Fourteenth Chapter Pins Have Their Good Points Too

When Gustav and the Professor entered the bank the man in the stiff hat was already standing at a cage on which was a sign, “Paying and Receiving Teller.” He was waiting impatiently for his turn to come. The bank clerk was telephoning.

The Professor took up his stand near the thief and watched like a hunting dog. Gustav stood behind the man and had his hand in his pocket all ready to honk his horn.

Then the cashier came to the window and asked the Professor what he wanted.

“Thank you,” he said, “this gentleman was here before me.”

“What do you wish?” the cashier asked Herr Grundeis.

“Will you please change a hundred-mark note for two fifties and give me forty marks silver?” asked the latter as he reached into his pocket and laid a hundred-mark note and two twenties on the counter.

The cashier took the three notes and turned with them to his cash drawer.

“One moment!” cried the Professor loudly. “That money is stolen!”

“Whaaat?” asked the bank clerk, astonished, and turned about. His colleagues who occupied other offices, working at their mental arithmetic, stopped working and poked up their heads as if a snake had bitten them.

“That money does not belong to that man at all. He stole it from a friend of mine, and now he wants to change it so that no one can prove it,” declared the Professor.

“Such impudence I’ve never met in all my whole life,” said Herr Grundeis. Then he turned back to the cashier: “Pardon me!” and gave the Professor a ringing box on the ear.

“That will not change the affair in the least,” declared the Professor, as he gave Grundeis in return such a sound punch that the man had to hang on to the counter. And now Gustav honked three times frightfully loud. The bank clerks all jumped up, consumed with curiosity, and ran to the cashier’s cage. The vice president, head of the deposit department, came storming out of his office.

And—through the door came ten boys on the run, Emil in the lead, and surrounded the man with the stiff hat.

“What in thunderation is the matter with the young imps?” cried the vice president.

“The young imps think that I stole from one of them the money that I just gave to your cashier to change for me,” answered Herr Grundeis, and trembled with rage.

“That’s just what it is!” called Emil, and sprang up to the cage. “A hundred-mark note and two twenty-mark notes he stole from me. Yesterday afternoon. On the train from Neustadt to Berlin. While I was asleep!”

“Can you prove that?” asked the cashier sternly.

“I have been in Berlin for a week, and yesterday was in the city from morning till night,” said the thief, and laughed politely.

“What a dirty lie!” shouted Emil, and almost wept with rage.

“Can you prove that this is the man who sat with you in the train?” asked the vice president.

“Of course he can’t do that,” said the thief carelessly.

“Because if you say you were alone with him on the train, then you have no witnesses,” remarked one of the onlookers. And Emil’s comrades looked worried.

“No!” cried Emil. “No, I have too a witness. It’s Frau Jakob from Gross-Grünau. She sat in the compartment at first and got out later. And she told me to take her very best regards to Herr Kurzhals in Neustadt.”

“It looks as though you’d have to produce an alibi,” said the head of the deposit department to the thief. “Can you do that?”

“Naturally,” he declared. “I live over at the Hôtel Kreid—”

“But only since last night,” cried Gustav. “I got myself in there as elevator boy and I know, man!”

The bank clerks smiled at that and began to be more interested in the boys.

“For the present we had best keep the money here, Herr—” said the vice president, and tore off a memorandum slip on which to write his name and address.

“Grundeis is his name!” called Emil.

The man in the stiff hat laughed out loud and said, “There, you see there must be a mistake. My name is Müller.”

“Oh, how well he lies! He told me in the train that his name was Grundeis,” cried Emil, furious.

“Have you identification papers?” asked the cashier.

“Unfortunately, not with me,” answered the thief. “But if you will just wait a minute I’ll bring them over from the hotel.”

“The fellow is just lying. And it is my money. And I must have it back,” cried Emil.

“But even if that’s true, my boy,” explained the cashier, “it isn’t as simple as all that. How can you prove that the money is yours? Is your name on it, perhaps? Or did you write down the numbers on the notes?”

“Of course not,” said Emil. “Who thinks that he’s going to be robbed? But, anyway, it is my money, do you hear? And my mother gave it to me for my grandmother, who lives here at 15 Schumann Street.”

“Was there a corner torn on one of the notes, or something else that wasn’t just as usual?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Really, my good sirs, I declare, on my honor, the money is mine. I wouldn’t rob small children, would I?” asked the thief.

“Wait!” shouted Emil, and suddenly he was so happy that he jumped for joy. “Wait! In the train I fastened the notes into my coat with a pin. So there must be pinholes in the notes.”

The cashier held the notes up to the light. The others held their breath.

The thief took a step back. The vice president drummed nervously on the counter.

“The boy is right,” cried the cashier, pale with excitement. “There are actually pinholes in the notes.”

“And here is the pin, besides,” said Emil, and laid the pin proudly on the counter. “I pricked myself, too.”

At that the thief turned like lightning, shoved the children right and left so that they fell over each other, ran across the room, tore open the door, and was off.

“After him!” shouted the vice president.

Everybody ran for the door.

When they got to the street they found the thief already hemmed in by at least twenty small boys. They held onto his legs. They hung on his arms. They pulled at his coat. He thrashed around as if he were crazy, but the children did not loosen their hold.

And then came a policeman on the run, whom Pony Hütchen had brought with her little wheel. And the vice president asked him earnestly to arrest the man that was named Grundeis as well as Müller, as apparently he was a train thief.

The cashier asked for time off, took the money and the pin, and went with them. Well, it was a funny procession. The policeman, the bank clerk, the thief in the middle, and after them ninety or a hundred children! So they streamed to the station house.

Pony Hütchen rode near by on her little nickel-plated wheel, waved to the elated Emil, and called, “Emil, my boy! I’ll hurry home and tell them the whole story.”

The boy nodded back and said, “I’ll be home for lunch! Give them my love!”

Pony called again, “Do you know what you look like? Like a big school picnic!” Then she curved around the corner, ringing loudly.