"The vault is built up, Snedeker told me, of three-inch chrome steel plates, three feet square, bolted together underneath like those of a battleship and set in concrete. The vault, the whole building, in fact, rests on solid ground, Snedeker said, without cellar or space of any kind below the level of the street. Seems they were afraid of water in that locality. He had assured me that our burglars could not have broken in from underground whatever other route they may have taken. Of course, I took his say-so on this point for what it might be worth, and no more."
"But as I looked at that plate in the middle of the vault floor I began to suspect that his confidence was not based on any firmer foundation than his building. The plate looked just like any of the others. It was the appearance of the lines where it joined the four around it that made me kneel down for closer examination. And. you know, I don't stoop my proud stomach any more than I have to. Luckily Daniels was puttering around absorbed in his monologue of Gottstrafing all bank burglars and paying no particular attention to what I was doing. His opinion of detectives, I had gathered, was only one point better than it was of burglars."
"What first had attracted my attention was no more than that the lines of demarkation between this particular plate and the others seemed a bit wider than the corresponding lines elsewhere and quite a bit dirtier, as if they were filled with greasy dust. When I knelt I found I was right about both — they were wider and they were dirtier. It was greasy dust or dusty grease and deeper than I could probe with my finger-nail, though the similar lines nearby were not depressed over a few hundredths of an inch."
"I confess that my hand trembled as I opened the blade of my knife and thrust it into those cracks — not in one place only but in a dozen, on all four sides of the plate. And each time it went clear in its full length without meeting any obstruction! I scraped out a little bit of that 'grease' — I'll show it to you in a minute — and then smoothed over all the holes that I had made. What do you think of that. Sticking an ordinary knife blade through chrome steel!"
"Let's look at that sample of 'grease'."
Carranaugh took his wallet from his pocket and from it a cigarette-paper-wrapped pellet of a greasy gray steel color. It was odorless, had the feeling and consistency of paraffine filled with small grit.
"And then?" asked Peiperson, laying the gray pellet carefully on the desk beside him,
"Then, more with the idea of getting Daniels away from that vault where he might happen to see what I had seen than with any idea of finding anything more, I asked to be shown the other vaults. I went through them all but discovered nothing until we came to the one used for the safe-deposit department, next to and directly east of the one from which the money had been taken."
"In the floor of this vault, and, as far as I could judge without making measurements, in direct line with the other loose plate, was a section in exactly the same condition — the same thin crack all around it filled with this."
Carranaugh touched the gray pellet and replaced it in his wallet.
"And?"
"Isn't that enough? There have been at least twenty trained men, supposedly experts, who have gone over that vault with fine-toothed combs in the past week, and not one of them discovered a smidgeon of evidence to show how the vault or the building, was entered. And here I—"
"It's mighty fine work, Jim. I didn't mean that it wasn't. I simply was anxious to know what came next."
"If you mean what did I do next — I told Snedeker I thought I would have something interesting to report within forty-eight hours. He sniffed and mumbled something about 'they all say that,' but I didn't mind his being sceptical. Can't blame him for sniffing at the end of a week of nothing but promises without performances. Then I came here and put in the time, while waiting for you, in figuring out a working theory."
"Have you got one?"
"Sort of one. Remember, I'm not sure those plates are loose. I only think so. But I'm basing as much of a theory as I have on their being so."
"Then they must have tunneled under the building after all — is that it?"
"It looks that way. Something like that. But what I'm bothered about is the loose plate, if it is loose, in the safe deposit vault. Instead of making the proposition simpler, it complicates it. What on earth did they want to monkey round that vault for — probably not enough valuables in the boxes to pay high class crooks for the taking, men who were figuring on more than a million. Can you dope that out? I can't, yet."
"Maybe they made a mistake — opened up the wrong vault first and then went on to the right one."
"Maybe. That's possible. But not probable. Expert cracksmen who could locate the center of the vaults at all wouldn't make a mistake of over twenty feet in their point of attack. No, that isn't the explanation. I'm sure it isn't. There's some other twist in the tangle, a better reason than that."
"Then maybe—"
"Hold on a minute, Tom! An almost human idea is trying to bore its way into my brain and I'm afraid to frighten it away by talking. Sit still and pray!"
Peiperson smoked his pipe and was silent as directed while Carranaugh almost visibly labored in his effort to concentrate on the glimmer of thought that suddenly had occurred to him. Finally, slowly, his eyes brightened, his huge body seemed to bulk even more hugely, he breathed like a diver coming to the surface as he whispered:
"By-the-seven-gods-who-rule-the-seas, I believe I've got it! I believe — I believe I know where that million is lying this blessed minute and how it got there! I believe I could lay my hands on it in less than ten minutes' walk from where we're sitting! I believe — I believe—" His voice trailed off into nothingness as he stared at the wall as if his eyes were piercing through and beyond it to the hiding place of the missing million.
"Spring it, Jim! Spring it!"
But Carranaugh insisted that they go and eat their long deferred dinner before he told his vision, declaring that he needed to piece it out in spots before telling even Tom. So it was not until he had fed mightily that he explained his "almost human idea." Then the two fell eagerly to discussing the pros and cons, the possibilities and their plans of activity for the morrow — a morrow that was fairly well begun when Jim caught a Madison street car for his houseboat on Lake Washington and Tom one going south for Mount Baker Park, where he knew that Mrs. Tom would be waiting up for him even at that hour, so unholy for the homecoming of a married man.
Chapter VII
At nine o'clock next morning Peiperson appeared at the office of the city engineer and asked to be allowed to examine plats of the Pioneer Square district, new and old, the older the better.
There was little that Tom could not get granted when he asked for it as he knew how to ask. For the next several hours he pored over the maps looking for a certain definite something that he felt convinced was in existence, whether the plats showed it or not. Luncheon and everything else were forgotten as he dug and delved through the dusty blue prints, tracings and brown paper drawings.
Finally, as his finger followed line after line on the earliest city map he could find it came to rest upon two parallel series of small dashes enclosing the word "Abandoned." Heaving a sigh of combined satisfaction and weariness, he borrowed a piece of tracing cloth and a pen from one of the draughtsmen and made a rapid but carefully accurate copy of the street and property lines in the district surrounding the spot that had ended his quest and the contiguous waterfront and wharves.
This sectional map he then compared and checked with the latest official plat, noting the changes and corrections made by the city's development and growth. Thanking the engineer who had assisted him he departed, trying to whistle and smoke at the same time.