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

The Dusty Drawer by Harry Muheim[1]

We welcome another new name to the pages of EQMM — Harry Muheim. Mr. Muheim was born in San Francisco, graduated from Stanford University, and worked at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood before becoming a member of the United States Navy. He learned Japanese at the Navy Language School and was then sent to the Pacific as an interrogator and interpreter. After the war he went back to Stanford for his M.A. In 1949 he won the Albert M. Bender award for creative writing in California. Since 1950 he has lived near New York — “submerged in suburbia” — where he is on the faculty of New York University and in spare time is one of the regular writers for NBC’s Philco Television Playhouse. As a matter of fact, we seem to recall that Mr. Muheim adapted his own story, “The Dusty Drawer,” for TV, and very successfully too; it is the story of a college botany teacher who planned and executed a “sweet revenge.”

Norman Logan paid for his apple pie and coffee, then carried his tray toward the front of the cafeteria. From a distance, he recognized the back of William Tritt’s large head. The tables near Tritt were empty, and Logan had no desire to eat with him, but they had some unfinished business that Logan wanted to clear up. He stopped at Tritt’s table and asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”

Tritt looked up as he always looked up from inside his teller’s cage in the bank across the street. He acted like a servant — like a fat, precise butler that Logan used to see in movies — but behind the film of obsequiousness was an attitude of vast superiority that always set Logan on edge.

“Why, yes, Mr. Logan. Do sit down. Only please, I must ask you not to mention that two hundred dollars again.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” said Logan, pulling out a chair and seating himself. “Rather late for lunch, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I’ve had lunch,” Tritt said. “This is just a snack.” He cut a large piece of roast beef from the slab in front of him and thrust it into his mouth. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you all summer,” he added, chewing the meat.

“I took a job upstate,” Logan said. “We were trying to stop some kind of blight in the apple orchards.”

“Is that so?” Tritt looked like a concerned bloodhound.

“I wanted to do some research out West,” Logan went on, “but I couldn’t get any money from the university.”

“You’ll be back for the new term, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Logan said with a sigh, “we begin again tomorrow.” He thought for a moment of the freshman faces that would be looking up at him in the lecture room. A bunch of high-strung, mechanical New York City kids, pushed by their parents or by the Army into the university, and pushed by the university into his botany class. They were brick-bound people who had no interest in growing things, and Logan sometimes felt sad that in five years of teaching he had communicated to only a few of them his own delight with his subject.

“My, one certainly gets a long vacation in the teaching profession,” Tritt said. “June through September.”

“I suppose,” Logan said. “Only trouble is that you don’t make enough to do anything in all the spare time.”

Tritt laughed a little, controlled laugh and continued chewing. Logan began to eat the pie. It had the drab, neutral flavor of all cafeteria pies.

“Mr. Tritt,” he said, after a long silence.

“Yes?”

“When are you going to give me back my two hundred dollars?”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Logan. We had this all out ten months ago. We went over it with Mr. Pinkson and the bank examiners and everyone. I did not steal two hundred dollars from you.”

“You did, and you know it.”

“Frankly, I’d rather not hear any more about it.”

“Mr. Tritt, I had three hundred and twenty-four dollars in my hand that day. I’d just cashed some bonds. I know how much I had.”

“The matter has all been cleared up,” Tritt said coldly.

“Not for me, it hasn’t. When you entered the amount in my checking account, it was for one hundred and twenty-four, not three hundred twenty-four.”

Tritt put down his fork and carefully folded his hands. “I’ve heard you tell that story a thousand times, sir. My cash balanced when you came back and complained.”

“Sure it balanced,” Logan exploded. “You saw your mistake when Pinkson asked you to check the cash. So you took my two hundred out of the drawer. No wonder it balanced!”

Tritt laid a restraining hand on Logan’s arm. “Mr. Logan, I’m going a long, long way in the bank. I simply can’t afford to make mistakes.”

“You also can’t afford to admit it when you do make one.”

“Oh, come now,” said Tritt, as though he were speaking to a child. “Do you think I’d jeopardize my entire career for two hundred dollars?”

“You didn’t jeopardize your career,” Logan snapped. “You knew you could get away with it. And you took my money to cover your error.”

Tritt sat calmly and smiled a fat smile at Logan. “Well, that’s your version, Mr. Logan. But I do wish you’d quit annoying me with your fairy tale.” Leaving half his meat untouched, Tritt stood up and put on his hat. Then he came around the table and stood looming over Logan. “I will say, however, from a purely hypothetical point of view, that if I had stolen your money and then staked my reputation on the lie that I hadn’t, the worst thing I could possibly do would be to return the money to you. I think you’d agree with that.”

“I’ll get you, Tritt,” said Logan, sitting back in the chair. “I can’t stand to be had.”

“I know, I know. You’ve been saying that for ten months, too. Goodbye.” Tritt walked out of the cafeteria. Norman Logan sat there motionless, watching the big teller cross the street and enter the bank. He felt no rage — only an increased sense of futility. Slowly, he finished his coffee.

A few minutes later, Logan entered the bank. Down in the safe-deposit vaults he raised the lid of his long metal box and took out three twenty-five-dollar bonds. With a sigh, he began to fill them out for cashing. They would cover his government insurance premium for the year. In July, too, he had taken three bonds from the box, when his father had overspent his pension money. And earlier in the summer, Logan had cashed some more of them, after slamming into a truck and damaging his Plymouth. Almost every month there was some reason to cash bonds, and Logan reflected that he hadn’t bought one since his Navy days. There just wasn’t enough money in botany.

With the bonds in his hand, he climbed the narrow flight of stairs to the street floor, then walked past the long row of tellers’ cages to the rear of the bank. Here he opened an iron gate in a low marble fence and entered the green-carpeted area of the manager and assistant manager. The manager’s desk was right inside the gate, and Mr. Pinkson looked up as Logan came in. He smiled, looking over the top of the glasses pinched on his nose.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Logan.” Pinkson’s quick eyes went to the bonds and then, with the professional neutrality of a branch bank manager, right back up to Logan’s thin face. “If you’ll just sit down, I’ll buzz Mr. Tritt.”

“Mr. Tritt?” said Logan, surprised.

“Yes. He’s been moved up to the first cage now.”

Pinkson indicated a large, heavy table set far over against the side wall in back of his desk, and Logan sat in a chair next to it.

“Have a good summer?” The little man had revolved in his squeaky executive’s chair to face Logan.

“Not bad, thanks.”

“Did you get out of the city?”

“Yes, I had a job upstate. I always work during my vacations.”

Mr. Pinkson let out a controlled chuckle, a suitable reply when he wasn’t sure whether or not the customer was trying to be funny. Then he revolved again; his chubby cue-ball head bobbed down, and he was back at his figures.

Logan put he bonds on the clean desk blotter and looked over at Tritt’s cage. It was at the near end of the row of cages, with a door opening directly into the manager’s area. Tritt was talking on the telephone inside, and for a long, unpleasant minute Logan watched the fat, self-assured face through the greenish glass. I’ll get him yet, Logan thought. But he didn’t see how. Tritt had been standing firmly shielded behind his lie for nearly a year now, and Norman Logan didn’t seem to know enough about vengeance to get him.

Restive, Logan sat back and tipped the chair onto its hind legs. He picked ineffectually at a gravy stain on his coat; then his eye was attracted to a drawer, hidden under the overhang of the tabletop. It was a difficult thing to see, for it had no handle, and its face was outlined by only a thin black crack in the dark-stained wood. Logan could see faintly the two putty-filled holes that marked the place where the handle had once been. Curious, he rocked forward a little and slipped his fingernails into the crack along the bottom of the drawer. He pulled gently, and the drawer slid smoothly and silently from the table.

The inside was a dirty, cluttered mess. Little mounds of grayish mold had formed on the furniture glue along the joints. A film of dust on the bottom covered the bits of faded yellow paper and rusted paper clips that were scattered about. Logan rocked the chair back farther, and the drawer came farther out to reveal a delicate spider web. The spider was dead and flaky, resting on an old page from a desk calendar. The single calendar sheet read October 2, 1936. Logan pushed the drawer softly back into the table, wondering if it had actually remained closed since Alf Landon was running against Roosevelt.

The door of Tritt’s cage clicked open, and he came out, carrying a large yellow form. William Tritt moved smoothly across the carpet, holding his fat young body erect, and making a clear effort to keep his stomach in.

“Why, hello, Mr. Logan,” he said. “I’m sorry for the delay. The main office called me. I can’t hang up on them, you know.”

“I know,” Logan said.

The teller smiled as he lowered himself into the chair opposite Logan. Logan slid the bonds across the table.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Tritt said pleasantly as he opened his fountain pen. “Preparing for the new semester, I suppose?” There was no indication of their meeting across the street. Logan said nothing in reply, so Tritt went to work, referring rapidly to the form for the amount to be paid on each bond. “Well, that comes to sixty-seven dollars and twenty-five cents,” he said, finishing the addition quickly.

Logan filled out a deposit slip. “Will you put it in my checking account, please?” He handed his passbook across the table. “And will you please enter the right amount?”

“Certainly, Mr. Logan,” Tritt said, smiling indulgently. Logan watched carefully as Tritt made the entry. Then the teller walked rapidly back to his cage, while Logan, feeling somehow compelled to do so, took another glance into the dusty drawer.

He kept thinking about the drawer as he got on a bus and rode up to the university. It had surprised him to stumble upon a dirty, forgotten place like that in a bank that was always so tidy.

Back in the biology department, Logan sat down at his desk, planning to prepare some roll sheets for his new classes. He stayed there for a long time without moving. The September sun went low behind the New Jersey Palisades, but he did not prepare the sheets, for the unused drawer stayed unaccountably in his mind.

Suddenly he sat forward in his chair. In a surprising flash of creative thought, he had seen how he could make use of the drawer. He wasn’t conscious of having tried to develop a plan. The entire plan simply burst upon him all at once, and with such clarity and precision that he hardly felt any responsibility for it. He would rob the bank and pin the robbery on Tritt. That would take care of Tritt.

In the weeks that followed, Norman Logan remained surprisingly calm about his plan. Each time he went step by step over the mechanics of the robbery, it seemed more gemlike and more workable. He made his first move the day he got his November pay check.

Down on Fifty-first Street, Logan went into a novelty-and-trick store and bought a cigarette case. It was made of a dark, steel-blue plastic, and it looked like a trim .38 automatic. When the trigger was pressed, a section of the top of the gun flipped up on a hinge, revealing the cigarettes inside the handle.

With this in his pocket, Logan took a bus way down to the lower part of Second Avenue and entered a grimy little shop displaying pistols and rifles in the window. The small shopkeeper shuffled forward, and Logan asked to see a .38.

“Can’t sell you a thing until I see your permit. The Sullivan Law.”

“Oh, I don’t want to buy a weapon,” Logan explained. He took out his plastic gun. “I just want to see if the real thing looks like mine here.”

The little man laughed a cackle laugh and brought up a .38 from beneath the counter, placing it next to Logan’s. “So you’ll just be fooling around, eh?”

“That’s right,” said Logan, looking at the guns. They were almost identical.

“Oh, they look enough alike,” said the man. “But lemme give you a little tip. Put some scotch tape over that lid to keep it down. Friend of mine was using one of those things, mister. He’d just polished off a stick-up when he pulled the trigger and the lid flopped open. Well, he tried to offer the victim a cigarette, but the victim hauled off and beat the hell out of him.”

“Thanks,” Logan said with a smile. “I’ll remember that.”

“Here, you can put some Scotch tape on right now.”

Logan walked over to the Lexington Avenue line and rode uptown on the subway. It was five minutes to 3 when he got to the bank. The old, gray-uniformed guard touched his cap as Logan came through the door. The stand-up desks were crowded, so it was natural enough for Logan to go through the little iron gate and cross to the table with the drawer. Mr. Pinkson and the new assistant manager had already left; their desks were clear.

As Logan sat down, Tritt stuck his head out the door of his cage.

“More bonds, Mr. Logan?” he asked.

“No,” said Logan. “Just a deposit.”

Tritt closed the door and bent over his work. Logan took out his wallet, removed the pay check, then looked carefully the length of the bank. No one was looking in his direction. As he put the wallet back into his inside coat pocket, he withdrew the slim plastic gun and eased open the drawer. He dropped the gun in, shut the drawer, deposited the check, and went home to his apartment. In spite of the Sullivan Law, he was on his way.

Twice during November he used the table with the drawer. Each time he checked on the gun. It had not been moved. By the time he deposited his December check, Logan was completely certain that nobody ever looked in there. On the nineteenth of the month, he decided to take the big step...

Next morning, after his ten o’clock class, Logan walked six blocks through the snow down the hill to the bank. He took four bonds out of his safe-deposit box and filled them for cashing. The soothing sound of recorded Christmas carols floated down from the main floor.

Upstairs, he seated himself at the heavy table to wait for Tritt. Pinkson had nodded and returned to his figuring; the nervous assistant manager was not around. The carols were quite loud here, and Logan smiled at this unexpected advantage. He placed the bonds squarely on the blotter. Then he slipped open the drawer, took out the gun with his left hand, and held it below the table.

Tritt was coming toward him, carrying his bond chart. They said hello, and Tritt sat down and went to work. He totaled the sum twice and said carefully, still looking at the figures, “Well, Mr. Logan, that comes to eighty-three fifty.”

“I’ll want something in addition to the eighty-three fifty,” said Logan, leaning forward and speaking in an even voice.

“What’s that?” asked Tritt.

“Ten thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills.”

Tritt’s pink face smiled. He started to look up into Logan’s face, but his eyes froze on the muzzle of the gun poking over the edge of the table. He did not notice the Scotch tape.

“Now just go to your cage and get the money,” Logan said.

It was William Tritt’s first experience with anything like this. “Mr. Logan. Come now, Mr. Logan...” He swallowed and tried to start again, but his self-assurance had deserted him. He turned toward Pinkson’s back.

“Look at me,” snapped Logan.

Tritt turned back. “Mr. Logan, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Keep still.”

“Couldn’t we give you a loan or perhaps a—”

“Listen to me, Tritt.” Logan’s voice was just strong enough to carry above The First Noel. He was amazed at how authoritative he sounded. “Bring the money in a bag. Place it on the table here.”

Tritt started to object, but Logan raised the gun slightly, and the last resistance drained from Tritt’s fat body.

“All right, all right. I’ll get it.” As Tritt moved erratically toward his cage, Logan dropped the gun back into the drawer and closed it. Tritt shut the door of the cage, and his head disappeared below the frosted part of the glass. Immediately, Mr. Pinkson’s telephone buzzed, and he picked it up. Logan watched his back, and, after a few seconds, Pinkson’s body stiffened. Logan sighed, knowing then that he would not get the money on this try.

Nothing happened for several seconds; then suddenly the little old guard came rushing around the corner of the cages, his big pistol drawn and wobbling as he tried to hold it on Logan.

“Okay. Okay. Stay there! Put your hands up, now!”

Logan raised his hands, and the guard turned to Pinkson with a half-surprised face. “Okay, Mr. Pinkson. Okay, I’ve got him covered now.”

Pinkson got up as Tritt came out of the cage. Behind the one gun, the three men came slowly toward Logan.

“Careful, Louis, he’s armed,” Tritt warned the guard.

“May I ask what this is all about?” Logan said, his hands held high.

“Mr. Logan,” said Pinkson, “I’m sorry about this, but Mr. Tritt here tells me that— that—”

“That you tried to rob me of ten thousand dollars,” said Tritt, his voice choppy.

“I–I what?”

“You just attempted an armed robbery of this bank,” Tritt said slowly. “Don’t try to deny it.”

Logan’s face became the face of a man so completely incredulous that he cannot speak. He remembered not to overplay it, though. First he simply laughed at Tritt. Then he lowered his hands, regardless of the guard’s gun, and stood up, the calm, indignant faculty member.

“All I can say, Mr. Tritt, is that I do deny it.”

“Goodness,” said Pinkson.

“Better take his gun, Louis,” Tritt ordered the guard.

The guard stepped gingerly forward to Logan and frisked him, movie style. “Hasn’t got a gun, Mr. Tritt,” he said.

“Of course he’s got a gun,” snapped Tritt. He pushed the guard aside. “It’s right in his coat.” Tritt jammed his thick hand into Logan’s left coat pocket and flailed it about. “It’s not in that pocket,” he said after a moment.

“It’s not in any pocket,” Logan said. “I don’t have one.”

“You do. You do have a gun. I saw it,” Tritt answered, beginning to sound like a child in an argument. He spun Logan around and pulled the coat off him with a jerk. The sleeves turned inside out. Eagerly, the teller pulled the side pockets out, checked the inside pocket and the breast pocket, then ran his hands over the entire garment, crumpling it. “The — the gun’s not in his coat,” he said finally.

“It’s not in his pants,” the guard added.

Tritt stepped over to the table quickly. “It’s around here somewhere,” he said. “We were sitting right here.” He stood directly in front of the closed drawer, and his hands began to move meaninglessly over the tabletop. He picked up the neat stack of deposit slips, put them down again, then looked under the desk blotter, as though it could have concealed a gun.

Logan knew he had to stop this. “Is there any place I can remove the rest of my clothes?” he asked loudly, slipping the suspenders from his shoulders. Several depositors had gathered on the other side of the marble fence to watch, and Mr. Pinkson had had enough.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, almost shouting. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Logan. Louis said you were unarmed. Now, Louis, put your gun away, and for goodness’ sake, request the customers to please move on.”

“But Mr. Pinkson, you must believe me,” Tritt said, coming over to the manager. “This man held a gun on me and—”

“It’s hard to know what to believe,” said Pinkson. “But no money was stolen, and I don’t see how we can embarrass Mr. Logan further with this matter. Please, Mr. Logan, do pull up your suspenders.”

It was a shattering moment for the teller — the first time his word had ever been doubted at the bank.

“But, sir, I insist that this man—”

“I must ask you to return to your cage now, Mr. Tritt,” Pinkson said, badly agitated. Tritt obeyed.

The manager helped Logan put on his coat, then steered him over to his desk. “This is all a terrible mistake, Mr. Logan. Please do sit down now, please.” The friendly little man was breathing heavily. “Now I just want you to know that if you should press this complaint, it — it would go awfully bad for us down in the main office downtown, and I—”

“Please don’t get so excited, Mr. Pinkson,” Logan said with a smile. “I’m not going to make any complaint.” Logan passed the whole thing off casually. Mr. Tritt imagined he saw a gun, that’s all. It was simply one of those aberrations that perfectly normal people get occasionally. Now, could Mr. Pinkson finish cashing his bonds? The manager paid him the eighty-three fifty, continuing to apologize.

Logan left the bank and walked through the soft snowfall, whistling a Christmas carol. He had handled himself perfectly.

In the weeks that followed, Logan continued to do business with Tritt, just as though nothing had happened. The teller tried to remain aloof and calm, but he added sums incorrectly, and his hands shook. One day late in January, Tritt stood halfway through a transaction, his great body trembling. “Excuse me, Mr. Logan,” he murmured, and rushed off into the corridor behind the cages. Pinkson followed him, and Logan took advantage of the moment to check on the gun. It lay untouched in the drawer. Then Pinkson came back alone. “I’m awfully sorry to delay you again, sir,” he said. “Mr. Tritt doesn’t feel too well.”

“Did he imagine he saw another gun?” Logan asked quietly.

“No. He just upsets easily now. Ever since that incident with you last month, he’s been like a cat on a hot stove.”

“I’ve noticed he’s changed.”

“He’s lost that old, calm banking touch, Mr. Logan. And of course, he’s in constant fear of a new hallucination.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Logan said, looking genuinely concerned. “It’s very sad when a person loses his grip.”

“It’s particularly disappointing to me,” the manager said sadly, “I brought Tritt into the bank myself, you see. Had him earmarked for a big spot downtown some day. Fine man. Intelligent, steady, accurate — why, he’s been right down the line on everything. But now — now he’s — well, I do hope he gets over this.”

“I can understand how you feel,” Logan said sympathetically. He smiled inside at the precision of his planning. Fat William Tritt had been undermined just enough — not only in Pinkson’s mind, but in his own.

On the tenth of March, Norman Logan acted again. When Tritt was seated across the table from him, Logan said, “Well, here we go again, Mr. Tritt.” Tritt’s head came up, and once more he was looking into the barrel of the toy automatic. He did not try to speak. “Now go get the ten thousand,” ordered Logan. “And this time, do it.”

Without objecting, the teller moved quickly to his cage. Logan slipped the gun back into the drawer; then he took his brief case from the floor and stood it on the edge of the table. I Pinkson’s telephone didn’t buzz, and the guard remained out of sight. After a few moments, Tritt came out of the cage, carrying a small cloth bag.

“All right, continue with the bonds,” Logan said. “The bag goes on the table between us.” Logan shifted forward and opened the bag, keeping the money out of sight behind the brief case. The clean new bills were wrapped in thousand-dollar units, each package bound with a bright yellow strip of paper. Logan counted through one package, and, with Tritt looking right at him, he placed the package of money carefully in the brief case.

“There,” he said. “Now finish with the bonds.” Tritt finished filling out the form and got Logan’s signature. He was not as flustered as Logan had thought he’d be. “Now listen, Tritt,” Logan went on, “my getaway is all set, of course, but if you give any signal before I’m out of the bank, I’ll put a bullet into you — right here.” Logan pointed to the bridge of his own nose. “Please don’t think I’d hesitate to do it. Now get back to your cage.”

Tritt returned to the cage. While his back was turned, Logan slipped the bag of money from his brief case and dropped it into the drawer, next to the gun. He eased the drawer into the table, took the brief case, and walked out of the bank.

Outside, he stood directly in front of the entrance, as though he were waiting for a bus. After just a few seconds the burglar alarm went off with a tremendous electrical shriek, and the old guard came running out of the door after him.

He was followed immediately by Pinkson, the assistant manager, and Tritt.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Logan, his hands raised again in front of the guard’s gun, “here we are again, eh?”

A crowd was gathering, and Pinkson sent the assistant to turn off the alarm. “Come, let’s all go inside,” he said. “I don’t want any fuss out here.”

It was the same kind of scene that they had played before, only now Logan — the twice-wronged citizen — was irate, and now ten thousand dollars was missing from William Tritt’s cage. Tritt was calm, though.

“I was ready for him this time,” he said proudly to Pinkson. “I marked ten thousand worth of twenties. My initial is on the band. The money’s in his brief case.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Tritt,” Logan shouted suddenly, “who ever heard of making a getaway by waiting for a bus. I don’t know what your game is, but—”

“Never mind my game,” said Tritt. “Let’s just take a look in your brief case.”

He wrenched it from Logan’s hand, clicked the lock, and turned the brief case upside down. A group of corrected examination books fell out. That was all.

“See?” said Logan. “Not a cent.” The guard put away his gun as Pinkson began to pick up the scattered books.

Tritt wheeled, threw the brief case against the wall, and grabbed Logan by the lapels. “But I gave you the money. I did. I did!” His face was pasty gray, and his voice high. “You put it in the brief case. I saw you. I saw you do it!” He began to shake Logan in a kind of final attempt to shake the ten thousand dollars out of him.

Pinkson straightened up with the exam books and said, “For goodness’ sake, Mr. Tritt. Stop it. Stop it.”

Tritt stopped shaking Logan, then turned wildly to Pinkson. “You don’t believe me!” he shouted. “You don’t believe me!”

“It’s not a question of—”

“I’ll find that money. I’ll show you who’s lying.” He rushed over to the big table and swept it completely clear with one wave of his heavy arm. The slips fluttered to the floor, and the inkwell broke, splattering black ink over the carpet. Tritt pulled the table in a wild, crashing arc across the green carpet, smashing it into Pinkson’s desk. Logan saw the dusty drawer come open about a half-inch.

The big man dropped clumsily to his knees and began to pound on the carpet with his flattened hands as he kept muttering, “It’s around here some place — a cloth bag.” He grabbed a corner of the carpet and flipped it back with a grunt. It made a puff of dust and revealed only a large triangle of empty, dirty floor. A dozen people had gathered outside the marble fence by now, and all the tellers were peering through the glass panes of the cages at Tritt.

“I’ll find it! I’ll find it!” he shouted. A film of sweat was on his forehead as he stood up, turned, and advanced again toward the table. The slightly opened drawer was in plain sight in front of him, but everyone’s eyes were fixed on Tritt, and Tritt did not see the drawer under the overhang of the table.

Logan turned quickly to Pinkson and whispered, “He may be dangerous, Mr. Pinkson. You’ve got to calm him.” He grabbed Pinkson by the arm and pushed him backward several feet, so that the manager came to rest on the edge of the table, directly over the drawer. The exam books were still in his hand.

“Mr. Tritt, you must stop this!” Mr. Pinkson said.

“Get out of my way, Pinkson,” said Tritt, coming right at him, breathing like a bull. “You believe him, but I’ll show you. I’ll find it!” He placed his hands on Pinkson’s shoulders. “Now get away, you fool.”

“I won’t take that from anyone,” snapped Pinkson. He slapped Tritt’s face with a loud, stinging blow. The teller stopped, stunned, and suddenly began to cry.

“Mr. Pinkson. Mr. Pinkson, you’ve got to trust me.”

Pinkson was immediately ashamed of what he had done. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my boy. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I tell you he held a gun on me again. A real gun — it’s not my imagination.”

“But why didn’t you call Louis?” Pinkson said. “That’s the rule, you know.”

“I wanted to catch him myself. He — he made such a fool of me last time.”

“But that business last time was hallucination,” said Pinkson, looking over at Logan, who had nodded.

“It’s no hallucination when ten thousand dollars is missing,” Tritt shouted.

“That’s precisely where the confusion arises in my mind,” Mr. Pinkson said slowly. “We’ll get it straight, but in the meantime, I must order your arrest, Mr. Tritt.”

Logan came and stood next to Pinkson, and they both looked sympathetically at the teller as he walked slowly, still sobbing, back to the cage.

“I’m just sick about it,” Pinkson said.

“I think you’ll find he’s not legally competent,” said Logan.

“Perhaps not.”

Logan showed his concern by helping to clean up the mess that Tritt had made. He and the assistant manager placed the table back into its position against the far wall, Logan shoving the dusty drawer firmly closed with his fingertips as they lifted it.

Norman Logan returned to the bank late the next day. He sat at the table to make a deposit, and he felt a pleasantly victorious sensation surge through him as he slipped the gun and the ten thousand dollars out of the drawer and into his overcoat pocket. As he walked out the front door past the guard, he met Mr. Pinkson, who was rushing in.

“Terrible. Just terrible,” the little man said, without pausing to say hello.

“What’s that?” Logan asked calmly.

“I’ve just been talking to the doctors at Bellevue about Tritt,” Pinkson said. “He seems all right, and they’ve released him. Unfortunately, he can answer every question except ‘Where’s the money?’ ” Logan held firmly to the money in his pocket and continued to extend his sympathies.

Back at his apartment, Logan borrowed a portable typewriter from the man upstairs. Then he sat down and wrote a note:

After looking up Tritt’s initials on an old deposit slip, he forged a small tidy W.T. to the note.

Logan wiped his fingerprints from the bills and wrapped them, along with the note, in a neat package.

Then he drove to the post office nearest Tritt’s apartment and mailed the money to Pinkson at the bank.

In the morning, Mr. Pinkson telephoned Logan at the university. “Well, it’s all cleared up,” he said, relieved but sad. “Tritt returned the money, so the bank is not going to press the charges. Needless to say, we’re dropping Tritt. He not only denies having taken the money, he also denies having returned it.”

“I guess he just doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Logan said.

“Yes. That’s what he said in the note. Anyway, Mr. Logan, I–I just wanted to call and apologize for the trouble we’ve caused you.”

“Oh, it was no trouble for me. I was glad to be of help,” Logan said quietly. “Delighted, in fact.”

They said goodbye then, and Logan walked across the hall to begin his ten-o’clock botany lecture.