Read Online Power, The by Frank M. Robinson - Free Book Online Page A

book? Who do you think made out the entries?”
    The teller fluttered his hands helplessly. “There’s no record sheet for you and no identification card that we ask all depositors to sign. I don’t know how this all happened. Really, I …”
    Tanner’s voice was thick. “Why don’t you get the manager?”
    The manager was a thin, balding man with steel-framed glasses and darting, suspicious eyes. He glanced at the bank book, frowned, and went to a rack of cards at the rear of the teller’s cage. When he came back he had another book like the one Tanner had been issued.
    “This book you have—it’s yours?”
    “It’s got my name on it.”
    The manager gave him a nasty look and showed him the book he held in his hand. “It so happens we already have a book by the same number. The man to whom it was issued has held it for the last ten years. I don’t know how you got hold of this book and numbered it and I don’t know how you got it filled out but forgery is a criminal offense.”
    He suddenly stopped and looked as if he wished he had called the police immediately.
    Tanner left him standing there and walked out.
    He had had close to a thousand dollars in the bank and now it was down the drain. Somebody had gotten there ahead of him. Somebody who had pulled his card and substituted another. Or, to be more exact, somebody had persuaded the teller to pull the card.
    You can’t run very far without money.
    Then he remembered and felt in his coat pocket. The check. He had never gotten around to cashing it at the bank. But there were half a dozen currency exchanges he knew of off-hand.
    The first one he tried cashed it without question and he felt momentarily pleased at the small victory. Then he realized, at best, he had just postponed the situation.
    He stopped in at a small restaurant and ordered coffee. He felt worn out, as if he had run a mile or had been sick for a long time. The noose was drawing tighter. Any day, any hour, somebody would yank on the rope and he’d be left dangling. The Enemy obviously wanted something more than just to get him off the committee.
    Why him?
    He looked at the restaurant clock. Twelve o’clock, and he had an appointment with the dentist for one.
    He fumbled through his pockets for a dime. It had been only a cleaning job and that could be put off to another day. And probably another city, since he wasn’t going to be in this one too much longer.
    He dialed the number, gave his name to the receptionist, and asked for a cancellation. There was a moment of silence.
    “Would you repeat your name, sir?”
    He did.
    “I’m sorry, sir, but we have no appointment for anybody named Tanner. ”
    “I made it a week ago,” he said slowly. “For one o’clock.”
    Another pause.
    “Dr. Landgraf doesn’t recall you, Mr. Tanner. However, if you wish to make an appointment …”
    He hung up.
    No mail since Monday. Because his name had somehow disappeared from all the lists? Because all the files that mentioned him had been yanked? And there was the case of the records in Wisconsin and the disappearance of his thesis from the library. And then the bank book and his appointment with the dentist …
    He was being isolated, he thought. Anything in print that mentioned his name was disappearing. People were being conditioned to forget that he had ever existed. One by one his connections with people were being severed. It was like a dental surgeon blocking off the nerves with shots of Novocain.
    Just before the tooth was pulled.

6
     
    THEY buried John Olson Friday morning.
    It was in a little cemetery just outside the city limits, on a morning that was overcast and cloudy with a cold wind that blew off the choppy lake.
    The priest stood at the head of the grave and said a few words, words that were tumbled and lost in the wind that flapped his vestments. Then the two gravediggers worked the small rollers that held the canvas straps supporting the coffin and it lurched and slowly