Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

Second Thoughts by Carroll Mayers

One confession may be good for a pair of souls.

I didn’t go to work the day Henry Gifford stole fifteen hundred dollars from the office safe. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even learn Henry had taken the money until four days later, and then only because Henry himself told me.

The reason I was absent was because I’d picked up a summer cold. I wasn’t in bed, and could get around all right, but I have a ‘thing’ about constantly sneezing in public, spreading germs and maybe infecting others. So I phoned Mr. Holcomb, our office manager, and told him I didn’t think I should come in.

He wasn’t too happy about it. “Very well, Miss Daniels,” he conceded, “but I trust you’ll be able to make it tomorrow. Your filing’s considerably behind, you know.”

Aside from Mr. Holcomb, there were five of us in the office of Fidelity Savings and Loan Company: Henry and I, and a Mr. Winder, a Mr. Zivic, and a Miss Corsi. The last three were strictly out of Henry’s league. Charlie Winder was a bright-lights boy with dark good looks, an endless supply of racy stories and a little black book to keep his evenings full. Fred Zivic was married but wasn’t working too hard at it, had a ready eye for our younger female customers. Rita Corsi wasn’t exactly a sex symbol, but I had to admit her dusky features were attractive and she knew how to wear provocative clothes.

Henry himself was a mild character in his late twenties. Unmarried, he didn’t drink or smoke, was bookishly inclined and nourished a secret ambition (confided to me) to become a writer.

As for myself, I wasn’t truly Henry’s introverted type, but he had a certain appeal and he tried to come out of himself in his quiet way. We’d had a few movie dates, but nothing serious. I just liked him, you understand.

Stealing the fifteen hundred dollars was, of course, completely out of character with Henry. He’d acted spontaneously, on a sudden impulse that had zeroed into his consciousness.

It all happened when a lone bandit hit the office an hour before closing that day. Brandishing a nickel-plated revolver, the gunman had herded the office force and two women customers into one corner, and started to scoop banded money packets from the open safe into an airline flight bag.

Then one of the customers made an inadvertent move and the bandit whirled, triggered a wild shot and bolted, gaining a car he’d parked at the curb outside and racing away.

Pandemonium had followed. Both women customers began screaming. Mr. Holcomb stormed in the robber’s wake, shouting and waving his arms. Traffic snarled. Pedestrians clotted the sidewalk, trying to peer into the office. Rita Corsi finally jumped to the phone to call the police — and Henry deftly transferred from the open safe to the bottom shelf of an adjacent supplies cabinet, underneath some cartons of business envelopes, three five-hundred-dollar money packets.

During the police investigation that followed, Mr. Holcomb assigned Henry the task of ascertaining precisely how much cash the holdup man had taken. Henry busied himself for several minutes with ledgers and the safe’s contents. It appeared the bandit had had time to collect only four of the money packets: two thousand dollars.

“It’s thirty-five hundred, Mr. Holcomb,” Henry said.

When the police finally left, Mr. Holcomb checked his watch. “It’s not yet five,” he announced, “but I believe we’ll close for the day. It’s been an... ah... exhaustive experience.” He glanced at Henry. “Ready, Gifford?”

Henry was jolted. In the heat of his action he’d forgotten he’d had his own car picked up by a garage that morning for some minor repair work, that Mr. Holcomb had offered to drive him there after work.

His mind raced. He had planned to stay behind and retrieve the money packets from the cabinet after everyone else had departed. Now, to appear completely natural, he could not delay. He steadied himself, gave a small smile. “Yes, sir,” he said, and left with Mr. Holcomb.

Once he had his own car, Henry’s immediate thought was to return to the office and pick up the money. In another moment, though, he decided not to. The office was in a commercial building and he might be recognized by the custodial personnel, have to manufacture some pretext for an after-hours visit. Again, the money was safely hidden; letting it remain overnight was no risk. He’d merely go in early in the morning and gather the packets before the others arrived.

True, there was one factor to be considered. If the bandit were subsequently apprehended, the money discrepancy would come to light. Yet the gunman had gotten away clean and fast. Early evening news reports cited the holdup, but there followed no word of an arrest.

For the rest of that evening, then, Henry should have been able to relax, but he couldn’t, because already his true character was taking over. His conscience began nibbling at him. He tried to sublimate the emotion and failed. He, Henry Gifford, had turned thief! How could he live with that?

Henry’s decision soon followed. He wouldn’t have to live with it because he wouldn’t keep the money. He’d retrieve those packets, replace them in the safe, and inform Mr. Holcomb he must have made an error in his original loss estimate.

The following morning, Henry reached the office twenty minutes ahead of time and went to the supplies cabinet with a tight smile of purpose. His smile suddenly faded. The money wasn’t there.

A chill traced Henry’s spine as his fumbling fingers shifted the cartons of business envelopes, and only confirmed the money’s absence. He slowly closed the cabinet, with chest constricted as comprehension flooded him. He’d believed himself unobserved when he’d transferred the money in the height of the heist’s furor — but he’d been seen. Someone in the office had witnessed his act, and had had an instantaneous inspiration of his own, either lagging behind or coming back to the office after hours to garner the cash, secure in the knowledge that Henry’s own guilt bound him to silence.

Who could it have been? Henry’s brain was a chaos. Charlie Winder; Rita Corsi; Fred Zivic? Any of the three had a ready affinity for high living and could have recognized a golden opportunity.

The rest of the day and those which immediately followed were untenable to Henry. There was nothing he could do. Vulnerable himself, he could not risk any individual accusation. Whoever had victimized him had pulled a devilish coup and was home free.

Henry began to brood. The fact that he’d been thwarted at a crime his essential rectitude had betrayed him into committing, and which he’d already determined to negate by returning the money, ate at him like acid. He couldn’t eat, lost weight, became haggard...

Aside from the news reports of the holdup itself (the bandit never was caught), I of course was privy to none of what Henry had done, nor his subsequent anguish. But I had noticed the change in his demeanor and his obvious health loss, so one noon at lunch in a cafeteria we both favored I put it to him.

“Henry, what’s wrong?”

Behind thick lenses, his pale eyes blinked. “Eh?”

“You’ve been looking like a ghost for days. Care to talk about it?”

For a long moment, his gaze held mine. Then he said simply, “Yes, I’ll talk about it. To you. I... I’ve got to talk about it.”

So he told me.

“For Heaven’s sake,” I said when he finished, “why did you ever do a thing like that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I swear I don’t,” he said. “It just struck me, all at once. Some crazy idea about getting some money ahead to pay for a writing course I’ve heard about—”

He broke off, then said, “Believe me, Janet, I know I was wrong. I was going to return that money.” His voice grew taut. “Who took it? That’s what’s bugging me out of my mind! Whoever did is sitting right there in the office, acting perfectly normal — and laughing at me!”

I said, “People are looking.”

He gained a modicum of control. “You know I don’t like any of them, really, but nobody acts any differently. Fred had me out to the house for dinner the other night. Rita loaned me an adventure novel she said she thought I’d enjoy. Charlie keeps telling me the latest jokes he’s picked up—” He stopped again. “I’ve got to know! It’s like an obsession. I can’t sleep, trying to figure who.”

I said, “Suppose you did know, for sure. You’re in no position to blow the whistle. What could you do?”

“Face down whoever it is and insist we return the money.” Henry’s pale eyes blazed. Then, recognizing the inanity of the remark, he finished lamely, “I don’t know what I could do.”

“Then let it go at that,” I counseled quietly. “You were euchred, Henry. Accept it.”

“No!” he came back. “I’m going to find out who it was.”

“Just how will you do that?”

“There’ll be some way. Maybe Fred is planning an extensive trip. Or Charlie will add a couple of expensive blondes to that harem of his.” His mouth quirked. “Maybe I can find out if Rita has cleaned up any sizable bills lately.”

“That still will be no proof.”

His lips twisted again, but he made no rebuttal. Suddenly, he shoved back his chair and left.

The next several days, the patent intensity which Henry evinced was more than enough to tell me he still was determinedly pursuing his objective in his own way. I stood it as long as I could, and then I capitulated.

“It wasn’t anyone in the office who saw you that day and later took the money from the cabinet,” I told Henry in the cafeteria. “It was me.”

Those pale eyes bugged. “You? But you were out with a cold.”

“I came in after hours,” I said, “when I wouldn’t contaminate anyone. My filing was behind and I wanted to catch up. I’d learned about the holdup on the newscasts, and when I accidentally discovered those money packets as I shifted the envelope cartons to get at some filing folder, I had a sudden hunch what someone might be pulling.”

I paused, looked at him directly. “I didn’t know it was you, Henry. I didn’t even suspect you. I thought was Charlie or Rita or Fred, and I decided to cross up whoever it was, keep the money myself.”

“B-but after I told you, after you knew I was the one...”

This was a delicate point I didn’t care to expound upon. “A girl has to look out for herself. She can always use fifteen hundred dollars,” I said stubbornly. Then I added, “But I started having conscience twinges of my own.”

Henry sighed. “So now what, Janet?”

I said, “Now it looks like all we have to do is return that fifteen hundred dollars.”

He made a vague gesture. “How? The books won’t balance, and it’s too late now to say I must have made a mistake in my original count.”

That of course was true, but I still smiled at him. “We’ll think of something,” I said.

Two days later, Mr. Holcomb called us all into his office. The morning mail had just arrived and he had unwrapped a small package. The package contained several banded money packets, along with a brief anonymous note Mr. Holcomb passed around to everyone.

Here’s fifteen hundred dollars back, the hand-printed note read. I held up your place because I needed money for an operation on my kid, plus hospital expenses. Two thousand did it. Call the rest conscience money I can’t keep. Sorry I gave you a bad time.

“Most amazing, I must say,” Mr. Holcomb mused. “I’ll inform the insurance company at once. Now, let’s get back to work, shall we?”

I didn’t concoct that phony note; Henry did, which sort of augurs well for his creative ability and his writing aspirations, don’t you think?

As for that delicate point I touched on, conscience did play some part in my confession to Henry. Mainly, though, it was because he wasn’t getting over his obsession, was driving himself up the wall, making himself ill. I suddenly realized I couldn’t let that continue. I told you in the beginning I just liked Henry, but all at once I sensed it was more than that. Maybe it was... well, a lot more.

Of course, I couldn’t tell Henry that. Even in this age of women’s lib, a girl has to have some pride.