The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

The Holdup

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1979.

Percy Kittridge, finance director of Memorial to Mercy Hospital, frowned in sharp distaste as the old woman appeared in his office. Percy was a neat, precise man of little finicky gestures, and the woman was a horrible old wretch. In a seedy greatcoat that hung almost to her ankles, she was like a mass of pillows lumpishly piled together. Her face was a study in wrinkles and tiny wens. Beneath an old straw hat decorated with imitation flowers, her hair dripped like Spanish moss on an ancient tree.

One moment Percy was rocked back behind his desk, looking out the window and comfortably chatting on the phone, the next he was swinging his chair around to hang up the telephone and there stood the old lady.

“How did you get in here unannounced?” Percy demanded in his rather high, impatient voice.

The old woman pointed to the tattered scarf wrapped about her throat. She was wearing cheap cotton gloves — probably, Percy thought, to hide leprous hands.

“Just walked in,” she said in a raspy whisper, “when no one in the outer office was paying attention. No trick to it.”

“Well, I’m a busy man. What do you want?”

The old woman’s right hand was in the side pocket of her bedraggled outer coat. She lifted the hand. It was gripping a deadly looking automatic.

“I want all the money out of the hospital safe,” she crackled.

Percy gasped, on the edge of a sudden faint. His thin lips quivered in a fruitless effort to speak. His bright eyes were parallaxed on the gun.

“Be a nice, sensible li’l fella,” the crone instructed, “and you can tell your wife about this at dinner tonight Otherwise, you’re on a DOA all full of bullet holes when they cart you over to the emergency room a few seconds from now.”

“I — uh — this doesn’t make sense,” Percy managed. “People steal drugs from hospitals, not money.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” the nightmare image said. “You have just one more tick of the clock to move it.”

Percy flinched back from his desk, tottering to his feet. “Hospitals do most of their business in paper,” he said, struggling for courage. “Medicare and Medicaid checks, checks from insurance companies and patients. Wouldn’t it be better to rob some other—”

“Can’t rob but one place at a time,” the old woman croaked. “And I’m here now. You do plenty of cash business. Everybody don’t pay by check. And there’s the cash flow from your cafeteria, snack bar, gift shop, parking lot, florist concession. I’m sure the safe is stuffed with more than enough for the likes of me.” The muzzle of the gun inched up. “Your time has run out, fella.”

Kittridge jumped. “Be careful with that thing! I’m hurrying. I’m hurrying!”

The horrid old woman used her free hand to pull a shopping bag from under her coat. “Put the money in this. I want it all, including the silver. The checks you can keep.”

A few minutes later, she was shuffling across one of the broad parking lots adjacent to the huge medical complex and Mr. Kittridge was on the floor of the anteroom next to his office, slumped beside the empty vault, a lump on his crown from a tap of the gun barrel.

The old woman paused beside a pickup truck with a camper cover. There were acres of cars but few people on the parking lot. Satisfied that she was unnoticed, the old woman disappeared.

Under the camper cover the crone worked quickly. And, stripping off the thickly padded coat, gloves, hat, wig, and rubberoid face mask, she was transformed into a nice-looking young man, dark-haired and clean-cut, in jeans and a knitted shirt He stuffed the accoutrements of his disguise into a foot locker. He would burn the items a little later, in a place even more private than the camper.

Snapping open the stuffed shopping bag, he dipped his hands into the money. He’d estimated it as the finance director had taken it from the safe — twenty thousand at least. Not an earth-shaking haul, but a nice return on the execution of a carefully structured plan.

Slightly short of breath, the young man fashioned a stack of bills from the bag — twenties, fifties, and hundreds. He stuffed the roll into the pocket of his jeans, then he added the bulky shopping bag to the contents of the foot locker and closed and locked it. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he drove the camper carefully from the parking lot to the drive-in window of a nearby branch bank, where he deposited the money from his jeans pocket. Tucking the deposit slip into his wallet, he smiled a good afternoon to the teller and drove back to the hospital. The automatic barricade at the parking lot swung up, admitting the camper as the young man dropped quarters into the parking-fee slot. The camper wended about and finally slipped into a vacant space reasonably close to the main hospital building.

When the young man walked into the business office, he felt the residue of excitement. Employees had vacated desks and frosted-glass cubicles, clustering at the water cooler to exchange strained murmurs. A middle-aged woman spotted him and came over to the counter.

“It’s been quite an afternoon,” she said. “We had a robbery.”

“No!”

“Yes. An old woman, would you believe it? She walked into Mr. Kittridge’s office and forced him to open the vault at gunpoint, then cracked him on the head and disappeared. Mr. Kittridge sounded the alarm when he regained consciousness. He gave the police a full description, but I don’t know — you know how it is these days. So many unsolved crimes. But an old woman — would you believe it?” The young man commiserated with a shake of his head.

The cashier drew a steadying breath. “But that’s our problem, isn’t it? What can I do for you?”

“I came to take my wife home,” the young man said. “The doctor said she could leave as soon as I settle the bill. So I guess we can say goodbye and thanks for everything. It’s been a long five weeks.”

“And after five weeks,” the cashier said in sympathy, “quite a bill.”

“No sweat,” the young man said. “My private hospitalization plan should be adequate. But I’ll need to borrow a pen to write the check.”