a withdrawal?”

“No. A deposit. I deposited the money for the Pettigrew diamond. By the way, my name is Joe Docker.”

“Bert Smith.”

“You Federal?”

“No,” said Bert Smith. “State. You got a record, Joe?”

“Long as your arm. I’m a bigger plum than you know. I’m an escaped con.”

Bert raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Are you the only one on this case? I mean, at the moment.”

“Yeah. Why?”

“My partner’s lamming.”

Bert stopped. He looked surprised. “Was that a dummy check?”

“No, it was the real check. Lefty isn’t taking anything out of this town except Lefty.”

Bert looked hurriedly around, as though he expected to find a pay phone on a nearby tree.

“Forget it,” Joe told him. “Lefty’s an expert at cutting out. You’ll never even get a whiff of him.”

Bert stared hard at Joe Docker, and then shrugged. “You’re an oddball,” he said.

They started to walk again. “I suppose I am,” admitted Joe. “Tell me, my assistant, Reverend Martin — is he a cop, too?”

“No, he’s a regular minister. But he’s there to keep an eye on you.”

“How did you get onto me?”

“Combination of events. Your Archbishop got a letter telling all about what a great job you were doing. He’d never heard of you. Then, we got an anonymous phone tip that something was buggy in the Lanesville Rural Church. We put one and one together and got you. But now I’ve got nothing on you. Not on this job, anyway. You deposited the haul.”

“That’s right.”

“You could of told me to go fly a kite. You could of taken a plane, and by the time I found out you were wanted for prison break, you’d be nothing but a memory.”

“I could even have cashed the check in some other town.”

Bert nodded. “You could have. Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s with your partner?”

“Look. I don’t understand myself why I did it. How could I get him to understand? I told him I’d meet him. I won’t make it. He’ll read the papers.”

They had reached Reverend Wimple’s house. Joe said, “Come on in.”

Bert said, “I intended to.”

Inside was pandemonium. Three uniformed cops, locals, were running around with fingerprint powder. Reverend Martin was pacing the floor, rubbing his hands agitatedly together. Miss Grace Pettigrew was sitting in a corner, talking away at the policemen, Reverend Martin, and the world in general, complaining about police inefficiency and stupidity and that this was the second time they had allowed a criminal who had swindled her to make good his escape. And, in state in the living room, sitting silently and majestically, was the Archbishop.

At Joe’s and Bert’s entrance, everybody shut up and stopped running around. The Archbishop rose and said, “You got him.”

Bert shook his head. “No. He went down to the bank, deposited the check, and came back here. He brought me.”

Everyone looked amazed. The Archbishop was the first to recover. “Mister Wimple?” he said.

“Docker.”

“Is that your real name? I prefer Wimple. You impersonated a minister. At least, I have no record of your ordination. You weren’t sent here by me. Frankly, it was assumed that you were a swindler.”

“I realize that.”

“I’m told you have done very fine work during your stay here.”

Reverend Martin piped up, “Excellent work, Archbishop. Magnificent work.”

Grace Pettigrew scuttled close to Joe and stared in his face “If you weren’t here to steal my diamond, why did you come?”

“I did come to steal your diamond. I changed my mind.”

The Archbishop said, “You changed your mind?”

“Yes.”

Reverend Martin said, “Archbishop, don’t you suppose Mister uh, Docker, could be sent to the seminary and then continue as minister here?”

“I’m sorry,” said Joe Docker. “I’m wanted for prison break.”

There was general consternation, but the Archbishop waded through the startled chatter, took Joe Docker by the arms and gazed into his eyes. “You have good in you,” he said. “Some day, you will be a free man again.”

Joe nodded. “Two years. I’m due for parole. Unless they give me another sentence for the breakout.”

“In your absence,” said the Archbishop, “Reverend Martin will carry on for you. Your congregation will eagerly await your return.”

Grace Pettigrew was back. “We’ll hire the best lawyers. Expense means nothing.”

Joe looked at them. “Are you sure—”

A voice beside him said, with mild reproof, “Joe, you know how much I hate jail.”

Joe turned. “Lefty! What did you come back for?”

Lefty shrugged his shoulders and looked shifty and guilty. “Same reason you didn’t take the dough. No reason. I felt like it, and no locks to pick — everything is open.”

Bert Smith, state cop, tapped Joe Docker, wanted criminal, gently on the arm. “Reverend,” he said, “would you mind if I used your phone?”