The Thief

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 791, 17 September 1954, Page 24

The Thief

A Short Story by

DESMOND

STONE

HE Big Four met every afternoon at 3.30. Sometimes they discussed the future of Germany, solving the boundary problems in double-quick time. Other days they ranged® far over the East. Now and again they descended to humbler things-to carrots that persisted in splitting and to weather that gave the town four seasons in a day. But mostly they talked of the business itself, of new stock on the water and the takings of the day before. There was the manager, the sub-manager, the chief clerk and the accountant. Tea at 3.30 was an informal affair. And to all but the accountant, the food they ate was incidental-a mere plate to be gathered around. Only Mr. White regarded the cakes with a kindling eye, making a swift mental selection !ong before the tea was poured. It was, on the whole, a discreet and restrained kind of greed. Mr. White, when the occasion demanded it, was prepared to feast with his eyes and fast with his mouth. If, after the -first. two rounds, one cake lay small and lonely on the plate, he heroically refrained from taking it-only to see the others do the same. When a tragedy like this occurred, and the left-over was thrown away, Mr. White hungered in silence. It was a measure of his concern for food that he rated the manager’s secretaries good or bad according to the afternoon tea they dispensed. A girl who dumped down oatmeal wafers day after day was scarcely worth keeping on. If she showed an imaginative touch, ushering in buttered scones on one day and pink meringues on another, she was a girl out of the box. She might be an indifferent speller, she might not even be able to read her own shorthand. But these things were as nothing if she knew how to adventure with cakes. _ "What do you say, Mr. White?" said the manager one afternoon, his hand hovering uncertainly above a plate of

custard squares of violent hue. "Shall I take the risk?" "I don’t recommend them," said the accountant without thinking. "They lie a little heavy on the tummy." "Ah hah," said the manager jocularly. "Sounds as if you’ve been doing some sampling on the sly." Everybody laughed except Mr. White, who bent his head over his cup. The manager had rattled a skeleton in his cupboard. Though he would have nobody know it, the accountant had had a secret surprised. It was his habit and his pleasure to raid the attAENOON tea cakes. It was all the fault of the mudickee men. Mr. White had smoked his cigarettes happily for 20 years, enjoying every one. When at first the specialists had advanced their theories, he had been openly sceptical. If Sir Winston Churchill could smoke those tremendous cigars without harm, he was perfectly safe with cigarettes. But when, with the itritating insistency of a dripping tap, the doctors rammed their warnings home, some of the savour Of smoking began to depart. He felt the first prickings of alarm. And with every warning multiplied a thousand times by his wife we his mother, life was suddenly joyIn the end Mr. White stopped smoking. The void was enormous. For the first few days he loaded his mouth with chewing gum. He chewed it until his jaw began to ache, until his stomach started to revolt. After that he began to have snacks between meals-a sandwich here and an apple or two there. It was easy at home, where he thought of the afternoon tea cakes? It was not like a case of common: theft. _With the others, the accountant paid 2/6 a week for his tea and cakes, so that how and when and where he ate his share was entirely his own affair. For all that, he admitted the need for stealth. There was his reputation to be considered. Mr. White valued nothing so much as his dignity and he took care to keep it intact. No one ever saw him sliding down

the banisters: no one evet found him waltzing in his room for the sheer dove of life. An accountant had his authority to maintain. Although Mr. White was guilty of nothing more than anticipation by an hour or two, he planned his raids with a criminal’s cunning. He knew that the girl bought the cakes in the morning, arranged them on the plate, put the plate in a tin and the tin in a cupboard with a sliding door. All he had to do was wait until she went out for the mail, step into the adjoining room, help himself to a cake, and retire behind his desk with his spoils. The accountant never became careless. If the sliding door was open when he went to the cupboard, he took care to leave it open. If the lid of the tin was slightly raised, he left it in exactly the same position. And if there was one ‘cake on the plate more conspicuous than the rest-a cream puff, for example, always stood out-he left it severely alone, confining his depredations to the commoner cakes less easily missed. He had one or two narrow escapes. There was the day when he dropped the tin on the floor and had only enough time to shovel the biscuits back before the secretary returned. On another occasion the chief clerk surprised him halfway through a slice of fruit cake, so that he had to swallow convulsively and park the rest in his drawer. It was mouldy when he found it again. There was the time, too, when he was called to the phone with the remains of a bun in his mouth, his speaking voice reduced to a gurgle. The operator had to ask him twice if he was working. r But it was not until the new girl arrived that his troubles really began. She was much sharper than the rest, and less easily awed by the weight of his authority. It was no time at all before she was asking the most disconcerting questions. "You know," she said to him one afternoon, "I could have sworn I put nine cakes on the plate. Now there are only eight." Mr. White really didn’t know anything about that. Affecting to despise food as one of the grosser necessities of life, he dismissed the question with a fine sweeping carelessness. "It’s very odd," she persisted. _ "Perhaps it’s the mice," he suggested. "They’re very bad this year." "But mice," she said scornfully, "don’t open tins." "Ah, but they’re cunning devils," he told her. "You never know with mice." Nothing more was said, but Mr. White thought it wise to wait a day or

two before resuming his raids. He was no sooner back to his old tricks when the chit of a girl was at him again. "I’m sure," she said, "there’s someone taking these cakes." "Oh, come, now," he protested, "we’re all of us very well fed." "Nevertheless, I’m positive." "It might be the office boy," he suggested. "He always looks hungry to me, and he always looks hungrily at you." Once again the matter was dropped and after a week or two of abstinence Mr, White returned to the tin. Did he but know it, the game was nearly up. It was a day full of spring and the dust of spring cleaning when the trap was sprung. The girl went out as usual to get the mail. And when the clatter of her feet had died away, Mr. White tiptoed as usual into her room. He opened the cupboard and lifted the lid of the tin. There on the plate were a dozen of the most delicious-looking cakes he had ever seen. Mr. White for once was unable to make up his mind. He simply couldn’t decide which one he liked best. He hesitated, and his arm was still deep in the cupboard when the door handle rattled and the secretary confronted him. Thoughts flashed through Mr. White's head quicker than visions through the mind of a drowning man. He thought of all the things he would like to have said-of hunger new born of abstinence, of his moral right to cakes he had helped to pay for, of an -accountant’s pleasure to do as he damn well pleased. But the words, when they came, were quite uncontrollable. "Oh," he said idiotically, "I didn’t expect you so soon." *The girl just stood there, shocked and silent. Her expression told him every-thing-that cream puffs were but a beginning, a tentative first step to a raid on the petty cash and ultimately to full embezzlement. The prison gates swinging open before him, Mr. White surrendered there and then. All his pain-fully-acquired will power went up in smoke. "T wonder," he said weakly, "if I might have one of your cigarettes." Wordless still, the girl. opened her purse and tipped the contents of a packet towards him. He took one. It felt hard and cold, like the butt of a revolver handed to a man with a crime to expiate. He felt a wild desire to press the cork tip to his forehead. But there was no quick way out for him, It would be lingering, like the doctors said. "Ah, well," he told her lamely, "a man -has to die some time, and one way’s as good as another." And he put a match to his cigarette.