The one insignificant fact upon which turned the following incident in the joint experiences of Mr Carlyle and Max Carrados was merely this: that having called upon his friend just at the moment when the private detective was on the point of leaving his office to go to the safe deposit in Lucas Street, Piccadilly, the blind amateur accompanied him, and for ten minutes amused himself by sitting quite quietly among the palms in the centre of the circular hall while Mr Carlyle was occupied with his deed-box in one of the little compartments provided for the purpose.
The Lucas Street depository was then (it has since been converted into a picture palace) generally accepted as being one of the strongest places in London. The front of the building was constructed to represent a gigantic safe door, and under the colloquial designation of “The Safe” the place had passed into a synonym for all that was secure and impregnable. Half of the marketable securities in the west of London were popularly reported to have seen the inside of its coffers at one time or another, together with the same generous proportion of family jewels. However exaggerated an estimate this might be, the substratum of truth was solid and auriferous enough to dazzle the imagination. When ordinary safes were being carried bodily away with impunity or ingeniously fused open by the scientifically equipped cracksman, nervous bond-holders turned with relief to the attractions of an establishment whose modest claim was summed up in its telegraphic address: “Impregnable.” To it went also the jewel-case between the lady’s social engagements, and when in due course “the family” journeyed north—or south, east or west—whenever, in short, the London house was closed, its capacious storerooms received the plate-chest as an established custom. Not a few traders also—jewellers, financiers, dealers in pictures, antiques and costly bijouterie, for instance—constantly used its facilities for any stock that they did not requite immediately to hand.
There was only one entrance to the place, an exaggerated keyhole, to carry out the similitude of the safe-door alluded to. The ground floor was occupied by the ordinary offices of the company; all the strong-rooms and safes lay in the steel-cased basement. This was reached both by a lift and by a flight of steps. In either case the visitor found before him a grille of massive proportions. Behind its bars stood a formidable commissionaire who never left his post, his sole duty being to open and close the grille to arriving and departing clients. Beyond this, a short passage led into the round central hall where Carrados was waiting. From this part, other passages radiated off to the vaults and strong-rooms, each one barred from the hall by a grille scarcely less ponderous than the first one. The doors of the various private rooms put at the disposal of the company’s clients, and that of the manager’s office, filled the wall-space between the radiating passages. Everything was very quiet, everything looked very bright, and everything seemed hopelessly impregnable.
“But I wonder?” ran Carrados’s dubious reflection; as he reached this point.
“Sorry to have kept you so long, my dear Max,” broke in Mr Carlyle’s crisp voice. He had emerged from his compartment and was crossing the hall, deed-box in hand. “Another minute and I will be with you.”
Carrados smiled and nodded and resumed his former expression, which was merely that of an uninterested gentleman waiting patiently for another. It is something of an attainment to watch closely without betraying undue curiosity, but others of the senses—hearing and smelling, for instance—can be keenly engaged while the observer possibly has the appearance of falling asleep.
“Now,” announced Mr Carlyle, returning briskly to his friend’s chair, and drawing on his grey suede gloves.
“You are in no particular hurry?”
“No,” admitted the professional man, with the slowness of mild surprise. “Not at all. What do you propose?”
“It is very pleasant here,” replied Carrados tranquilly. “Very cool and restful with this armoured steel between us and the dust and scurry of the hot July afternoon above. I propose remaining here for a few minutes longer.”
“Certainly,” agreed Mr Carlyle, taking the nearest chair and eyeing Carrados as though he had a shrewd suspicion of something more than met the ear. “I believe some very interesting people rent safes here. We may encounter a bishop, or a winning jockey, or even a musical comedy actress. Unfortunately it seems to be rather a slack time.”
“Two men came down while you were in your cubicle,” remarked Carrados casually. “The first took the lift. I imagine that he was a middle-aged, rather portly man. He carried a stick, wore a silk hat, and used spectacles for close sight. The other came by the stairway. I infer that he arrived at the top immediately after the lift had gone. He ran down the steps, so that the two were admitted at the same time, but the second man, though the more active of the pair, hung back for a moment in the passage and the portly one was the first to go to his safe.”
Mr Carlyle’s knowing look expressed: “Go on, my friend; you are coming to something.” But he merely contributed an encouraging “Yes?”
“When you emerged just now our second man quietly opened the door of his pen a fraction. Doubtless he looked out. Then he closed it as quietly again. You were not his man, Louis.”
“I am grateful,” said Mr Carlyle expressively. “What next, Louis?”
“That is all; they are still closeted.”
Both were silent for a moment. Mr Carlyle’s feeling was one of unconfessed perplexity. So far the incident was utterly trivial in his eyes; but he knew that the trifles which appeared significant to Max had a way of standing out like signposts when the time came to look back over an episode. Carrados’s sightless faculties seemed indeed to keep him just a move ahead as the game progressed.
“Is there really anything in it, Max?” he asked at length.
“Who can say?” replied Carrados. “At least we may wait to see them go. Those tin deed-boxes now. There is one to each safe, I think?”
“Yes, so I imagine. The practice is to carry the box to your private lair and there unlock it and do your business. Then you lock it up again and take it back to your safe.”
“Steady! our first man,” whispered Carrados hurriedly. “Here, look at this with me.” He opened a paper—a prospectus—which he pulled from his pocket, and they affected to study its contents together.
“You were about right, my friend,” muttered Mr Carlyle, pointing to a paragraph of assumed interest. “Hat, stick and spectacles. He is a clean-shaven, pink-faced old boy. I believe—yes, I know the man by sight. He is a bookmaker in a large way, I am told.”
“Here comes the other,” whispered Carrados.
The bookmaker passed across the hall, joined on his way by the manager whose duty it was to counterlock the safe, and disappeared along one of the passages. The second man sauntered up and down, waiting his turn. Mr Carlyle reported his movements in an undertone and described him. He was a younger man than the other, of medium height, and passably well dressed in a quiet lounge suit, green Alpine hat and brown shoes. By the time the detective had reached his wavy chestnut hair, large and rather ragged moustache, and sandy, freckled complexion, the first man had completed his business and was leaving the place.
“It isn’t an exchange day, at all events,” said Mr Carlyle. “His inner case is only half the size of the other and couldn’t possibly be substituted.”
“Come up now,” said Carrados, rising. “There is nothing more to be learned down here.”
They requisitioned the lift and on the steps outside the gigantic keyhole stood for a few minutes discussing an investment as a couple of trustees or a lawyer and a client who were parting there might do. Fifty yards away, a very large silk hat with a very curly brim marked the progress of the bookmaker towards Piccadilly.
The lift in the hall behind them swirled up again and the gate clashed. The second man walked leisurely out and sauntered away without a backward glance.
“He has gone in the opposite direction,” exclaimed Mr Carlyle, rather blankly. “It isn’t the ‘lame goat’ nor the ‘follow-me-on,’ nor even the homely but efficacious sand-bag.”
“What colour were his eyes?” asked Carrados.
“Upon my word, I never noticed,” admitted the other.
“Parkinson would have noticed,” was the severe comment.
“I am not Parkinson,” retorted Mr Carlyle, with asperity, “and, strictly as one dear friend to another, Max, permit me to add, that while cherishing an unbounded admiration for your remarkable gifts, I have the strongest suspicion that the whole incident is a ridiculous mare’s nest, bred in the fantastic imagination of an enthusiastic criminologist.”
Mr Carrados received this outburst with the utmost benignity. “Come and have a coffee, Louis,” he suggested. “Mehmed’s is only a street away.”
Mehmed proved to be a cosmopolitan gentleman from Mocha whose shop resembled a house from the outside and an Oriental divan when one was within. A turbaned Arab placed cigarettes and cups of coffee spiced with saffron before the customers, gave salaam and withdrew.
“You know, my dear chap,” continued Mr Carlyle, sipping his black coffee and wondering privately whether it was really very good or very bad, “speaking quite seriously, the one fishy detail—our ginger friend’s watching for the other to leave—may be open to a dozen very innocent explanations.”
“So innocent that to-morrow I intend taking a safe myself.”
“You think that everything is all right?”
“On the contrary, I am convinced that something is very wrong.”
“Then why——?”
“I shall keep nothing there, but it will give me the entrée. I should advise you, Louis, in the first place to empty your safe with all possible speed, and in the second to leave your business card on the manager.”
Mr Carlyle pushed his cup away, convinced now that the coffee was really very bad.
“But, my dear Max, the place—‘The Safe’—is impregnable!”
“When I was in the States, three years ago, the head porter at one hotel took pains to impress on me that the building was absolutely fireproof. I at once had my things taken off to another hotel. Two weeks later the first place was burnt out. It was fireproof, I believe, but of course the furniture and the fittings were not and the walls gave way.”
“Very ingenious,” admitted Mr Carlyle, “but why did you really go? You know you can’t humbug me with your superhuman sixth sense, my friend.”
Carrados smiled pleasantly, thereby encouraging the watchful attendant to draw near and replenish their tiny cups.
“Perhaps,” replied the blind man, “because so many careless people were satisfied that it was fireproof.”
“Ah-ha, there you are—the greater the confidence the greater the risk. But only if your self-confidence results in carelessness. Now do you know how this place is secured, Max?”
“I am told that they lock the door at night,” replied Carrados, with bland malice.
“And hide the key under the mat to be ready for the first arrival in the morning,” crowed Mr Carlyle, in the same playful spirit. “Dear old chap! Well, let me tell you——”
“That force is out of the question. Quite so,” admitted his friend.
“That simplifies the argument. Let us consider fraud. There again the precautions are so rigid that many people pronounce the forms a nuisance. I confess that I do not. I regard them as a means of protecting my own property and I cheerfully sign my name and give my password, which the manager compares with his record-book before he releases the first lock of my safe. The signature is burned before my eyes in a sort of crucible there, the password is of my own choosing and is written only in a book that no one but the manager ever sees, and my key is the sole one in existence.”
“No duplicate or master-key?”
“Neither. If a key is lost it takes a skilful mechanic half-a-day to cut his way in. Then you must remember that clients of a safe-deposit are not multitudinous. All are known more or less by sight to the officials there, and a stranger would receive close attention. Now, Max, by what combination of circumstances is a rogue to know my password, to be able to forge my signature, to possess himself of my key, and to resemble me personally? And, finally, how is he possibly to determine beforehand whether there is anything in my safe to repay so elaborate a plant?” Mr Carlyle concluded in triumph and was so carried away by the strength of his position that he drank off the contents of his second cup before he realized what he was doing.
“At the hotel I just spoke of,” replied Carrados, “there was an attendant whose one duty in case of alarm was to secure three iron doors. On the night of the fire he had a bad attack of toothache and slipped away for just a quarter of an hour to have the thing out. There was a most up-to-date system of automatic fire alarm; it had been tested only the day before and the electrician, finding some part not absolutely to his satisfaction, had taken it away and not had time to replace it. The night watchman, it turned out, had received leave to present himself a couple of hours later on that particular night, and the hotel fireman, whose duties he took over, had missed being notified. Lastly, there was a big riverside blaze at the same time and all the engines were down at the other end of the city.”
Mr Carlyle committed himself to a dubious monosyllable. Carrados leaned forward a little.
“All these circumstances formed a coincidence of pure chance. Is it not conceivable, Louis, that an even more remarkable series might be brought about by design?”
“Our tawny friend?”
“Possibly. Only he was not really tawny.” Mr Carlyle’s easy attitude suddenly stiffened into rigid attention. “He wore a false moustache.”
“He wore a false moustache!” repeated the amazed gentleman. “And you cannot see! No, really, Max, this is beyond the limit!”
“If only you would not trust your dear, blundering old eyes so implicitly you would get nearer that limit yourself,” retorted Carrados. “The man carried a five-yard aura of spirit gum, emphasized by a warm, perspiring skin. That inevitably suggested one thing. I looked for further evidence of making-up and found it—these preparations all smell. The hair you described was characteristically that of a wig—worn long to hide the joining and made wavy to minimize the length. All these things are trifles. As yet we have not gone beyond the initial stage of suspicion. I will tell you another trifle. When this man retired to a compartment with his deed-box, he never even opened it. Possibly it contains a brick and a newspaper. He is only watching.”
“Watching the bookmaker.”
“True, but it may go far wider than that. Everything points to a plot of careful elaboration. Still, if you are satisfied——”
“I am quite satisfied,” replied Mr Carlyle gallantly. “I regard ‘The Safe’ almost as a national institution, and as such I have an implicit faith in its precautions against every kind of force or fraud.” So far Mr Carlyle’s attitude had been suggestive of a rock, but at this point he took out his watch, hummed a little to pass the time, consulted his watch again, and continued: “I am afraid that there were one or two papers which I overlooked. It would perhaps save me coming again to-morrow if I went back now——”
“Quite so,” acquiesced Carrados, with perfect gravity. “I will wait for you.”
For twenty minutes he sat there, drinking an occasional tiny cup of boiled coffee and to all appearance placidly enjoying the quaint atmosphere which Mr Mehmed had contrived to transplant from the shore of the Persian Gulf.
At the end of that period Carlyle returned, politely effusive about the time he had kept his friend waiting but otherwise bland and unassailable. Anyone with eyes might have noticed that he carried a parcel of about the same size and dimensions as the deed-box that fitted his safe.
The next day Carrados presented himself at the safe-deposit as an intending renter. The manager showed him over the vaults and strong-rooms, explaining the various precautions taken to render the guile or force of man impotent: the strength of the chilled-steel walls, the casing of electricity-resisting concrete, the stupendous isolation of the whole inner fabric on metal pillars so that the watchman, while inside the building, could walk above, below, and all round the outer walls of what was really—although it bore no actual relationship to the advertising device of the front—a monstrous safe; and, finally, the arrangement which would enable the basement to be flooded with steam within three minutes of an alarm. These details were public property. “The Safe” was a showplace and its directors held that no harm could come of displaying a strong hand.
Accompanied by the observant eyes of Parkinson, Carrados gave an adventurous but not a hopeful attention to these particulars. Submitting the problem of the tawny man to his own ingenuity, he was constantly putting before himself the question: How shall I set about robbing this place? and he had already dismissed force as impracticable. Nor, when it came to the consideration of fraud, did the simple but effective safeguards which Mr Carlyle had specified seem to offer any loophole.
“As I am blind I may as well sign in the book,” he suggested, when the manager passed to him a gummed slip for the purpose. The precaution against one acquiring particulars of another client might well be deemed superfluous in his case.
But the manager did not fall into the trap.
“It is our invariable rule in all cases, sir,” he replied courteously. “What word will you take?” Parkinson, it may be said, had been left in the hall.
“Suppose I happen to forget it? How do we proceed?”
“In that case I am afraid that I might have to trouble you to establish your identity,” the manager explained. “It rarely happens.”
“Then we will say ‘Conspiracy.’”
The word was written down and the book closed.
“Here is your key, sir. If you will allow me—your key-ring——”
A week went by and Carrados was no nearer the absolute solution of the problem he had set himself. He had, indeed, evolved several ways by which the contents of the safes might be reached, some simple and desperate, hanging on the razor-edge of chance to fall this way or that; others more elaborate, safer on the whole, but more liable to break down at some point of their ingenious intricacy. And setting aside complicity on the part of the manager—a condition that Carrados had satisfied himself did not exist—they all depended on a relaxation of the forms by which security was assured. Carrados continued to have several occasions to visit the safe during the week, and he “watched” with a quiet persistence that was deadly in its scope. But from beginning to end there was no indication of slackness in the business-like methods of the place; nor during any of his visits did the “tawny man” appear in that or any other disguise. Another week passed; Mr Carlyle was becoming inexpressibly waggish, and Carrados himself, although he did not abate a jot of his conviction, was compelled to bend to the realities of the situation. The manager, with the obstinacy of a conscientious man who had become obsessed with the pervading note of security, excused himself from discussing abstract methods of fraud. Carrados was not in a position to formulate a detailed charge; he withdrew from active investigation, content to await his time.
It came, to be precise, on a certain Friday morning, seventeen days after his first visit to “The Safe.” Returning late on the Thursday night, he was informed that a man giving the name of Draycott had called to see him. Apparently the matter had been of some importance to the visitor for he had returned three hours later on the chance of finding Mr Carrados in. Disappointed in this, he had left a note. Carrados cut open the envelope and ran a finger along the following words:—
“Dear Sir,—I have to-day consulted Mr Louis Carlyle, who thinks that you would like to see me. I will call again in the morning, say at nine o’clock. If this is too soon or otherwise inconvenient I entreat you to leave a message fixing as early an hour as possible. to leave a message fixing as early an hour as possible.
Yours faithfully,
“P.S.—I should add that I am the renter of a safe at the Lucas Street depository. H. D.”
A description of Mr Draycott made it clear that he was not the West-End bookmaker. The caller, the servant explained, was a thin, wiry, keen-faced man. Carrados felt agreeably interested in this development, which seemed to justify his suspicion of a plot.
At five minutes to nine the next morning Mr Draycott again presented himself.
“Very good of you to see me so soon, sir,” he apologized, on Carrados at once receiving him. “I don’t know much of English ways—I’m an Australian—and I was afraid it might be too early.”
“You could have made it a couple of hours earlier as far as I am concerned,” replied Carrados. “Or you either for that matter, I imagine,” he added, “for I don’t think that you slept much last night.”
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” corrected Mr Draycott. “But it’s strange that you should have seen that. I understood from Mr Carlyle that you—excuse me if I am mistaken, sir—but I understood that you were blind.”
Carrados laughed his admission lightly.
“Oh yes,” he said. “But never mind that. What is the trouble?”
“I’m afraid it means more than just trouble for me, Mr Carrados.” The man had steady, half-closed eyes, with the suggestion of depth which one notices in the eyes of those whose business it is to look out over great expanses of land or water; they were turned towards Carrados’s face with quiet resignation in their frankness now. “I’m afraid it spells disaster. I am a working engineer from the Mount Magdalena district of Coolgardie. I don’t want to take up your time with outside details so I will only say that about two years ago I had an opportunity of acquiring a share in a very promising claim—gold, you understand, both reef and alluvial. As the work went on I put more and more into the undertaking—you couldn’t call it a venture by that time. The results were good, better than we had dared to expect, but from one cause and another the expenses were terrible. We saw that it was a bigger thing than we had bargained for and we admitted that we must get outside help.”
So far Mr Draycott’s narrative had proceeded smoothly enough under the influence of the quiet despair that had come over the man. But at this point a sudden recollection of his position swept him into a frenzy of bitterness.
“Oh, what the blazes is the good of going over all this again!” he broke out. “What can you or anyone else do anyhow? I’ve been robbed, rooked, cleared out of everything I possess,” and tormented by recollections and by the impotence of his rage the unfortunate engineer beat the oak table with the back of his hand until his knuckles bled.
Carrados waited until the fury had passed.
“Continue, if you please, Mr Draycott,” he said. “Just what you thought it best to tell me is just what I want to know.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” apologized the man, colouring under his tanned skin. “I ought to be able to control myself better. But this business has shaken me. Three times last night I looked down the barrel of my revolver, and three times I threw it away.... Well, we arranged that I should come to London to interest some financiers in the property. We might have done it locally or in Perth, to be sure, but then, don’t you see, they would have wanted to get control. Six weeks ago I landed here. I brought with me specimens of the quartz and good samples of extracted gold, dust and nuggets, the clearing up of several weeks’ working, about two hundred and forty ounces in all. That includes the Magdalena Lodestar, our lucky nugget, a lump weighing just under seven pounds of pure gold.
“I had seen an advertisement of this Lucas Street safe-deposit and it seemed just the thing I wanted. Besides the gold, I had all the papers to do with the claims—plans, reports, receipts, licences and so on. Then when I cashed my letter of credit I had about one hundred and fifty pounds in notes. Of course I could have left everything at a bank but it was more convenient to have it, as it were, in my own safe, to get at any time, and to have a private room that I could take any gentlemen to. I hadn’t a suspicion that anything could be wrong. Negotiations hung on in several quarters—it’s a bad time to do business here, I find. Then, yesterday, I wanted something. I went to Lucas Street, as I had done half-a-dozen times before, opened my safe, and had the inner case carried to a room.... Mr Carrados, it was empty!”
“Quite empty?”
“No.” He laughed bitterly. “At the bottom was a sheet of wrapper paper. I recognized it as a piece I had left there in case I wanted to make up a parcel. But for that I should have been convinced that I had somehow opened the wrong safe. That was my first idea.”
“It cannot be done.”
“So I understand, sir. And, then, there was the paper with my name written on it in the empty tin. I was dazed; it seemed impossible. I think I stood there without moving for minutes—it was more like hours. Then I closed the tin box again, took it back, locked up the safe and came out.”
“Without notifying anything wrong?”
“Yes, Mr Carrados.” The steady blue eyes regarded him with pained thoughtfulness. “You see, I reckoned it out in that time that it must be someone about the place who had done it.”
“You were wrong,” said Carrados.
“So Mr Carlyle seemed to think. I only knew that the key had never been out of my possession and I had told no one of the password. Well, it did come over me rather like cold water down the neck, that there was I alone in the strongest dungeon in London and not a living soul knew where I was.”
“Possibly a sort of up-to-date Sweeney Todd’s?”
“I’d heard of such things in London,” admitted Draycott. “Anyway, I got out. It was a mistake; I see it now. Who is to believe me as it is—it sounds a sort of unlikely tale. And how do they come to pick on me? to know what I had? I don’t drink, or open my mouth, or hell round. It beats me.”
“They didn’t pick on you—you picked on them,” replied Carrados. “Never mind how; you’ll be believed all right. But as for getting anything back——” The unfinished sentence confirmed Mr Draycott in his gloomiest anticipations.
“I have the numbers of the notes,” he suggested, with an attempt at hopefulness. “They can be stopped, I take it?”
“Stopped? Yes,” admitted Carrados. “And what does that amount to? The banks and the police stations will be notified and every little public-house between here and Land’s End will change one for the scribbling of ‘John Jones’ across the back. No, Mr Draycott, it’s awkward, I dare say, but you must make up your mind to wait until you can get fresh supplies from home. Where are you staying?”
Draycott hesitated.
“I have been at the Abbotsford, in Bloomsbury, up to now,” he said, with some embarrassment. “The fact is, Mr Carrados, I think I ought to have told you how I was placed before consulting you, because I—I see no prospect of being able to pay my way. Knowing that I had plenty in the safe, I had run it rather close. I went chiefly yesterday to get some notes. I have a week’s hotel bill in my pocket, and”—he glanced down at his trousers—“I’ve ordered one or two other things unfortunately.”
“That will be a matter of time, doubtless,” suggested the other encouragingly.
Instead of replying Draycott suddenly dropped his arms on to the table and buried his face between them. A minute passed in silence.
“It’s no good, Mr Carrados,” he said, when he was able to speak; “I can’t meet it. Say what you like, I simply can’t tell those chaps that I’ve lost everything we had and ask them to send me more. They couldn’t do it if I did. Understand, sir. The mine is a valuable one; we have the greatest faith in it, but it has gone beyond our depth. The three of us have put everything we own into it. While I am here they are doing labourers’ work for a wage, just to keep going ... waiting, oh, my God! waiting for good news from me!”
Carrados walked round the table to his desk and wrote. Then, without a word, he held out a paper to his visitor.
“What’s this?” demanded Draycott, in bewilderment. “It’s—it’s a cheque for a hundred pounds.”
“It will carry you on,” explained Carrados imperturbably. “A man like you isn’t going to throw up the sponge for this set-back. Cable to your partners that you require copies of all the papers at once. They’ll manage it, never fear. The gold ... must go. Write fully by the next mail. Tell them everything and add that in spite of all you feel that you are nearer success than ever.”
Mr Draycott folded the cheque with thoughtful deliberation and put it carefully away in his pocket-book.
“I don’t know whether you’ve guessed as much, sir,” he said in a queer voice, “but I think that you’ve saved a man’s life to-day. It’s not the money, it’s the encouragement ... and faith. If you could see you’d know better than I can say how I feel about it.”
Carrados laughed quietly. It always amused him to have people explain how much more he would learn if he had eyes.
“Then we’ll go on to Lucas Street and give the manager the shock of his life,” was all he said. “Come, Mr Draycott, I have already rung up the car.”
But, as it happened, another instrument had been destined to apply that stimulating experience to the manager. As they stepped out of the car opposite “The Safe” a taxicab drew up and Mr Carlyle’s alert and cheery voice hailed them.
“A moment, Max,” he called, turning to settle with his driver, a transaction that he invested with an air of dignified urbanity which almost made up for any small pecuniary disappointment that may have accompanied it. “This is indeed fortunate. Let us compare notes for a moment. I have just received an almost imploring message from the manager to come at once. I assumed that it was the affair of our colonial friend here, but he went on to mention Professor Holmfast Bulge. Can it really be possible that he also has made a similar discovery?”
“What did the manager say?” asked Carrados.
“He was practically incoherent, but I really think it must be so. What have you done?”
“Nothing,” replied Carrados. He turned his back on “The Safe” and appeared to be regarding the other side of the street. “There is a tobacconist’s shop directly opposite?”
“There is.”
“What do they sell on the first floor?”
“Possibly they sell ‘Rubbo.’ I hazard the suggestion from the legend ‘Rub in Rubbo for Everything’ which embellishes each window.”
“The windows are frosted?”
“They are, to half-way up, mysterious man.”
Carrados walked back to his motor car.
“While we are away, Parkinson, go across and buy a tin, bottle, box or packet of ‘Rubbo.’”
“What is ‘Rubbo,’ Max?” chirped Mr Carlyle with insatiable curiosity.
“So far we do not know. When Parkinson gets some, Louis, you shall be the one to try it.”
They descended into the basement and were passed in by the grille-keeper, whose manner betrayed a discreet consciousness of something in the air. It was unnecessary to speculate why. In the distance, muffled by the armoured passages, an authoritative voice boomed like a sonorous bell heard under water.
“What, however, are the facts?” it was demanding, with the causticity of baffled helplessness. “I am assured that there is no other key in existence; yet my safe has been unlocked. I am given to understand that without the password it would be impossible for an unauthorized person to tamper with my property. My password, deliberately chosen, is ‘anthropophaginian,’ sir. Is it one that is familiarly on the lips of the criminal classes? But my safe is empty! What is the explanation? Who are the guilty persons? What is being done? Where are the police?”
“If you consider that the proper course to adopt is to stand on the doorstep and beckon in the first constable who happens to pass, permit me to say, sir, that I differ from you,” retorted the distracted manager. “You may rely on everything possible being done to clear up the mystery. As I told you, I have already telephoned for a capable private detective and for one of my directors.”
“But that is not enough,” insisted the professor angrily. “Will one mere private detective restore my #6000 Japanese 4-1/2 per cent. bearer bonds? Is the return of my irreplaceable notes on ‘Polyphyletic Bridal Customs among the mid-Pleistocene Cave Men’ to depend on a solitary director? I demand that the police shall be called in—as many as are available. Let Scotland Yard be set in motion. A searching inquiry must be made. I have only been a user of your precious establishment for six months, and this is the result.”
“There you hold the key of the mystery, Professor Bulge,” interposed Carrados quietly.
“Who is this, sir?” demanded the exasperated professor at large.
“Permit me,” explained Mr Carlyle, with bland assurance. “I am Louis Carlyle, of Bampton Street. This gentleman is Mr Max Carrados, the eminent amateur specialist in crime.”
“I shall be thankful for any assistance towards elucidating this appalling business,” condescended the professor sonorously. “Let me put you in possession of the facts——”
“Perhaps if we went into your room,” suggested Carrados to the manager, “we should be less liable to interruption.”
“Quite so; quite so,” boomed the professor, accepting the proposal on everyone else’s behalf. “The facts, sir, are these: I am the unfortunate possessor of a safe here, in which, a few months ago, I deposited—among less important matter—sixty bearer bonds of the Japanese Imperial Loan—the bulk of my small fortune—and the manuscript of an important projected work on ‘Polyphyletic Bridal Customs among the mid-Pleistocene Cave Men.’ To-day I came to detach the coupons which fall due on the fifteenth, to pay them into my bank a week in advance, in accordance with my custom. What do I find? I find the safe locked and apparently intact, as when I last saw it a month ago. But it is far from being intact, sir. It has been opened; ransacked, cleared out. Not a single bond; not a scrap of paper remains.”
It was obvious that the manager’s temperature had been rising during the latter part of this speech and now he boiled over.
“Pardon my flatly contradicting you, Professor Bulge. You have again referred to your visit here a month ago as your last. You will bear witness of that, gentlemen. When I inform you that the professor had access to his safe as recently as on Monday last you will recognize the importance that the statement may assume.”
The professor glared across the room like an infuriated animal, a comparison heightened by his notoriously hircine appearance.
“How dare you contradict me, sir!” he cried, slapping the table sharply with his open hand. “I was not here on Monday.”
The manager shrugged his shoulders coldly.
“You forget that the attendants also saw you,” he remarked. “Cannot we trust our own eyes?”
“A common assumption, yet not always a strictly reliable one,” insinuated Carrados softly.
“I cannot be mistaken.”
“Then can you tell me, without looking, what colour Professor Bulge’s eyes are?”
There was a curious and expectant silence for a minute. The professor turned his back on the manager and the manager passed from thoughtfulness to embarrassment.
“I really do not know, Mr Carrados,” he declared loftily at last. “I do not refer to mere trifles like that.”
“Then you can be mistaken,” replied Carrados mildly yet with decision.
“But the ample hair, the venerable flowing beard, the prominent nose and heavy eyebrows——”
“These are just the striking points that are most easily counterfeited. They ‘take the eye.’ If you would ensure yourself against deception, learn rather to observe the eye itself, and particularly the spots on it, the shape of the fingernails, the set of the ears. These things cannot be simulated.”
“You seriously suggest that the man was not Professor Bulge—that he was an impostor?”
“The conclusion is inevitable. Where were you on Monday, Professor?”
“I was on a short lecturing tour in the Midlands. On Saturday I was in Nottingham. On Monday in Birmingham. I did not return to London until yesterday.”
Carrados turned to the manager again and indicated Draycott, who so far had remained in the background.
“And this gentleman? Did he by any chance come here on Monday?”
“He did not, Mr Carrados. But I gave him access to his safe on Tuesday afternoon and again yesterday.”
Draycott shook his head sadly.
“Yesterday I found it empty,” he said. “And all Tuesday afternoon I was at Brighton, trying to see a gentleman on business.”
The manager sat down very suddenly.
“Good God, another!” he exclaimed faintly.
“I am afraid the list is only beginning,” said Carrados. “We must go through your renters’ book.”
The manager roused himself to protest.
“That cannot be done. No one but myself or my deputy ever sees the book. It would be—unprecedented.”
“The circumstances are unprecedented,” replied Carrados.
“If any difficulties are placed in the way of these gentlemen’s investigations, I shall make it my duty to bring the facts before the Home Secretary,” announced the professor; speaking up to the ceiling with the voice of a brazen trumpet.
Carrados raised a deprecating hand.
“May I make a suggestion?” he remarked. “Now; I am blind. If, therefore——?”
“Very well,” acquiesced the manager. “But I must request the others to withdraw.”
For five minutes Carrados followed the list of safe-renters as the manager read them to him. Sometimes he stopped the catalogue to reflect a moment; now and then he brushed a finger-tip over a written signature and compared it with another. Occasionally a password interested him. But when the list came to an end he continued to look into space without any sign of enlightenment.
“So much is perfectly clear and yet so much is incredible,” he mused. “You insist that you alone have been in charge for the last six months?”
“I have not been away a day this year.”
“Meals?”
“I have my lunch sent in.”
“And this room could not be entered without your knowledge while you were about the place?”
“It is impossible. The door is fitted with a powerful spring and a feather-touch self-acting lock. It cannot be left unlocked unless you deliberately prop it open.”
“And, with your knowledge, no one has had an opportunity of having access to this book?”
“No,” was the reply.
Carrados stood up and began to put on his gloves.
“Then I must decline to pursue my investigation any further,” he said icily.
“Why?” stammered the manager.
“Because I have positive reason for believing that you are deceiving me.”
“Pray sit down, Mr Carrados. It is quite true that when you put the last question to me a circumstance rushed into my mind which—so far as the strict letter was concerned—might seem to demand ‘Yes’ instead of ‘No.’ But not in the spirit of your inquiry. It would be absurd to attach any importance to the incident I refer to.”
“That would be for me to judge.”
“You shall do so, Mr Carrados. I live at Windermere Mansions with my sister. A few months ago she got to know a married couple who had recently come to the opposite flat. The husband was a middle-aged, scholarly man who spent most of his time in the British Museum. His wife’s tastes were different; she was much younger, brighter, gayer; a mere girl in fact, one of the most charming and unaffected I have ever met. My sister Amelia does not readily——”
“Stop!” exclaimed Carrados. “A studious middle-aged man and a charming young wife! Be as brief as possible. If there is any chance it may turn on a matter of minutes at the ports. She came here, of course?”
“Accompanied by her husband,” replied the manager stiffly. “Mrs Scott had travelled and she had a hobby of taking photographs wherever she went. When my position accidentally came out one evening she was carried away by the novel idea of adding views of a safe-deposit to her collection—as enthusiastic as a child. There was no reason why she should not; the place has often been taken for advertising purposes.”
“She came, and brought her camera—under your very nose!”
“I do not know what you mean by ‘under my very nose.’ She came with her husband one evening just about our closing time. She brought her camera, of course—quite a small affair.”
“And contrived to be in here alone?”
“I take exception to the word ‘contrived.’ It—it happened. I sent out for some tea, and in the course——”
“How long was she alone in here?”
“Two or three minutes at the most. When I returned she was seated at my desk. That was what I referred to. The little rogue had put on my glasses and had got hold of a big book. We were great chums, and she delighted to mock me. I confess that I was startled—merely instinctively—to see that she had taken up this book, but the next moment I saw that she had it upside down.”
“Clever! She couldn’t get it away in time. And the camera, with half-a-dozen of its specially sensitized films already snapped over the last few pages, by her side!”
“That child!”
“Yes. She is twenty-seven and has kicked hats off tall men’s heads in every capital from Petersburg to Buenos Aires! Get through to Scotland Yard and ask if Inspector Beedel can come up.”
The manager breathed heavily through his nose.
“To call in the police and publish everything would ruin this establishment—confidence would be gone. I cannot do it without further authority.”
“Then the professor certainly will.”
“Before you came I rang up the only director who is at present in town and gave him the facts as they then stood. Possibly he has arrived by this. If you will accompany me to the boardroom we will see.”
They went up to the floor above, Mr Carlyle joining them on the way.
“Excuse me a moment,” said the manager.
Parkinson, who had been having an improving conversation with the hall porter on the subject of land values, approached.
“I am sorry, sir,” he reported, “but I was unable to procure any ‘Rubbo.’ The place appears to be shut up.”
“That is a pity; Mr Carlyle had set his heart on it.”
“Will you come this way, please?” said the manager, reappearing.
In the boardroom they found a white-haired old gentleman who had obeyed the manager’s behest from a sense of duty, and then remained in a distant corner of the empty room in the hope that he might be overlooked. He was amiably helpless and appeared to be deeply aware of it.
“This is a very sad business, gentlemen,” he said, in a whispering, confiding voice. “I am informed that you recommend calling in the Scotland Yard authorities. That would be a disastrous course for an institution that depends on the implicit confidence of the public.”
“It is the only course,” replied Carrados.
“The name of Mr Carrados is well known to us in connexion with a delicate case. Could you not carry this one through?”
“It is impossible. A wide inquiry must be made. Every port will have to be watched. The police alone can do that.” He threw a little significance into the next sentence. “I alone can put the police in the right way of doing it.”
“And you will do that, Mr Carrados?”
Carrados smiled engagingly. He knew exactly what constituted the great attraction of his services.
“My position is this,” he explained. “So far my work has been entirely amateur. In that capacity I have averted one or two crimes, remedied an occasional injustice, and now and then been of service to my professional friend, Louis Carlyle. But there is no reason at all why I should serve a commercial firm in an ordinary affair of business for nothing. For any information I should require a fee, a quite nominal fee of, say, one hundred pounds.”
The director looked as though his faith in human nature had received a rude blow.
“A hundred pounds would be a very large initial fee for a small firm like this, Mr Carrados,” he remarked in a pained voice.
“And that, of course, would be independent of Mr Carlyle’s professional charges,” added Carrados.
“Is that sum contingent on any specific performance?” inquired the manager.
“I do not mind making it conditional on my procuring for you, for the police to act on, a photograph and a description of the thief.”
The two officials conferred apart for a moment. Then the manager returned.
“We will agree, Mr Carrados, on the understanding that these things are to be in our hands within two days. Failing that——”
“No, no!” cried Mr Carlyle indignantly, but Carrados good-humouredly put him aside.
“I will accept the condition in the same sporting spirit that inspires it. Within forty-eight hours or no pay. The cheque, of course, to be given immediately the goods are delivered?”
“You may rely on that.”
Carrados took out his pocket-book, produced an envelope bearing an American stamp, and from it extracted an unmounted print.
“Here is the photograph,” he announced. “The man is called Ulysses K. Groom, but he is better known as ‘Harry the Actor.’ You will find the description written on the back.”
Five minutes later, when they were alone, Mr Carlyle expressed his opinion of the transaction.
“You are an unmitigated humbug, Max,” he said, “though an amiable one, I admit. But purely for your own private amusement you spring these things on people.”
“On the contrary,” replied Carrados, “people spring these things on me.”
“Now this photograph. Why have I heard nothing of it before?”
Carrados took out his watch and touched the fingers.
“It is now three minutes to eleven. I received the photograph at twenty past eight.”
“Even then, an hour ago you assured me that you had done nothing.”
“Nor had I—so far as result went. Until the keystone of the edifice was wrung from the manager in his room, I was as far away from demonstrable certainty as ever.”
“So am I—as yet,” hinted Mr Carlyle.
“I am coming to that, Louis. I turn over the whole thing to you. The man has got two clear days’ start and the chances are nine to one against catching him. We know everything, and the case has no further interest for me. But it is your business. Here is your material.
“On that one occasion when the ‘tawny’ man crossed our path, I took from the first a rather more serious view of his scope and intention than you did. That same day I sent a cipher cable to Pierson of the New York service. I asked for news of any man of such and such a description—merely negative—who was known to have left the States; an educated man, expert in the use of disguises, audacious in his operations, and a specialist in ‘dry’ work among banks and strong-rooms.”
“Why the States, Max?”
“That was a sighting shot on my part. I argued that he must be an English-speaking man. The smart and inventive turn of the modern Yank has made him a specialist in ingenious devices, straight or crooked. Unpickable locks and invincible lock-pickers, burglar-proof safes and safe-specializing burglars, come equally from the States. So I tried a very simple test. As we talked that day and the man walked past us, I dropped the words ‘New York’—or, rather, ‘Noo Y’rk’—in his hearing.”
“I know you did. He neither turned nor stopped.”
“He was that much on his guard; but into his step there came—though your poor old eyes could not see it, Louis—the ‘psychological pause,’ an absolute arrest of perhaps a fifth of a second; just as it would have done with you if the word ‘London’ had fallen on your ear in a distant land. However, the whys and the wherefores don’t matter. Here is the essential story.
“Eighteen months ago ‘Harry the Actor’ successfully looted the office safe of M’Kenkie, J. F. Higgs & Co.; of Cleveland, Ohio. He had just married a smart but very facile third-rate vaudeville actress—English by origin—and wanted money for the honeymoon. He got about five hundred pounds, and with that they came to Europe and stayed in London for some months. That period is marked by the Congreave Square post office burglary, you may remember. While studying such of the British institutions as most appealed to him, the ‘Actor’s’ attention became fixed on this safe-deposit. Possibly the implied challenge contained in its telegraphic address grew on him until it became a point of professional honour with him to despoil it; at all events he was presumedly attracted by an undertaking that promised not only glory but very solid profit. The first part of the plot was, to the most skilful criminal ‘impersonator’ in the States, mere skittles. Spreading over those months he appeared at ‘The Safe’ in twelve different characters and rented twelve safes of different sizes. At the same time he made a thorough study of the methods of the place. As soon as possible he got the keys back again into legitimate use, having made duplicates for his own private ends, of course. Five he seems to have returned during his first stay; one was received later, with profuse apologies, by registered post; one was returned through a leading Berlin bank. Six months ago he made a flying visit here, purely to work off two more. One he kept from first to last, and the remaining couple he got in at the beginning of his second long residence here, three or four months ago.
“This brings us to the serious part of the cool enterprise. He had funds from the Atlantic and South-Central Mail-car coup when he arrived here last April. He appears to have set up three establishments; a home, in the guise of an elderly scholar with a young wife, which, of course, was next door to our friend the manager; an observation point, over which he plastered the inscription ‘Rub in Rubbo for Everything’ as a reason for being; and, somewhere else, a dressing-room with essential conditions of two doors into different streets.
“About six weeks ago he entered the last stage. Mrs Harry, with quite ridiculous ease, got photographs of the necessary page or two of the record-book. I don’t doubt that for weeks before then everyone who entered the place had been observed, but the photographs linked them up with the actual men into whose hands the ‘Actor’s’ old keys had passed—gave their names and addresses, the numbers of their safes, their passwords and signatures. The rest was easy.”
“Yes, by Jupiter; mere play for a man like that,” agreed Mr Carlyle, with professional admiration. “He could contrive a dozen different occasions for studying the voice and manner and appearance of his victims. How much has he cleared?”
“We can only speculate as yet. I have put my hand on seven doubtful callers on Monday and Tuesday last. Two others he had ignored for some reason; the remaining two safes had not been allotted. There is one point that raises an interesting speculation.”
“What is that, Max?”
“The ‘Actor’ has one associate, a man known as ‘Billy the Fondant,’ but beyond that—with the exception of his wife, of course—he does not usually trust anyone. It is plain, however, that at least seven men must latterly have been kept under close observation. It has occurred to me——”
“Yes, Max?”
“I have wondered whether Harry has enlisted the innocent services of one or other of our clever private inquiry offices.”
“Scarcely,” smiled the professional. “It would hardly pass muster.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Mrs Harry, in the character of a jealous wife or a suspicious sweetheart, might reasonably——”
Mr Carlyle’s smile suddenly faded.
“By Jupiter!” he exclaimed. “I remember——”
“Yes, Louis?” prompted Carrados, with laughter in his voice.
“I remember that I must telephone to a client before Beedel comes,” concluded Mr Carlyle, rising in some haste.
At the door he almost ran into the subdued director, who was wringing his hands in helpless protest at a new stroke of calamity.
“Mr Carrados,” wailed the poor old gentleman in a tremulous bleat, “Mr Carrados, there is another now—Sir Benjamin Gump. He insists on seeing me. You will not—you will not desert us?”
“I should have to stay a week,” replied Carrados briskly, “and I’m just off now. There will be a procession. Mr Carlyle will support you, I am sure.”
He nodded “Good-morning” straight into the eyes of each and found his way out with the astonishing certainty of movement that made so many forget his infirmity. Possibly he was not desirous of encountering Draycott’s embarrassed gratitude again, for in less than a minute they heard the swirl of his departing car.
“Never mind, my dear sir,” Mr Carlyle assured his client, with impenetrable complacency. “Never mind. I will remain instead. Perhaps I had better make myself known to Sir Benjamin at once.”
The director turned on him the pleading, trustful look of a cornered dormouse.
“He is in the basement,” he whispered. “I shall be in the boardroom—if necessary.”
Mr Carlyle had no difficulty in discovering the centre of interest in the basement. Sir Benjamin was expansive and reserved, bewildered and decisive, long-winded and short-tempered, each in turn and more or less all at once. He had already demanded the attention of the manager, Professor Bulge, Draycott and two underlings to his case and they were now involved in a babel of inutile reiteration. The inquiry agent was at once drawn into a circle of interrogation that he did his best to satisfy impressively while himself learning the new facts.
The latest development was sufficiently astonishing. Less than an hour before Sir Benjamin had received a parcel by district messenger. It contained a jewel-case which ought at that moment to have been securely reposing in one of the deposit safes. Hastily snatching it open, the recipient’s incredible forebodings were realized. It was empty—empty of jewels, that is to say, for, as if to add a sting to the blow, a neatly inscribed card had been placed inside, and on it the agitated baronet read the appropriate but at the moment rather gratuitous maxim: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth——”
The card was passed round and all eyes demanded the expert’s pronouncement.
“‘—where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.’ H’m,” read Mr Carlyle with weight. “This is a most important clue, Sir Benjamin——”
“Hey, what? What’s that?” exclaimed a voice from the other side of the hall. “Why, damme if I don’t believe you’ve got another! Look at that, gentlemen; look at that. What’s on, I say? Here now, come; give me my safe. I want to know where I am.”
It was the bookmaker who strode tempestuously in among them, flourishing before their faces a replica of the card that was in Mr Carlyle’s hand.
“Well, upon my soul this is most extraordinary,” exclaimed that gentleman, comparing the two. “You have just received this, Mr—Mr Berge, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, Berge—‘Iceberg’ on the course. Thank the Lord Harry, I can take my losses coolly enough, but this—this is a facer. Put into my hand half-an-hour ago inside an envelope that ought to be here and as safe as in the Bank of England. What’s the game, I say? Here, Johnny, hurry and let me into my safe.”
Discipline and method had for the moment gone by the board. There was no suggestion of the boasted safeguards of the establishment. The manager added his voice to that of the client, and when the attendant did not at once appear he called again.
“John, come and give Mr Berge access to his safe at once.”
“All right, sir,” pleaded the harassed key-attendant; hurrying up with the burden of his own distraction. “There’s a silly fathead got in what thinks this is a left-luggage office, so far as I can make out—a foreigner.”
“Never mind that now,” replied the manager severely. “Mr Berge’s safe: No. 01724.”
The attendant and Mr Berge went off together down one of the brilliant colonnaded vistas. One or two of the others who had caught the words glanced across and became aware of a strange figure that was drifting indecisively towards them. He was obviously an elderly German tourist of pronounced type—long-haired, spectacled, outrageously garbed and involved in the mental abstraction of his philosophical race. One hand was occupied with the manipulation of a pipe, as markedly Teutonic as its owner; the other grasped a carpet-bag that would have ensured an opening laugh to any low comedian.
Quite impervious to the preoccupation of the group, the German made his way up to them and picked out the manager.
“This was a safety deposit, nicht wahr?”
“Quite so,” acquiesced the manager loftily, “but just now——”
“Your fellow was dense of gomprehension.” The eyes behind the clumsy glasses wrinkled to a ponderous humour. “He forgot his own business. Now this goot bag——”
Brought into fuller prominence, the carpet-bag revealed further details of its overburdened proportions. At one end a flannel shirt cuff protruded in limp dejection; at the other an ancient collar, with the grotesque attachment known as a “dickey,” asserted its presence. No wonder the manager frowned his annoyance. “The Safe” was in low enough repute among its patrons at that moment without any burlesque interlude to its tragic hour.
“Yes, yes,” he whispered, attempting to lead the would-be depositor away, “but you are under a mistake. This is not——”
“It was a safety deposit? Goot. Mine bag—I would deposit him in safety till the time of mine train. Ja?“
“Nein, nein!“ almost hissed the agonized official. “Go away, sir, go away! It isn’t a cloakroom. John, let this gentleman out.”
The attendant and Mr Berge were returning from their quest. The inner box had been opened and there was no need to ask the result. The bookmaker was shaking his head like a baffled bull.
“Gone, no effects,” he shouted across the hall. “Lifted from ‘The Safe,’ by crumb!”
To those who knew nothing of the method and operation of the fraud it seemed as if the financial security of the Capital was tottering. An amazed silence fell, and in it they heard the great grille door of the basement clang on the inopportune foreigner’s departure. But, as if it was impossible to stand still on that morning of dire happenings, he was immediately succeeded by a dapper, keen-faced man in severe clerical attire who had been let in as the intruder passed out.
“Canon Petersham!” exclaimed the professor, going forward to greet him.
“My dear Professor Bulge!” reciprocated the canon. “You here! A most disquieting thing has happened to me. I must have my safe at once.” He divided his attention between the manager and the professor as he monopolized them both. “A most disquieting and—and outrageous circumstance. My safe, please—yes, yes, Rev. Henry Noakes Petersham. I have just received by hand a box, a small box of no value but one that I thought, yes, I am convinced that it was the one, a box that was used to contain certain valuables of family interest which should at this moment be in my safe here. No. 7436? Very likely, very likely. Yes, here is my key. But not content with the disconcerting effect of that, professor, the box contained—and I protest that it’s a most unseemly thing to quote any text from the Bible in this way to a clergyman of my position—well, here it is. ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth——’ Why, I have a dozen sermons of my own in my desk now on that very verse. I’m particularly partial to the very needful lesson that it teaches. And to apply it to me! It’s monstrous!”
“No. 7436, John,” ordered the manager, with weary resignation.
The attendant again led the way towards another armour-plated aisle. Smartly turning a corner, he stumbled over something, bit a profane exclamation in two, and looked back.
“It’s that bloomin’ foreigner’s old bag again,” he explained across the place in aggrieved apology. “He left it here after all.”
“Take it upstairs and throw it out when you’ve finished,” said the manager shortly.
“Here, wait a minute,” pondered John, in absent-minded familiarity. “Wait a minute. This is a funny go. There’s a label on that wasn’t here before. ‘Why not look inside?’”
“‘Why not look inside?’” repeated someone.
“That’s what it says.”
There was another puzzled silence. All were arrested by some intangible suggestion of a deeper mystery than they had yet touched. One by one they began to cross the hall with the conscious air of men who were not curious but thought that they might as well see.
“Why, curse my crumpet,” suddenly exploded Mr Berge, “if that ain’t the same writing as these texts!”
“By gad, but I believe you are right,” assented Mr Carlyle. “Well, why not look inside?”
The attendant, from his stooping posture, took the verdict of the ring of faces and in a trice tugged open the two buckles. The central fastening was not locked, and yielded to a touch. The flannel shirt, the weird collar and a few other garments in the nature of a “top-dressing” were flung out and John’s hand plunged deeper....
Harry the Actor had lived up to his dramatic instinct. Nothing was wrapped up; nay, the rich booty had been deliberately opened out and displayed, as it were, so that the overturning of the bag, when John the keybearer in an access of riotous extravagance lifted it up and strewed its contents broadcast on the floor, was like the looting of a smuggler’s den, or the realization of a speculator’s dream, or the bursting of an Aladdin’s cave, or something incredibly lavish and bizarre. Bank-notes fluttered down and lay about in all directions, relays of sovereigns rolled away like so much dross, bonds and scrip for thousands and tens of thousands clogged the downpouring stream of jewellery and unset gems. A yellow stone the size of a four-pound weight and twice as heavy dropped plump upon the canon’s toes and sent him hopping and grimacing to the wall. A ruby-hilted kris cut across the manager’s wrist as he strove to arrest the splendid rout. Still the miraculous cornucopia deluged the ground, with its pattering, ringing, bumping, crinkling, rolling, fluttering produce until, like the final tableau of some spectacular ballet, it ended with a golden rain that masked the details of the heap beneath a glittering veil of yellow sand.
“My dust!” gasped Draycott.
“My fivers, by golly!” ejaculated the bookmaker, initiating a plunge among the spoil.
“My Japanese bonds, coupons and all, and—yes, even the manuscript of my work on ‘Polyphyletic Bridal Customs among the mid-Pleistocene Cave Men.’ Hah!” Something approaching a cachinnation of delight closed the professor’s contribution to the pandemonium, and eyewitnesses afterwards declared that for a moment the dignified scientist stood on one foot in the opening movement of a can-can.
“My wife’s diamonds, thank heaven!” cried Sir Benjamin, with the air of a schoolboy who was very well out of a swishing.
“But what does it mean?” demanded the bewildered canon. “Here are my family heirlooms—a few decent pearls, my grandfather’s collection of camei and other trifles—but who——?”
“Perhaps this offers some explanation,” suggested Mr Carlyle, unpinning an envelope that had been secured to the lining of the bag. “It is addressed ‘To Seven Rich Sinners.’ Shall I read it for you?”
For some reason the response was not unanimous, but it was sufficient. Mr Carlyle cut open the envelope.
“My dear Friends,—Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you happy at this moment? Ah yes; but not with the true joy of regeneration that alone can bring lightness to the afflicted soul. Pause while there is yet time. Cast off the burden of your sinful lusts, for what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (Mark, chap. viii., v. 36.)
“Oh, my friends, you have had an all-fired narrow squeak. Up till the Friday in last week I held your wealth in the hollow of my ungodly hand and rejoiced in my nefarious cunning, but on that day as I with my guilty female accomplice stood listening with worldly amusement to the testimony of a converted brother at a meeting of the Salvation Army on Clapham Common, the gospel light suddenly shone into our rebellious souls and then and there we found salvation. Hallelujah!
“What we have done to complete the unrighteous scheme upon which we had laboured for months has only been for your own good, dear friends that you are, though as yet divided from us by your carnal lusts. Let this be a lesson to you. Sell all you have and give it to the poor—through the organization of the Salvation Army by preference—and thereby lay up for yourselves treasures where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal. (Matthew, chap, vi., v. 20.)
“Yours in good works,
“P.S. (in haste).—I may as well inform you that no crib is really uncrackable, though the Cyrus J. Coy Co.’s Safe Deposit on West 24th Street, N.Y., comes nearest the kernel. And even that I could work to the bare rock if I took hold of the job with both hands—that is to say I could have done in my sinful days. As for you, I should recommend you to change your T. A. to ‘Peanut.’
“There sounds a streak of the old Adam in that postscript, Mr Carlyle,” whispered Inspector Beedel, who had just arrived in time to hear the letter read.