Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 27, No. 3. Whole No. 148, March 1956

Banks Are Never Wrong by John D. Hess[4]

Would you have thought that anyone could dream up a new wrinkle on “poltergeist” shenanigans in a modern, error-proof bank? Well, here it is — a perfectly delicious yarn!

Like Mr. Jebal Deeks himself, the Valley National Bank was neither small nor large. Again like Mr. Deeks, the Bank was most proper; no one had ever found any reason to suspect that either Deeks or the Bank was anything but dependable and perfectly, though dully, honest.

Deeks’s career at the Bank had shown a creeping, labored progress. He began as a teller and was shifted from department to department, always a minor officer, always trusting a half-spoken promise that the Bank was giving him such a variety of experience to groom him for the critical job of cashier or perhaps the executive position of vice-president.

But, finally, after he had spent twenty-two years moving from the trust department to the loan department to the savings department to the accounting department, Jebal Deeks came to believe that high office would never be his. The belief grew to disappointment, and disappointment grew to bitterness, and when Deeks entered his twenty-third year of service he was a dangerous man.

Halfway through his twenty-third year Deeks began to plot the ruin of the Bank.

He was a bachelor, and therefore had ample time to develop schemes that might cause chaos in the institution which continued to trust him as a stable-master trusts a docile old nag reserved for elderly women who have never been on a horse before.

Strangely enough, embezzlement did not occur to him until he had worked out and discarded twenty other plans. Embezzlement would be a simpler matter. He had access to the vault, the books, the files, the cash drawers, all the hallowed and secret niches in the Bank’s complex structure. On a carefully chosen day he could fill two suitcases with cash and negotiables, calmly walk out the front door, and thus perpetrate the only scandal in the long and honored history of the Valley National Bank.

As the plan developed he savored little mind-pictures of his superiors on the day his crime came to light. Mr. Rolfe, the cashier, would probably faint and might even have a heart attack. Mr. Elliott, the first vice-president, would rage and sputter helplessly and his breakdown of decorum would cause the second, third, and fourth vice-presidents to make rapid and violent gestures of reform and retaliation.

The news would soon reach Mr. Edward T. P. Fannington, PRESIDENT. Deeks always thought of the title in capital letters because that was the way the word was printed on the little wooden desk sign that separated Mr. Fannington from other mortals. When the embezzlement became known, Mr. Fannington, PRESIDENT, would have to call a special meeting of the board of directors, and over that meeting would preside the mysterious and never-present chairman, Colonel Vincent Sykes.

Colonel Sykes, whom Deeks had seen only seven times in all his years at the Bank, would doubtless bring to bear all the icy dignity and monstrous authority that marked him as the city’s first citizen, and the minutes of that particular meeting would probably never be entered into the annals of the Valley National Bank. It would be murderous.

Delicious as these thoughts were to him, Deeks finally abandoned the idea of embezzlement. He was not afraid that he would be caught and sent to jail; he expected that. He dropped his plans because he knew that, however skillfully he worked, he could not possibly arrange to be present when his wild deed wrought its effect on the Bank and the officers he sought to confound and destroy.

Once he walked out with his suitcases full of assets, he could never return. And, in a relatively short time, the insurance companies would make up the loss and the general public would consider the incident nothing but a bit of old gossip. Jebal Deeks and his one brilliant splurge of vengeance would subside and be forgotten.

Then, at church, of all places, Jebal Deeks found his Great Idea. The minister was delivering a pre-Christmas sermon on the text, “It is better to give than to receive.” The text struck a chord deep within him; almost immediately he saw its usefulness. He spent that night in a turbulent fever of creative wickedness. By dawn the plot was defined, organized, and ready for execution.

Jebal Deeks would not take money from the bank — he would give!

On that very Monday he whipped into action.

Result: at 6:15 that evening John Berry, chief teller, was still working because his accounts did not balance.

He was $4.71 over. Somehow the bank had taken in $4.71 more than the total of the deposit slips.

On his way out (he had purposely invented some late work for himself) Deeks stopped by the table back of the cages, where John Berry was staring unhappily at piles of deposit slips.

“Trouble?” he asked Berry. “Four-seventy-one over,” Berry said.

“Hmm,” Deeks commented. “That’s bad.”

“Not good,” Berry said. “Can’t figure it.”

“Better check those slips again,” Deeks said.

“I’ve half a mind to take four-seventy-one from the till and let it go at that,” Berry grumbled.

“The Valley,” Deeks said righteously, “doesn’t do things like that.”

“Well,” Berry asked sullenly, “just what would you do?”

“I’d check,” Deeks told him, “and then I’d recheck.”

“Um-hm.”

“If you look long enough and hard enough you can always find an error in arithmetic,” Deeks said. “If I’ve learned anything in my twenty-three years here, that’s it.”

That evening Deeks bought himself a steak dinner. He waited two weeks before he made another small gift to the bank, and this time he raised himself from $4.71 to $6.38, and Berry kept all four tellers after hours.

Six days later he went up to $11.60 and Berry felt obliged to report the discrepancy to Mr. Rolfe, the cashier. Mr. Rolfe spent all the next day examining the methods and procedures followed by the tellers in taking in and accounting for the money that passed over their counters.

That afternoon Deeks left early and for the first time in his life had a suit made to order.

For four months Deeks continued his assault on the Bank. At the end of that time there were circles under Berry’s eyes, a teller had been transferred to the Bank’s branch in Fairview, Mr. Rolfe was spending almost all his time watching the cages, and the Bank had ordered a special audit by an outside accounting firm.

Deeks estimated that this special audit would cost the Bank between three and four hundred dollars. That afternoon he ordered a table-model television set sent to his sister in California.

Soon after the audit was completed a stranger came to the Bank and was introduced to the staff as Mr. Bricklow. The staff was instructed to cooperate fully with Mr. Bricklow, and it quickly got around that Mr. Bricklow was a representative of Hermann, Struckle, and Foist, a well-known firm of management engineers.

Cautious investigation revealed that Mr. Rolfe, the cashier, had one day gone to the office of Mr. Elliott, the first vice-president, and solemnly announced that something was drastically wrong with the efficiency standards of the Bank — at the so-called working level only, of course — and that he was damned if he knew where the trouble was. Mr. Rolfe had taken this news to Mr. Edward T. P. Fannington, PRESIDENT, and Mr. Fannington, who had got where he was because he made decisions on his own and acted on them without shilly-shallying, had called Hermann, Struckle, and Foist.

Hermann, Struckle, and Foist had listened to the problem and announced that the immediate difficulty was “more symptomatic than self-contained.” They had recommended a thorough management and operational survey, which their firm was prepared to make for the sum of $12,000. When Jebal Deeks heard this figure he moved out of the rooming house in which he had lived for nearly twenty years and rented a modern three-room apartment on fashionable Elmhurst Street. And he had the inspiration to broaden and enrich his scheme with entirely new tactics.

Deeks was assigned to Mr. Bricklow as the Bank’s man, the inside man who knew more about the “working level” than anyone else, and for three months he labored with a new diligence to accommodate Mr. Bricklow and the two “engineers” who were soon brought in to “get to the bottom of this thing.”

The strange discrepancies continued, however, and Deeks saw to it that the discrepancies were not limited to simple overages in the tellers’ daily accounts.

Mr. Bricklow one day pointed out to Deeks that the filing cabinet labeled Small loans: 1936–1938 actually contained mortgage papers for 1932–1934.

“How did you people get yourselves into this mess?” Mr. Bricklow asked, appalled.

“I suppose we were just getting a little smug and rusty,” Deeks said, and he suggested that he would search the files himself for errors.

Mr. Bricklow accepted the suggestion, and Deeks went to work. He found quite a few things wrong with the filing system.

Then one of Mr. Bricklow’s assistants discovered that, through a clerical error which no one seemed able to trace, one of the guards had received one weekly pay check equal to that received by the PRESIDENT and had quietly cashed the check. The guard was discharged, of course, but the incident went into Mr. Bricklow’s notebook, where it was sidemarked, with a notation N.B.! in the margin.

One day, while Hermann, Struckle, and Foist’s engineers were busy in the back room, Mr. Fannington, PRESIDENT, received a telephone call from his old friend, Mr. Blackstone, president of the Blackstone Manufacturing Company, the city’s second biggest industrial concern.

Mr. Blackstone kidded Mr. Fannington without mercy, playing fifteen variations on a single joke. The joke was that the Blackstone Manufacturing Company had received a monthly account statement, properly addressed to Blackstone by the Bank, which contained the balance sheet of a private individual named Kackel. Kackel had written eleven checks that month, six of them to his local liquor store.

Mr. Blackstone was uproariously jocular, and told Mr. Fannington that he wasn’t mad about it, just wondering if Kackel, when he opened the statement that came to him, had rushed out and written another great big check to his liquor store. After Mr. Fannington hung up he went directly to Mr. Bricklow and asked him when the hell he was going to finish his survey; if he didn’t finish soon the whole damn Bank might collapse in a rubble heap at their feet.

Deeks had never heard Mr. Fannington swear. It was a juicy plum to add to the sweet fruits of his efforts.

Three months after Mr. Bricklow had completed his field work the report arrived, beautifully bound in black leather, with gold letters stamped on the cover. The letters announced a Management Survey Conducted by Hermann, Struckle, and Foist in Behalf of the Valley National Bank. They also announced, in the largest letters of all, that the report was CONFIDENTIAL.

While the report was being written to its full 316 pages, complete with charts, graphs, and tables, matters worsened at the Bank, and when the book arrived Mr. Fannington read it through in one evening. He then sent his copy to Colonel Sykes, adding a note: “This is rough stuff, but we might as well face the facts.”

A special meeting of the board of directors was called for the following Tuesday. Hermann, Struckle, and Foist hadn’t minced any words.

The Valley National Bank, they wrote, was operating on archaic management principles. Fortunately, the fundamental problems had been faced in time, and so far the trouble was only “symptomatic” — a word they used nearly a hundred times in the report. However, if the Bank wished to avoid graver consequences, many, many changes would be required.

Among the changes were:

1. A re-facing of the exterior of the Bank building and a complete renovation of the interior. Twenty pages of reasons followed this recommendation.

2. The elimination of the post now held by the third vice-president.

3. The replacement of the individual now occupying the post of first vice-president. (This suggestion was why the report was considered sufficiently confidential to be kept from Mr. Elliott, the first vice-president.)

4. The installation of a completely new records system operated by highly skilled (and expensive) persons using automatic (and expensive) equipment.

5. The inauguration of an institutional advertising campaign to reinvigorate public confidence.

The engineers piled reform on reform and expense on expense until, toward the end of the report, they estimated the total cost of the operation at nearly a quarter of a million dollars. However, they said, the Bank would save five times that sum over a period of ten years if they faced the issue and took immediate action.

On the closing page, the engineers paid tribute to the fine cooperation they had received from the Bank’s personnel. And, while everyone had been helpful, they wished especially to comment on the unflagging assistance of Mr. Jebal Deeks, whose splendid knowledge of the Bank’s many and complex departments had been of inestimable value to them.

Because he had been the Bank’s inside man on the job, Deeks knew exactly what the report would say. He also knew, because Mr. Bricklow had told him, that he would get a special note of praise on the last page. So it was no surprise to him when he was told he would be called into the Special Meeting of the board of directors on Tuesday.

He was told he would be asked to give his views on the situation as well as certain specific information, and that he should plan to be present at the meeting from 2:20 to 2:40, at which time, unless he was requested to stay, he would automatically leave.

Up to this moment Jebal Deeks’s wickedness had struck straight and true toward its ultimate goal. But at 2:10, just ten minutes before he was to be admitted to the solemn meeting, Deeks allowed the wheel to spin out of his hands and his scheme shot off in a new direction.

While he sat calmly on a green leather chair, awaiting his call, it came to him that he now had a chance to achieve what he had always wanted to achieve — a position of authority, a title, and the recognition due him after so many years of superior service.

He became so convinced of this future that, when he was finally asked to enter the meeting room, he lit a cigar and walked in calmly puffing it, as if he were the chairman of the board.

“Deeks,” Mr. Fannington said, “we asked Mr. Bricklow to absent himself during your interview. The colonel would like some uninhibited discussion of Bricklow’s methods in making up his report.”

“That’s very wise of the colonel,” Deeks said, nodding his head and narrowing his eyes.

The colonel sat up stiffly — and began, “First of all, Deeks—”

“Before you ask any questions,” Deeks interrupted, “let me say that I am acquainted with the contents of the report, and, with all due respect, it is my opinion that the wool is being pulled over your eyes.”

There was a clearing of throats, but Deeks did not heed it.

“Colonel,” he said, pointing a finger at the chairman’s forehead, “You play golf, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“When you lose a ball in the rough, Colonel, do you rush to the clubhouse and sign up for some expensive lessons with the pro?”

“Why... ahh... no.”

“And you, Mr. Fannington, you play poker, don’t you?”

“Now and then,” the PRESIDENT said.

“If you have a run of bad luck, do you hurry out to buy a new card table?”

“No... but...”

“Gentlemen!” Deeks said, and for the first time in his life he slammed his fist on a table, “I ask you not to be stampeded into this thing.”

More throats were cleared, more fingers were drummed on the table, and more glances were exchanged.

“What are you suggesting, Deeks?” the colonel asked.

Deeks’s proposal was forthright and simple. He explained that he had followed every step of the Hermann, Struckle, and Foist investigation. It was the first time in his twenty-three years at the Bank that he had compared the work of the many departments in which he had served, and, while he didn’t wish to disparage the integrity of Hermann, Struckle, and Foist, it was nevertheless his objective opinion that he knew a great deal more about the Bank than Hermann or Struckle or Foist — or Bricklow.

“It is my belief, gentlemen,” Deeks said, “that the Valley National is as soundly run a bank as any in the country. It was sound before Bricklow, it was sound during Bricklow, and it is sound now.”

Colonel Sykes nodded and turned to the PRESIDENT. “Can you deny that?” he asked.

“In an operation this size,” Deeks continued, “a few frayed ends poke out and give the casual observer an impression of general shabbiness. But this Bank is not shabby.”

“Hardly,” said Colonel Sykes.

“On the other hand,” Deeks said lowering his voice, “even a few frayed ends are inexcusable. So I say that, instead of reorganizing, instead of putting up a new façade, instead of dismissing valuable officers, instead of cluttering ourselves with unnecessary machinery, instead of humiliating ourselves with advertising campaigns, we should pick up broom and dust-cloth and clean house in our own way and with our own tools!”

“Please elaborate,” the colonel said.

“If you will give me one month, gentlemen, I promise I will do more to abolish these signs of inefficiency than a new set of front pillars would do in five years.”

A week later a new office was created. The title was Director of Procedure, and the job, with a 20 per cent increase in salary, fell to Jebal Deeks.

He installed a new tallying system for the tellers, and in no time at all the maddening clerical discrepancies disappeared. He hired two new filing clerks and fired one stenographer, and at the end of a month he was able to report the files were without error and would remain without error. He invented a double-checking plan to insure that there would be no recurrence of the embarrassing Blackstone Manufacturing Company-Mr. Kackel incident.

He swept and dusted the procedural machinery of the Valley National Bank with such thoroughness and skill that he soon became known, behind his back as “The Watchdog.” Nobody mentioned the end of the month he had requested to put the Bank in order, and at the end of a year, at the regular board meeting, Colonel Sykes personally recommended that Deeks receive another 10 per cent increase in salary.

The next year the title Director of Procedure was dropped and Jebal Deeks was made fifth vice-president. Two years later, after the sad passing of Mr. Elliott, Colonel Sykes and Mr. Fannington invited him to a private lunch and told him they were putting him up for membership in the Century Club. Colonel Sykes then smiled and slyly said that his chances of acceptance into the club would be greatly improved if he were first vice-president instead of fifth.

Deeks made an excellent first vice-president, and around the Bank it was believed that when Mr. Fannington stepped down, within the clearly foreseeable future, “The Watchdog” would become PRESIDENT.

The dean of the local business school, who made it a point to keep abreast of such matters, called Deeks one day and asked if Jeb would be kind enough to let the school’s banking class spend a day at the bank.

“I want ’em to see how a first-rate house is run,” the dean said, “and I can’t think of anybody better to tell ’em than the next president of the Valley.”

Deeks laughed and made an appointment for the boys. At his regular afternoon conference with Mr. Fannington he reported the dean’s request.

“Jeb,” Mr. Fannington said, “I’d like to sit in on that schoolboy interview myself. Many a time I’ve wondered exactly what it was that shot you so far ahead.”

Deeks shrugged. “Anybody who puts his mind to it could do the trick,” he said.

And, he thought later, that statement was entirely true. His scheme had been foolproof. He could have gone on for an unlimited time, casually disrupting the Bank’s innermost gears, slowly increasing the scope of his sabotage. So long as he was reasonably careful nobody could possibly catch him. It was a brilliant scheme, and it would inevitably have destroyed the Bank.

Fortunately for the Bank, he’d had the vision to convert the scheme to his own permanent and respectable advantage. Another man might not have been that clever.

Mr. Fannington broke in on these thoughts. “Jeb,” he said, “how old are you?”

“Fifty-seven.”

“I’m only sixty-two,” the PRESIDENT said, “but I had a check-up a few weeks ago. I might as well admit it: the doctor tells me it’s time to quit.”

“You’re joking,” Deeks said.

“No. I’m not. The old ticker.” He patted his breast. “But let’s not go into it. I tell you, Jeb, because I’m going to recommend to the board that you step into my shoes.”

“That’s — that’s — what can I say, Mr. Fannington?”

“Don’t say anything. But get a check-up yourself. Before I throw you to the wolves, I want to be sure you’re in top shape. Physically, I mean. I know now what a—” he patted his chest again — “thing like this can do to a man’s business worth.”

“I’ll do it, of course.”

Deeks did. He spent a whole morning in the doctor’s office. He expected to return for more tests in the afternoon, and made only one appointment for the day — the talk to the students from the business school. He planned to speak to them briefly about the virtues of efficiency, relentless and spotless no-margin-for-error efficiency, as the backbone of a good banking operation; then he would turn them over to Wardell, the new chief teller.

He sent for Warded to explain the visit. Warded listened respectfully, nodded his head several times, and then turned to go. At the door he stopped.

“Mr. Deeks,” he said.

“Yes, Warded?”

“You’ve been so busy lately I’ve hesitated to ask to see you.”

“What about?”

“Well, sir, in the last two or three months — and I just can’t account for it — I’ve spent night after night working overtime...”

Deeks’s stomach tightened. A sharp pain told him he had just bit his tongue.

“Yes?” he said.

“I wouldn’t bother you, Mr. Deeks, except that I think this is — wed — symptomatic of some pretty basic troubles.”

“What is?”

“Well, in the last months something’s gone badly wrong with our tallying system. We’ve got regular discrepancies between the deposit slip figures and the money actually deposited.”

Deeks felt dizzy.

“It just isn’t traceable, Mr. Deeks. We can’t find anything that points—”

“Never mind!” Deeks said. “I’ll talk to you about it later.”

“Yes, sir,” Warded said, and he left.

Deeks leaned his head on his hand, and tried to straighten out his mind. But he could only straighten it to the first ready big kink: “Whoever it is, he can’t be caught; whoever it is, he can’t be stopped.”

He pushed the buzzer for his secretary.

“Yes, sir?” she said at the door.

“When those schoolboys come,” he said, “send them right to Mr. Warded. I can’t see them today.”

“But, Mr. Deeks,” she said, “you called the whole thing off yesterday.”

“I did?”

“Yes sir. Here... just a second.”

She disappeared for a moment, and came back with the appointment calendar. She set it down before him and put her finger on the 1:30 line. Dean Nelson s banking students had been crossed out, and over the black line was written, in a scrawl that might or might not have been his, Please cancel. J. D.

“So I called the dean, of course,” the secretary said. “He tried to be nice about it, but I could tell he was milled. If you don’t mind my suggesting it, Mr. Deeks, a nice letter—”

“That will be all,” Deeks said.

When she closed the door he leaped to his feet, paced to the window and back to his desk and back to the window.

His brain was stuck in one deepening groove. Over and over it repeated, “Whoever it is, whoever it is, whoever it is...” The telephone snapped the string. He picked it up and said, “I’m not taking any calls, Miss Barr.”

“Mr. Deeks,” she said, “Colonel Sykes is on the phone.”

“Oh,” he said. “Put him on.”

“Deeks,” the colonel said, “I don’t suppose this could be a joke, but if it is, it’s backfired.”

“What’s that, Colonel?” Deeks asked in a faint voice.

“I received three separate form notices from the bank today, all saying my account was overdrawn and would I please come in to discuss it with Miss Ashenby.”

“Why, that’s—”

“Even if it were overdrawn,” the colonel continued, “don’t you think one notification would have been enough? And, incidentally, unless somebody in that organization has embezzled a great deal of money, Deeks, I am not overdrawn.”

“But that’s absolutely—”

“How many of our depositors get such notices, Deeks? What kind of confidence do you suppose this sort of thing builds in the community? It’s damn fortunate it happened to be me, because...”

For five minutes Deeks said “Yes, sir” into the phone without knowing what he was yessing. He did not remember saying goodbye to the colonel; suddenly he was holding the phone and no voice was coming out of it. Slowly he put the instrument back to its cradle, and then he let his chin drop to his chest. He sat there, hardly breathing, his shoulders hunched, his eyes closed, for many minutes.

Then he sat up, inhaled deeply, and reached for the phone. There was only one thing to do.

“Get me Mr. Fannington,” he said to his secretary, and when the PRESIDENT was on the phone, he said, “Mr. Fannington, I took your advice. I went to the doctor for a check-up.”

“Oh, good,” Mr. Fannington said. “I’m glad you did that.”

“I have to tell you, Mr. Fannington,” Deeks said, “the doctor says it’s time for me to give up, too. He says I’d better quit while — while the quitting’s good.”