A police radio car was at the curb. A watchman at the door scrutinized Strickland’s badge and moved to one side. Strickland’s big feet pounded down an echoing corridor, the midnight silence contrasting to the humming activity of the daylight hours. Lights blazed in an office on the mezzanine floor. Strickland wearily climbed the stairs.
Du Nord was standing in front of a safe door. Lights shone upon a glistening array of nickeled knobs, shining wheels. To one side was the grimly disapproving countenance of Mrs. Carver, her blue eyes staring reproachfully at the excitement-distorted features of the president of the company.
Strickland arrived in the middle of Du Nord’s impassioned explanation.
“...my own son! He just arrived on the boat today. He’s spent the last year in France. I left orders that the vault wasn’t to be locked tonight and arranged that the party we suspected was to be sent to the store by Mrs. Carver on an errand. I didn’t take Mrs. Carver fully into my confidence as to the scheme. My son was to be caught by this person in the vaults, apparently having mastered the combination. And now they’re both in there — shut in!”
“What is it?” asked the radio officer. “A time lock?”
“No, no, no,” Du Nord explained hastily. “There’s a time lock on the outer door, but it’s open. See? We can open it.”
He pulled back the massive doors.
“It’s the inner sealed doors. There’s an inner and an outer lock, so that a person in the vault couldn’t be surprised by thieves. It’s locked from the inside. Can’t you see what’s happened? She’s killing him or something. She won’t come out.”
Du Nord ran to the door and banged on the metal with his fists. One of the officers pounded with a night stick.
“She’s trapped him in there! Killed him!” Du Lord screamed. “Break the doors down! Do something!”
One of the officers inspected the doors.
“Had this vault made to order?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Better get a representative of the manufacturer and see if an acetylene torch will cut through them.”
He banged once more on the doors with the point of his night stick.
“You’re trapped!” he shouted. “We’ll cut through the doors with a torch if we have to. If you’re alive, come out!”
Mrs. Carver gave a gasp.
“Perhaps,” she said, “it’s murder and suicide.”
She had hardly spoken when there was the sound of a rasping bolt. The doors swung open. Those who had been prepared to see the evidences of murder stood dumbfounded before the pair who stood in the entrance to the vault. Dane Du Nord, his eyes beaming with a strange, misty happiness, stood with his arm around Anita Lyle, whose lips were half parted, revealing the tips of her teeth. Her shoulders heaved with her breathing, as though she had been running.
“Damn it, Dad!” said Dane Du Nord. “You took her away from me once — you can’t do it again! Let us out of here! We’re looking for a preacher.”
“Stop!” Du Nord cried. “She’s a thief? We have the proof.”
Pete Strickland pushed his way forward.
“Can I say something?” he asked in a voice that was strangely without emotion.
Perhaps it was the very lack of emotion in his voice which compelled attention. They turned to him.
“That little stunt of mine,” he said, “about the cards, is something I always use on a job to get fingerprints. The cards are coated with stuff that gives me the prints of the people who handle them. I always seem to give the same card out two or three times. I don’t — I put it back in my case and give out another one. You take on a job of this kind, people like Mrs. Carver and Mr. Du Nord would resent it if I asked for their fingerprints. So I use the card trick. Of course, I don’t get a complete set of ten fingerprints, but I get enough to get a pretty general classification of the kind of prints, loops, arches, whorls or composites.
“You folks figured the designs had been stolen after they got in the vault. I wasn’t so certain; particularly after I handed one of my cards to Jacqueline Carver, and when she handed it back there was a smear on the back that was oily to the touch — something like graphite. I pretended to think it wasn’t of any importance, but I knew right away it came from a very soft carbon paper that had smeared on her thumb.
“So I got a screw driver, and when I got an opportunity, after we came back from the boat and the designers had gone home, slipped into the room, unscrewed the strips that held the imitation leather cover in place on the designing table and found just what I’d expected — a whole bunch of soft carbon paper underneath.
“There were fingerprints on the carbon paper. They all came from the same person — Jacqueline Carver.”
“What?” screamed Du Nord.
Strickland nodded gloomily.
“Fact,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Du Nord asked. “Why didn’t you report immediately?”
“Because,” Strickland said, “I wanted to find out whether she was working alone,” and he glanced meaningly toward Mrs. Carver. “Of course, we can probably get it out of her by using a little — persuasion, but if you hadn’t forced my hand I’d have been able to give you a complete report tomorrow. I’m telling you now because of Miss Lyle.
“And you’d better be sort of careful how you treat her, because she’d have a suit against you for defamation of character if you went too far.
“Personally, I don’t go for this fancy psychological stuff. Maybe people clench their hands when they’re trying to conceal something, but they also clench them when they’re mad or when they’re getting a rotten deal, or when they’re determined to do something.
“Now maybe this Anita Lyle knew that the father of the man she loved disapproved of her, and she decided she’d get a job in his company and work so hard that he’d have to respect her. And all that time, the man’s son was chasing around Paris, trying to find what had happened to the woman he loved, and then when the son finally did show up to report to his father, the girl got some time off and sneaked down to steal just one heart-hungry glance at him.
“You see, it hadn’t been easy going for her. She tried to make the man’s father respect her, but there had been a psychological expert in charge of the personnel, who hadn’t liked the way this girl had made herself almost invaluable in the business, and this psychological expert had a daughter. And that’s why the poor kid walked around with her fists clenched.”
Strickland ceased speaking, raised his arms above his head and sucked in a prodigious lungful of breath as he yawned. “So,” he said wearily, “I guess I can go back and get the rest of my sleep. God, but my stomach’s sour! You can’t get jerked out of bed and—”
Mrs. Carver, who had been glowering at him with speechless indignation, shrilled into high-voiced accusation.
“It’s all some kind of frame-up! You and this creature framed—”
Strickland’s big forefinger, rigidly extended, stabbed at her chest.
“Look out, sister,” he said, “you’ve got your hands clenched. That’s a sign of secretiveness, you know.”
Barney Killigen
I
Charlotte Ray came into my office, and her eyes looked as though she’d been crying. “I swear,” she said, “I don’t know what’s going to become of that man, Miss Graham.”
She dropped into a chair and slammed the big office checkbook down on the desk.
“Overdrawn again?” I asked.
“Overdrawn!” she exclaimed. “Overdrawn is no name for it! Last month we took in five thousand two hundred and sixty-four dollars and nineteen cents. We should have had a balance of two thousand six hundred and four dollars and thirty-two cents, and the bank’s sent me a notice that we’re overdrawn three hundred and forty-two dollars and seven cents.”