Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (электронная книга TXT) 📗
There would almost certainly be shooting. I understand, Manfred nodded. Before you go on, please tell us how much money is usually transferred. Between fifty thousand and seventy thousand pounds Thursday of each month, when we make except on the last provision for the monthly paid workers on the mine properties. Then it will be closer to a hundred thousand. In addition there is always our ordinary cash float of approximately twenty-five thousand. They were gathered in the home of one of the mine officials of the Crown Deep gold mines. The same man had recruited the local stormiagers for the operation. He was a big red-faced man named Lourens, with the look of a heavy drinker. Manfred was not entirely happy with him; although so far he had found no real cause for his mistrust, he felt the man would be unreliable under stress.
Thank you, Meneer De Kok, please go on. The bank manager, Mr Cartwright, opens the back door of the building and the money is brought in. Of course, at this time in the afternoon the bank is closed to normal business. Mr Cartwright and I, together with our two senior tellers, count the money and issue a receipt. it is then deposited in the vault and locked up for the night. I have one key and half of the combination. Mr Cartwright keeps the other key and has the other half of the combination. That would be the time, Manfred anticipated. After the police escort has left, but before the vault is locked. That is a possibility, De Kok nodded. However, at that time it will still be light. Many people on the streets. Mr Cartwright is a difficult man, many things could go wrong.
May I tell you how I would arrange it, if I were in command? ,Thank you, Meneer De Kok. I'm glad of your assistance. It was ten minutes before midnight when Mr Peter Cartwright left the Freemason hall at the end of the meeting. He was the master of the lodge and he was still wearing his apron over his dinner jacket. He always parked his Morris in the lane behind the hall, but tonight as he sat in the driver's seat and fumbled with the ignition key, something hard was pressed into the back of his neck and a cold voice said quietly, This is a pistol, Mr Cartwright. If you do not do exactly as you are told, you will be shot in the back of the head. Drive to the bank, please. Terrified for his life and following the instructions of the two masked men in the back seat of the Morris, Peter Cartwright drove to the bank building and parked the Morris near the back door. There had been a spate of bank robberies over the last few months, at least four on the Witwatersrand and during one of them a bank guard had been shot dead.
Cartwright was in no doubt as to the danger of his position or the ruthlessness of his captors.
As soon as he climbed out of the Morris, they closed on each side of him, pinning his arms and hustling him to the back door of the bank.
One of them tapped upon it with the butt of his pistol and to Cartwright's astonishment it opened immediately. Only when he was inside did he realize how the robbers had gained access. His senior accountant Willem De Kok was already there, in pyjamas and dressinggown, his hair tousled and his face slack and ashen with terror. He had obviously been dragged from his bed.
I'm sorry, Mr Cartwright,he blubbered. They forced me. Pull yourself together, man, Cartwright snapped at him, his own fear making him brusque, then his expression changed as he saw the two women: De Kok's fat little wife and his own beloved Mary in hair curlers and pink fulllength dressing-gown with artificial pink roses down the front.
Peter, she wailed. Oh Peter, don't let them do anything. Stop that, Mary. Don't let them see you like that. Cartwright looked around at his captors. There were six of them, including the two who had waylaid him, but his training in character judgement enabled him to pick out the leader almost immediately, a tall, powerfully built man with a dense black beard curling out from under his cloth face-mask, and above the mask a pair of strangely pale eyes, like those of one of the big predatory cats. His fear turned to real terror when he looked into those yellow eyes, for he sensed that there was no compassion in them.
Open the vault, the man said. His English was heavily accented.
I don't have the key, Cartwright said, and the man with yellow eyes seized Mary Cartwright by the wrist and forced her to her knees.
You wouldn't dare, Cartwright blustered, and the man placed the muzzle of his pistol to Mary's temple.
MY wife is going to have a baby, Cartwright said.
Then you will want to spare her any further unpleasantness. open it for them, Peter. Let them have it. It's not our money, Mary screamed. It's the bank's. Give it to them, And she began to urinate in little spurts that soaked through the skirts of her dressing-gown.
Cartwright went to the green Chatwood steel door of the vault and drew his watch chain from his fob pocket with the key dangling on the end of it. Anger and humiliation seethed in him as he tumbled the combination and turned the key. He stood back while De Kok came forward to do the same. Then, while all their attention was on the vault door as it swung open, he glanced across at his desk. He kept the pistol in the top right-hand drawer. It was a .455 service Webley and there was always a round under the hammer.
By now his outrage at the treatment of his wife outweighed his terror.
Get the money! the leader with the pale eyes ordered and three of the robbers, carrying canvas kit bags, hurried into the vault.
My wife, Cartwright said, I must see to her. Nobody interfered as he lifted her to her feet and helped her to the desk. Tenderly he settled her into the chair, keeping up a flow of reassurance that covered the soft scrape as he opened the drawer.
He lifted the pistol and slipped it into the pocket of his masonic apron.
Then he backed away, leaving his wife at the desk. He had both hands raised to shoulder level in an attitude of surrender as he rejoined De Kok against the far wall. Both women were out of the line of his fire, but he waited until the three robbers re-emerged from the vault, each of them lugging a kitbag stuffed with wads of banknotes. Again all attention was on those bulging canvas bags, and Cartwright reached into the pocket of his white leather apron, brought out the pistol and his first shot crashed across the room in a long spurt of blue gunsmoke. He kept firing as the Luger bullets smashed into his body, and he was flung back against the wall. He fired until the hammer of the Webley snapped down on a spent cartridge, but his last bullet had gone into the concrete floor between his feet, and he was dead as he slumped down the bullet-pocked wall and huddled at the foot of it, with his blood puddling under him.
SHOOT-OUT AT RAND BANK TWO DEAD ROBBERY LINKED TO O B The letters OB caught Sarah Stander's eye on the placard outside the news-stand. She went in and bought candy for the children, as she always did, and then, as an apparent afterthought, she took a copy of the newspaper.
She crossed to the park and while the two toddlers romped on the lawn and she absently rocked the pram. with her foot to keep the baby quiet, she read the front-page article avidly.
Mr Peter Cartwright, the manager of a bank in Foraisburg, was last night shot dead while attempting to prevent a robbery at the bank's premises. One of the robbers was also shot dead, while a second man was seriously wounded and taken into custody by the police.
First estimates are that the four remaining robbers fled with cash in excess of 5,100,000.
police spokesman said this morning that preliminary interrogation of the wounded robber had established definite involvement by members of the Ossewa Brandwag in the outrage.
The Minister of the Interior, Colonel Blaine Malcomess, announced from his office in the House of Parliament in Cape Town that he had ordered an enquiry into the subversive activities of the O B and that any member of the public with information to offer should contact the nearest police station or telephone the following numbers: Johannesburg 78I 4, Cape Town 42444. The minister gave the assurance that all information would be treated in the strictest confidence.
