The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-11-05

The next one proved to be the towns main business street. The driver swung the wheel and the car proceeded to the right, through the Saturday morning trafic. Not far ahead was a stone-story building of white stone. Broad stone steps led up to the door; Q window beside the door. had big gold, letters an- nouncing that this was the Na- tional Bank of Maplehurst.
 The curb before the bank was vacant and the car unostentaticusly drew up to Q halt beside it. The driver did not shut the motor of; instead he simply shifted into low gear, kept his goot on the clutch pedal, and lolled behind the wheel in the deceptively careless manner which seemed to he his unvarying habit.
 The doors of the car opened. The two men in the back seat got out first; the red-haired man kept one hand in his coat pocket, and the smaller one folded his arms to carry large, ungainly something under his coat. They looked cas- ually up and down the street and walked into the bank, the red- haired man in the lead. Then the broad-shouldered youth in the front seat walked up the steps and stood by the door, sub-machine gun in his hands, peering up and down and across the street from under his hat brim.
 The bank was quiet and peace full, inside. MT. Hobart, back at the cashiers cage, was counting out thin Sheaf of bills to farm CT; he looked up and smiled dry, bankers smile as the farmer pock- eted the money and stepped away, and saw burly man with red hair striding toward him.
 This man wasted no moves. Half way across the lobby he took his right hand from his pocket. It came out holding a AS automatic, whose blue-steel finish glinted soft ly in the dim, light. MT. Hobart started at 1t, his eyes wide open. Before the first shock of surprise has passed he thought, with a flood or relief, of the tear gas inStalla- tion, and prepared to reach out with one foot and touch the but ton that would release the gas.
 But the red-haired man was ahead of him. In the fraction of a second that MT. Hobart was tightening his leg muscles to move his foot the 18 inches to the gas button, the man leveled his pistol and fired.
 In the ordered quiet of the little bank the crash of the automatic was like the explosion of 1O-inch shell. MT. Hobart spun half around and gently sank to the floor, oblivi- ous to guns, tear gas and every thing else. A stenographer. who was clicking a typewriter dozen feet away, gave a frightened little scream and looked up with a face as white as milk, her hands frozen to her typewriter. A young man who stood beside the second wicket gave nervous start and stared out through the grille, ignorant of the fact that his mouth was open wide enough to receive 8 baseball. The farmer who had just cashed check backed up against the wall, his face pasty under its tan, his hands automatically beginning to go up.
 MT. Dunn, president of the bank, opened the door to his private of flee and came into the lobby-to find dapper little man confront ing him with 8 vicious-l looking sub- machine gun. Mr. Dunn backed against the wall, his hands in the air. A moment later the stenogra- pher and the farmer joined him there, while the little man with the gun smiled evily and gently swung his gun back and forth so that its ugly muzzle pointed at one after another in turn.
 The red-haired man had gone be- hind the grille. He cast a contemp- tuous glance into MT. Hobart'S cage, saw MT. Hobart lying mo- tionless in a pool of blood, and mo- tioned with his automatic for the young clerk to open the safe. The clerk, not liking the carefree way in which the man waved the gun around-it looked, to his startled eyes, as big as a -obeyed, trembling so hard that his fingers could hardly twirl the knob. Step on it." said the red-haired ] man harShly. "T haven't got all