CRIME: The Elder & the Bandit

CRIME The Elder & the Bandit Mild-mannered Charles A. Crist peered put of his cashier's cage last week to see a young man with his face wrapped in a red bandanna pointing a revolver at him. The Maybrook (N.Y.) National Bank was making up a $30,000 railroad workers' payroll. Out of the corner of his eye 58-year-old Crist saw two other muffled men with menacing revolvers. Said the first young man: "This is a stickup." Crist, an elder of the First Reformed Church in nearby Walden, retorted: "You go to hell," bounced to one side and pressed his foot on a pedal that shot clouds of tear gas from ducts over the tellers' windows.

The bandit fired two shots which were stopped by the bulletproof glass of Crist's window. Then he and his pals frantically dropped to their knees and crawled, choking, through the doorway. Outside they jumped into a car driven by an accomplice, and vanished out of Maybrook (pop. 1,200).

Roadblocks hastily put up by State Troopers trapped two of the men; the other two were tracked to an apartment in Brooklyn, 78 miles away.

Back in Maybrook, Elder Crist and other employees, covering their faces with their handkerchiefs, fanned out the little white frame bank, and while the air was clearing, hung out a sign: "Due to Hold Up Bank Closed: Nothing taken"