With the package and letter came a request from Henry Blaine which those in power at the Brooklyn & Queens Bank were only too glad to accede to, in order to ingratiate themselves with the great investigator.
In accordance with this request, therefore, the affair was made known by the bank-officials to the clerks as a 40 matter of long standing which had only just been rediscovered in an old vault, and the subordinates discussed it among themselves with the gusto of those whose lives were bounded by gilt cages, and circumscribed by rules of silence. It was not unusual, therefore, that the new clerk, Alfred Hicks, should have heard of it, but it was unusual that he should find it expedient to make a detour on his way to work the next morning which would take him to the gate of Walter Pennold’s modest home. Perhaps the fact that Alfred Hicks’ real name was Guy Morrow and that a letter received early that morning from Henry Blaine’s office, giving Pennold’s address and a single line of instruction may have had much to do with his matutinal visit.
Be that as it may, Morrow, the dapper young bank-clerk, found in the Pennold household a grizzled, middle-aged man, with shifty, suspicious eyes and a moist hand-clasp; behind him appeared a shrewish, thin-haired wife who eyed the intruder from the first with ill-concealed animosity.
He smiled––that frank, winning smile which had helped to land more men behind the bars than the astuteness of many of his seniors––and said: “I’m a clerk in the Brooklyn & Queens Bank, Mr. Pennold, and we have a box of securities there evidently belonging to one Jimmy Brunell. No one knows anything about it and no note came with it except a line which read: ‘Hold for Jim Brunell. See Walter Pennold of Brooklyn.’ Now you’re the only Walter Pennold who banks with the B. & Q. and I thought you might like to know about it. There are over two hundred thousand dollars in securities and they have evidently been left there by somebody as conscience-money. You can go to the bank and see the people about it, of course. In fact, I understand 41 they are going to write you a letter concerning it, but I thought you might like to know of it in advance. In case this Mr. Brunell is alive, they will pay him the money on demand, or if dead, to his heirs after him.”
The middle-aged man with the shifty eyes spat cautiously, and then, rubbing his stubby chin with a hairy, freckled hand, observed:
“Well, young man, I’m Pennold, all right. I do some business with the Brooklyn & Queens people––small business, of course, for we poor honest folk haven’t the money to put in finance that the big stock-holders have. I don’t know where you can find this man Brunell, haven’t heard of him in years, but I understand he went wrong. Ain’t that so, Mame?”
The hatchet-faced woman nodded her head in slow and non-committal thought.
Pennold edged a little nearer his unknown guest and asked in a tone of would-be heartiness. “And what might your name be? You’re a bright-looking feller to be a bank-clerk––not the stolid, plodding kind.”
Morrow chuckled again.
“My name is Hicks. I live at 46 Jefferson Place. It’s only a little way from here, you know.” He swung his lunch-box nonchalantly. “Of course, bank-clerking don’t get you anywhere, but it’s steady, such as it is, and I go out with the boys a lot.” He added confidentially: “The ponies are still running, you know, even if the betting-ring is closed––and there are other ways––” He paused significantly.