The Oxford Book of American Det (34 page)

“True,” smiled the problemist with his lips, but there was no smile in his tone. Two hectic spots glowed in his cheeks, the muscles worked under the pale skin. “What do you think, President Montrose?” The white-haired president halted his pacing once more, and stroked his Vandyke.

“The first stain on the unsullied escutcheon of the Berkley Trust Company,” he groaned. “In all of the half century—“

“I know all that!” broke in Colton impatiently. “What happened? Why are the police here instead of the protective-agency men?”

“I was excited,” moaned the president. “It was the first thing that occurred to me. In all the half century of—“

“I guess we were all excited,” interjected Simpson, his lips twisted in a wry smile. “I know I was up in the air. I came down here, happier than I ever was before in my life, to arrange for a short vacation to take a wedding trip. Now this comes up. When I came to my senses I telephoned for you, because I want the robbery solved as soon as possible. The little girl has banked so much on our little time.”

“Too bad,” murmured Colton. “Tell me the story, Norris.” Before he could get an answer he turned to Thames, who always stayed discreetly in the background when Colton was on a case. “See that no one goes near that safe, Sydney; I may want to examine it.”

“Kind of dropped that bluff of bein’ blind, ain’t you?” sneered Jamison, who was one of the hundreds of persons in New York who would not believe that Thornley Colton was really sightless. And the problemist did not deign to explain that once he had been in a room and touched its objects with his cane his trained brain held the correct mental picture for ever.

“The bonds were fifty in number, ten thousand each, government fours, negotiable anywhere,” began Norris, licking his dry lips to make the words come easier. “They were the bulk of the Stillson estate, on which I was working. We are settling it up. As third secretary my work is with trusts and estates. It was necessary to have everything finished by tonight. I worked late yesterday, so late that the bonds and other papers could not go into the time-locked vaults, and I had to be at work on them this morning before the clock-release time.”

“Is it customary to keep valuable bonds in the small safe in this office?” interrupted Colton.

“It is not unusual. The safe is practically as strong as the big vaults, and only lacks the clocks. This office is really part of the vault itself, the walls are windowless, and of four-foot concrete reinforced by interlocked steel rails. The sheet-steel door, the only entrance to the room, opens into a small cage that is occupied during the day by Thompson, head of the trust and estate routine clerks, and at night by one of our two watchmen. The watchmen never leave it, because it often happens that valuable papers and bonds are left out of the big vaults so that we can work on them before nine o’clock, the hour set on the vault’s clocks. To get to the steel door of this office one would have to enter the outer and inner steel cages, the steel-barred door of the small ante-room, besides setting off burglar-alarms on all, disturbing the watchman, and ringing the bells in the burglar-alarm department of the Bankers’ Protective Association, of which we are a member. And there was no sign of a break, the safe was opened with the combination that only Mr. Montrose and Mr. Simpson and myself know.”

“The watchman could get to this door without any trouble?”

“Both have been in the employ of the bank for forty years. They are absolutely above suspicion. Both are illiterate. Even though they could enter the office, they could not open the safe, and even if they did that they would not know enough to steal all the notes I had made regarding the estate, or the bonds that have so utterly vanished. They have been sent for, however, and should be here any minute.”

“Were the notes you made stolen, too?”

“All of them.”

“Any of the other employees of the bank know the bonds were in this safe?”

“Several, probably.”

“All have access to this room, at any time?”

“Only Thomas, the head of the T. and E. clerks.”

“Trustworthy?”

“He grew up with the bank.”

“You require other clerical assistance at times?”

“Thomas takes the papers from this office, and the clerks get them from him outside.

All must be returned to me before closing time. I carefully checked over every one last night before any of them went away.”

“Any one in here yesterday while you were at work on the papers; any one who could have seen the bonds?”

For a moment there was no answer; then it came, almost in a whisper: “Miss Richmond and her mother were in for a few moments—“

“And I was, too, by Jove!” The interruption came from Simpson. “And I remember asking you how you were getting on with the Stillson estate. I just finished my part when I went away. I guess I really held them up longer than I should.”

“Has Miss Richmond been sent for?” Colton paid absolutely no heed to the first vice-president.

A grunting laugh from the detective. “She sure has, bo. After I found out this guy’s stage lady had been in here with a tailor’s suit-box after closin’ time, my partner went right up to her hotel.”

“By Heaven! You—“ Norris rose to his feet, face black with fury. Colton’s hand on his shoulder forced him back into the chair. Sydney Thames, to whom all women were angels, clenched his fists.

“Is that true?” There was a new tone to Colton’s voice.

Norris seemed to recognise the menace. “She isn’t guilty, I tell you! She can’t be.

She’s—Listen, man! She’s my wife!”

“Your wife!” They all echoed it. The detective with laughing triumph; President Montrose with horror; Sydney Thames in dazed surprise; Simpson with a half-suppressed, significant gasp.

“We were married two days ago; but it was to be a secret until the end of her season.”

“How long ago was she sent for?”

The detective answered: “My side kick ought to be back now. We was on the job there, all right, all right.”

Voices outside came to their ears—the harsh, commanding voice of a man, the half-subdued sobbing of a woman. The door was thrown open, and Rhoda Richmond, opera-singer, and wife of Norris, was half pushed, half carried into the small room.

“Good work, Jim!” grinned Jamison. “Did she put up a howl at the hotel?”

“Hotel?” growled the other scornfully. “No hotel for her. I had a lot of luck or I’d never’ve got her. She was boardin’ a boat fer South America that sails in an hour.”

“It’s a lie!” Norris screamed the words as he leaped toward the man whose rough hand was clenched around the slim arm of the girl. Sydney Thames, obeying Colton’s silent signal, forced him back, his own hands trembling. The problemist without a word untwisted the central-office man’s fingers, and gently seated the girl in a chair at the long table.

“Who the—“ The blustering detective was cut off suddenly.

“We’ve had enough of your strong-arm methods!” Colton’s voice was hard as flint.

“We’ll get some facts now.” The hardness vanished; in its place came gentle sympathy.

“When did you get the message, Miss Richmond?” he asked.

The voice seemed to have the reassuring effect of a pat on the head of a hurt child.

With an effort the girl controlled her sobs, and answered as though it had been the most natural question in the world: “An hour ago—over the telephone—I thought I recognised How—Mr. Norris’s voice. He wanted me to meet him at the Buenos Aires dock. He had to go to South America secretly, he said, and I must tell no one. I hurried to the dock without even telling mother. I waited for an hour, but he did not come; then I decided to go aboard and see if he had missed me and gone to his state room. This man—said Howard had—robbed—I thought—“ She broke down again.

“I guess that’s bad!” grinned Jamison gloatingly. “In another hour there’d of been a clean getaway.”

“The whereabouts of the bonds doesn’t seem to worry you!” snapped Colton sarcastically.

“The stuff ain’t never far away from the guy that took it,” growled Jamison. “When you get through your know-it-all talk we’ll sweat that out, all right.”

“Did you have a tailor’s suit-box with you yesterday?” asked Colton abruptly of the girl.

“Yes. I called to see if my new walking-suit was finished. It was all ready to be sent to my home, but when I saw the poor, tired little boy who would have to carry it I took it myself. The tailor is just around the corner, on the avenue; that is why mother and I dropped in here.”

“Of course,” nodded Colton, his teeth snapping together as he seemed to sense the derisive grins on the faces of the detectives. “Did you recognise the bonds among the papers on which Mr. Norris was working?”

“Oh, he showed them to me, and we laughingly spoke of what we could do with half a million dollars. Then, when he took mother out to show her around the bank—I was too tired—I picked one up and read it.”

“Rhoda!” cried Norris. He could realise the present significance of yesterday’s innocent words.

“That’ll be about all from you!” scowled Jamison. “If this guy wants to third-degree her, and cinch it for us, let him.”

“An’ if he don’t cinch it this will.” The other detective pulled a paper from his pocket.

“Here’s the Buenos Aires’s passenger list, and here’s Mr. and Mrs. Frank Morris, who booked yesterday, added in pencil. Morris for Norris! Slick enough to be almost good.”

Every one in the room but Colton seemed to be shocked into a state of stupefied rigidity.

“Now—“ Jamison said that word in the tone one uses to introduce some especially clever thing, and accompanied it with a sarcastic glance toward the blind man, who tapped his trouser leg with his cane in thoughtful silence. “If you ain’t got no objection we’ll take these two to headquarters, and get a line on where they got the stuff cached.” He paused suggestively, mockingly.

The permission came, with a deprecatory wave of the cane, and a smile that was menacing in its very suaveness. “Go as far as you like, Jamison. Don’t be too gentle with them.”

“My God, Mr. Colton! You don’t think—“ The words choked in Norris’s throat.

“I think you had better go.” The problemist’s tone was peculiarly quiet. “Jamison and his partner have the reputation of being the two wealthiest detectives in the department. No one knows how they got it, but they’ve enough to give you and your wife a twenty-thousand-dollar nest egg each on a false-arrest suit. Isn’t that worth a few hours’ discomfort? I can prove your innocence when they have gone. They worry me here.”

Simpson whistled, and turned it into a jerky laugh. “Gad, that was clever!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, is that so!” The detectives chorused it, in their voices sarcasm—and just a tinge of something else, too. Colton knew the one thing that would make them stop and think.

“Are you going?” snapped Colton.

“We’ll see them two watchmen first,” growled Jamison.

“Good!” The problemist laughed at the sudden change. “I think you’ll have quite a crowd to take down to headquarters if you hang around long enough. Before I started I telephoned to the burglar-alarm telegraph department of the protective agency to get hold of the men who answered the alarm that rang in from this office early this morning.”

“What burglar-alarm?” snarled Jamison. He whirled on the white-haired president.

“Why didn’t you tell us there was an alarm rung in?”

“Really”—the Vandyke received several severe yanks—“I didn’t know it. We do not receive the clock reports and emergency alarm sheets until about noon. Er—Mr.

Colton, might I ask where you got this information?”

“I telephoned for it,” answered Colton curtly. “If these policemen hadn’t been so anxious to make arrests, and the robbery hadn’t been too obvious for their thick heads, they might have investigated. But they are just headquarters men; the obvious arrest is the one they always make. Feet make good central-office men, not heads. Ah, here are the men, all together.”

They came in slowly, two old men first; one with straggly, white whiskers that concealed the weak chin and grew up around the faded, watery eyes; the other’s parchment-like face a network of wrinkles. Honesty shone from every part of them; the weak, helpless honesty of their kind.

As Colton took each man’s hand with a murmured greeting he felt it tremble in his.

The aged watchmen knew that something had happened; something that concerned them and the bank they had guarded so long. The two men from the burglar-alarm company nodded to the two detectives, and their eyes narrowed as they shook the hand of the problemist. Both knew him, and both knew this had been no common summons. Thornley Colton never bothered with common things. Sydney Thames had pulled two chairs up to the table, and the old men sat down. Colton lighted a cigarette thoughtfully, then he spoke:

“This morning, gentlemen, that small safe was robbed of five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of government bonds.” His slim cane, apparently held idly between his fingers, touching the chair of the man nearest him, felt the watchman’s involuntary jump. The others saw the old jaws drop, saw the watchmen glance helplessly at each other, their trembling fingers picking at worn trouser-knees. Colton heard the gasp of the two protective-agency men.

“I knowed it!” quavered the white-whiskered watchman. “I knowed something’d happen when Mary took sick.”

“Who’s Mary?” queried Colton interestedly. The others crowded forward.

“She’s Mary, my wife. She’s been scrubbin’ the bank floors fer thirty years, an’

nobody ever said a word against her.” He glanced at them all with pathetic belligerence. “She even picked up the pins she found on the floor, and put ‘em in a box on the cashier’s desk.”

“That’s true,” laughed Simpson. “It’s the joke of the bank.”

“And she was taken sick last night?” Thornley asked gently.

“A week ago.” The other watchman answered, while the first brushed his dry lips with his work-gnarled hand. “Mrs. Bowden, she’s got the consumption, and lives across the hall from us and—“

“Where do you live?” interrupted Colton.

“Sixteen hundred Third Avenue. I been boardin’ with him an’ his wife fer thirty years.