A BANK FRAUD.
He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse;
He purchased raiment and forebore to pay;
He struck a trusting junior with a horse,
And won Gymkhanas in a doubtful way.
Then, 'twixt a vice and folly, turned aside
To do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied.
The Mess Room.
If Reggie Burke were in India now, he would resent this tale being
told; but as he is in Hong-Kong and won't see it, the telling is
safe. He was the man who worked the big fraud on the Sind and
Sialkote Bank. He was manager of an up-country Branch, and a sound
practical man with a large experience of native loan and insurance
work. He could combine the frivolities of ordinary life with his
work, and yet do well. Reggie Burke rode anything that would let
him get up, danced as neatly as he rode, and was wanted for every
sort of amusement in the Station.
As he said himself, and as many men found out rather to their
surprise, there were two Burkes, both very much at your service.
"Reggie Burke," between four and ten, ready for anything from a hot-
weather gymkhana to a riding-picnic; and, between ten and four, "Mr.
Reginald Burke, Manager of the Sind and Sialkote Branch Bank." You
might play polo with him one afternoon and hear him express his
opinions when a man crossed; and you might call on him next morning
to raise a two-thousand rupee loan on a five hundred pound
insurance-policy, eighty pounds paid in premiums. He would
recognize you, but you would have some trouble in recognizing him.
The Directors of the Bank--it had its headquarters in Calcutta and
its General Manager's word carried weight with the Government--
picked their men well. They had tested Reggie up to a fairly severe
breaking-strain. They trusted him just as much as Directors ever
trust Managers. You must see for yourself whether their trust was
misplaced.
Reggie's Branch was in a big Station, and worked with the usual
staff--one Manager, one Accountant, both English, a Cashier, and a
horde of native clerks; besides the Police patrol at nights outside.
The bulk of its work, for it was in a thriving district, was hoondi
and accommodation of all kinds. A fool has no grip of this sort of
business; and a clever man who does not go about among his clients,
and know more than a little of their affairs, is worse than a fool.
Reggie was young-looking, clean-shaved, with a twinkle in his eye,
and a head that nothing short of a gallon of the Gunners' Madeira
could make any impression on.
One day, at a big dinner, he announced casually that the Directors
had shifted on to him a Natural Curiosity, from England, in the
Accountant line. He was perfectly correct. Mr. Silas Riley,
Accountant, was a MOST curious animal--a long, gawky, rawboned
Yorkshireman, full of the savage self-conceit that blossom's only in
the best county in England. Arrogance was a mild word for the
mental attitude of Mr. S. Riley. He had worked himself up, after
seven years, to a Cashier's position in a Huddersfield Bank; and all
his experience lay among the factories of the North. Perhaps he
would have done better on the Bombay side, where they are happy with
one-half per cent. profits, and money is cheap. He was useless for
Upper India and a wheat Province, where a man wants a large head and
a touch of imagination if he is to turn out a satisfactory balance-
sheet.
He was wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, being new to the
country, had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct from
Home work. Like most clever self-made men, he had much simplicity
in his nature; and, somehow or other, had construed the ordinarily
polite terms of his letter of engagement into a belief that the
Directors had chosen him on account of his special and brilliant
talents, and that they set great store by him. This notion grew and
crystallized; thus adding to his natural North-country conceit.
Further, he was delicate, suffered from some trouble in his chest,
and was short in his temper.
You will admit that Reggie had reason to call his new Accountant a
Natural Curiosity. The two men failed to hit it off at all. Riley
considered Reggie a wild, feather-headed idiot, given to Heaven only
knew what dissipation in low places called "Messes," and totally
unfit for the serious and solemn vocation of banking. He could
never get over Reggie's look of youth and "you-be-damned" air; and
he couldn't understand Reggie's friends--clean-built, careless men
in the Army--who rode over to big Sunday breakfasts at the Bank, and
told sultry stories till Riley got up and left the room. Riley was
always showing Reggie how the business ought to be conducted, and
Reggie had more than once to remind him that seven years' limited
experience between Huddersfield and Beverly did not qualify a man to
steer a big up-country business. Then Riley sulked and referred to
himself as a pillar of the Bank and a cherished friend of the
Directors, and Reggie tore his hair. If a man's English
subordinates fail him in this country, he comes to a hard time
indeed, for native help has strict limitations. In the winter Riley
went sick for weeks at a time with his lung complaint, and this
threw more work on Reggie. But he preferred it to the everlasting
friction when Riley was well.
One of the Travelling Inspectors of the Bank discovered these
collapses and reported them to the Directors. Now Riley had been
foisted on the Bank by an M. P., who wanted the support of Riley's
father, who, again, was anxious to get his son out to a warmer
climate because of those lungs. The M. P. had an interest in the
Bank; but one of the Directors wanted to advance a nominee of his
own; and, after Riley's father had died, he made the rest of the
Board see that an Accountant who was sick for half the year, had
better give place to a healthy man. If Riley had known the real
story of his appointment, he might have behaved better; but knowing
nothing, his stretches of sickness alternated with restless,
persistent, meddling irritation of Reggie, and all the hundred ways
in which conceit in a subordinate situation can find play. Reggie
used to call him striking and hair-curling names behind his back as
a relief to his own feelings; but he never abused him to his face,
because he said: "Riley is such a frail beast that half of his
loathsome conceit is due to pains in the chest."
Late one April, Riley went very sick indeed. The doctor punched him
and thumped him, and told him he would be better before long. Then
the doctor went to Reggie and said:--"Do you know how sick your
Accountant is?" "No!" said Reggie--"The worse the better, confound
him! He's a clacking nuisance when he's well. I'll let you take
away the Bank Safe if you can drug him silent for this hot-weather."
But the doctor did not laugh--"Man, I'm not joking," he said. "I'll
give him another three months in his bed and a week or so more to
die in. On my honor and reputation that's all the grace he has in
this world. Consumption has hold of him to the marrow."
Reggie's face changed at once into the face of "Mr. Reginald Burke,"
and he answered:--"What can I do?"
"Nothing," said the doctor. "For all practical purposes the man is
dead already. Keep him quiet and cheerful and tell him he's going
to recover. That's all. I'll look after him to the end, of
course."
The doctor went away, and Reggie sat down to open the evening mail.
His first letter was one from the Directors, intimating for his
information that Mr. Riley was to resign, under a month's notice, by
the terms of his agreement, telling Reggie that their letter to
Riley would follow and advising Reggie of the coming of a new
Accountant, a man whom Reggie knew and liked.
Reggie lit a cheroot, and, before he had finished smoking, he had
sketched the outline of a fraud. He put away--"burked"--the
Directors letter, and went in to talk to Riley, who was as
ungracious as usual, and fretting himself over the way the bank
would run during his illness. He never thought of the extra work on
Reggie's shoulders, but solely of the damage to his own prospects of
advancement. Then Reggie assured him that everything would be well,
and that he, Reggie, would confer with Riley daily on the management
of the Bank. Riley was a little soothed, but he hinted in as many
words that he did not think much of Reggie's business capacity.
Reggie was humble. And he had letters in his desk from the
Directors that a Gilbarte or a Hardie might have been proud of!
The days passed in the big darkened house, and the Directors' letter
of dismissal to Riley came and was put away by Reggie, who, every
evening, brought the books to Riley's room, and showed him what had
been going forward, while Riley snarled. Reggie did his best to
make statements pleasing to Riley, but the Accountant was sure that
the Bank was going to rack and ruin without him. In June, as the
lying in bed told on his spirit, he asked whether his absence had
been noted by the Directors, and Reggie said that they had written
most sympathetic letters, hoping that he would be able to resume his
valuable services before long. He showed Riley the letters: and
Riley said that the Directors ought to have written to him direct.
A few days later, Reggie opened Riley's mail in the half-light of
the room, and gave him the sheet--not the envelope--of a letter to
Riley from the Directors. Riley said he would thank Reggie not to
interfere with his private papers, specially as Reggie knew he was
too weak to open his own letters. Reggie apologized.
Then Riley's mood changed, and he lectured Reggie on his evil ways:
his horses and his bad friends. "Of course, lying here on my back,
Mr. Burke, I can't keep you straight; but when I'm well, I DO hope
you'll pay some heed to my words." Reggie, who had dropped polo,
and dinners, and tennis, and all to attend to Riley, said that he
was penitent and settled Riley's head on the pillow and heard him
fret and contradict in hard, dry, hacking whispers, without a sign
of impatience. This at the end of a heavy day's office work, doing
double duty, in the latter half of June.
When the new Accountant came, Reggie told him the facts of the case,
and announced to Riley that he had a guest staying with him. Riley
said that he might have had more consideration than to entertain his
"doubtful friends" at such a time. Reggie made Carron, the new
Accountant, sleep at the Club in consequence. Carron's arrival took
some of the heavy work off his shoulders, and he had time to attend
to Riley's exactions--to explain, soothe, invent, and settle and
resettle the poor wretch in bed, and to forge complimentary letters
from Calcutta. At the end of the first month, Riley wished to send
some money home to his mother. Reggie sent the draft. At the end
of the second month, Riley's salary came in just the same. Reggie
paid it out of his own pocket; and, with it, wrote Riley a beautiful
letter from the Directors.
Riley was very ill indeed, but the flame of his life burnt
unsteadily. Now and then he would be cheerful and confident about
the future, sketching plans for going Home and seeing his mother.
Reggie listened patiently when the office work was over, and
encouraged him.
At other times Riley insisted on Reggie's reading the Bible and grim
"Methody" tracts to him. Out of these tracts he pointed morals
directed at his Manager. But he always found time to worry Reggie
about the working of the Bank, and to show him where the weak points
lay.
This in-door, sick-room life and constant strains wore Reggie down a
good deal, and shook his nerves, and lowered his billiard-play by
forty points. But the business of the Bank, and the business of the
sick-room, had to go on, though the glass was 116 degrees in the
shade.
At the end of the third month, Riley was sinking fast, and had begun
to realize that he was very sick. But the conceit that made him
worry Reggie, kept him from believing the worst. "He wants some
sort of mental stimulant if he is to drag on," said the doctor.
"Keep him interested in life if you care about his living." So
Riley, contrary to all the laws of business and the finance,
received a 25-per-cent, rise of salary from the Directors. The
"mental stimulant" succeeded beautifully. Riley was happy and
cheerful, and, as is often the case in consumption, healthiest in
mind when the body was weakest. He lingered for a full month,
snarling and fretting about the Bank, talking of the future, hearing
the Bible read, lecturing Reggie on sin, and wondering when he would
be able to move abroad.
But at the end of September, one mercilessly hot evening, he rose up
in his bed with a little gasp, and said quickly to Reggie:--"Mr.
Burke, I am going to die. I know it in myself. My chest is all
hollow inside, and there's nothing to breathe with. To the best of
my knowledge I have done nowt"--he was returning to the talk of his
boyhood--"to lie heavy on my conscience. God be thanked, I have
been preserved from the grosser forms of sin; and I counsel YOU, Mr.
Burke . . . ."
Here his voice died down, and Reggie stooped over him.
"Send my salary for September to my mother. . . . done great things
with the Bank if I had been spared . . . . mistaken policy . . . .
no fault of mine."
Then he turned his face to the wall and died.
Reggie drew the sheet over Its face, and went out into the verandah,
with his last "mental stimulant"--a letter of condolence and
sympathy from the Directors--unused in his pocket.
"If I'd been only ten minutes earlier," thought Reggie, "I might
have heartened him up to pull through another day."
