Waltz Into Darkness

19

Hatless, coatless, hair awry, just as the discovery had found him in his room moments before, he was running like someone demented through the quiet, night-lidded streets now, unable to find a coach and too crazed to stand still and wait for one in any one given place. Onward, ever onward, toward an address that had fortuitously recurred to him just now, when he needed it most. The house of the banker Simms, halfway across New Orleans. He would have run the whole distance on foot, to get there, if necessary.

But luckily, as he came to a four-way crossing, a gaslit post brooding over it in sulphuric yellow-green, he spied a carriage just ahead, returning idle from some recent hire, screaming after it and without waiting for it to come back and get him, ran down the roadway after it full tilt; floundered into it and choked out Simms’ address.

At the banker’s house he rang the bell like fury.

A colored servant led him in, showing an offended mien at his impetuosity.

“He’s at supper, sir,” she said disapprovingly. “If you’ll have the patience to seat yourself just a few minutes and wait till he gets through—”

“No matter,” he panted. “This can’t wait! Ask him to come out here a moment—”

The banker came out into the hall, brow beetling with annoyance, still chewing food and with a napkin still trussed about his collar. When he saw who it was his face cleared.

“Mr. Durand!” he said heartily. “What brings you here at such an hour? Will you come in and join us at table?” Then noting his distracted appearance more closely as he came nearer, “You’re all upset— What’s the matter, man? Bring him some brandy, Becky. A chair—”

Durand swept a curt hand offside in refusal of the offered restoratives. “My money—” he gasped out.

“What is it, Mr. Durand? What of your money?”

“Is it there—? Has it been touched—? When you closed at three, what was my balance on your ledgers—?”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Durand. No one can touch your money. It’s safeguarded. No one but yourself and your wife—”

He caught an inkling of something from the agonized expression that had flitted across Durand’s face just then.

“You mean—?” he breathed, appalled.

“I have to know— Now, tonight— For the love of God, Mr. Simms, do something for me, help me— Don’t keep me waiting like this—”

The banker wrenched off his napkin, cast it from him, in sign his meal was ended for that evening at least. “My chief teller,” he said in quick-formed decision. “My chief teller would know. That would be quicker than going to the bank; we’d have to open up and go over the day’s transactions—”

“Where can I find him?” Durand was already on his way toward the door and out again.

“No, no, I’ll go with you. Wait for me just a second—” Simms hurriedly snatched at his hat and a silken throat muffler. “What is it, what has happened, Mr. Durand?”

“I’m afraid to say, until I find out,” Durand said desolately. “I’m afraid even to think—”

Simms had to stop first and secure his teller’s home address; then they hurriedly left, climbed back into the same carriage that had brought Durand, and were driven to a frugal little squeezed-in house on Dumaine Street.

Simms got out, deterred Durand with a kindly intended gesture of his hand, evidently hoping to spare him as much as possible.

“Suppose you wait here. I’ll go in and talk to him.”

He went inside to be gone perhaps ten minutes at the most. To Durand it seemed he had been left out there the whole night.

At last the door opened and Simms had reappeared. Durand leaped, as though a spring had been released, to meet him, trying to read his face for the tidings as he went toward him. It looked none too sanguine.

“What is it? For God’s sake, tell me!”

“Steady, Mr. Durand, steady.” Simms put a supporting arm about him just below the turn of the shoulders. “You had thirty thousand, fifty-one dollars, forty cents in your check-cashing account and twenty thousand and ten in your savings account this morning when we opened for business—”

“I know that! I know that already! That isn’t what I want to know—”

The teller had followed Simms out. The manager gestured to him surreptitiously, handing over to him the unwelcome responsibility of answering the question.

“Your wife appeared at five minutes of three to make a last-minute withdrawal,” the teller said.

“Your balance at closing-time was fifty-one dollars, forty cents in the one account, ten dollars in the other. To have closed them both out entirely, your own signature would have been necessary.”