The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 1, No. 5 - August 1920)

Chapter I

A man cannot be in two places at the same time.

That is a law of physics — isn't it?

But how about the other law, of evidence, and your own senses? If you saw and heard a man in that impossible situation or condition, which would you believe, the law or your own eyes and ears?

"But the thing is impossible!"

So? Then how about this:

On one of those fine Italian spring mornings that pass for summer in the Puget Sound country, there entered the Savoy Hotel, Seattle, a man who ordinarily would not call for specific description, but who, for the sake of this argument, we need to identify particularly.

He stood out from the world about five feet eleven inches, weighed approximately one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds, was apparently in his late thirties or early forties, wore a neatly trimmed brown mustache and beard of the cut known as Vandyke, spectacles with large, rimless, egg-shaped lenses, a soft black broad-brimmed hat, blue serge suit with double-breasted coat, black tie, low tan shoes, carried a light-weight gray overcoat, a black Gladstone bag and a sole-leather suitcase. He walked with a slight but noticeable limp of the left leg.

Relinquishing coat and bags to a bellboy, the newcomer nodded pleasantly to the clerk and registered, in a distinctly legible hand, the name "Samuel Smith," without address. This done, he set his watch by that of the clerk — it was just 10:02 a. m. — received his key and followed the bell-boy to room 314. Tipping the boy generously but not lavishly, he asked that the hotel valet and public stenographer be sent to him. To the one he gave a suit of clothes for pressing; to the other he dictated two short letters. Returning to the lobby, he bought a dollar's worth of cigars, asked to be directed to the Totem National Bank, glanced at his watch and, commenting audibly upon the time, 10:48, walked out into the crowd on Second Avenue.

Nothing remarkable or unusual about that, nothing that does not occur, in a general way, in a thousand hotels all over the land every day in the year?

True. But wait a moment. The case is not stated yet.

On that same fine Italian spring morning of the same day, in this same city of Seattle, Washington, there entered the Butler Hotel, a man who ordinarily would not call for specific description, but who, for the sake of this argument, we need to identify particularly.

He stood out from the world about five feet eleven inches, weighed approximately one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds, was apparently in his late thirties or early forties, wore a neatly trimmed brown mustache and beard of the cut known as Vandyke, spectacles with large egg-shaped lenses, black tie, low tan shoes, blue serge suit with double-breasted coat, a soft black broad-brimmed hat, carried a light weight gray overcoat, a black Gladstone bag and sole-leather suitcase. He walked with a slight but noticeable limp of the left leg.

Relinquishing coat and bags to a bellboy, the newcomer nodded pleasantly to the clerk and registered, in a distinctly legible hand, the name "Samuel Smith," without address. This done, he set his watch by that of the clerk — it was just 10:02 A. M. — received his key and followed the bell-boy to room 264. Tipping the boy generously but not lavishly, he asked that the hotel valet and public stenographer be sent to him. To the one he gave a suit of clothes for pressing; to the other dictated two short letters. Returning to the lobby, he bought a dollar's worth of cigars, asked to be directed to the Totem National Bank, glanced at his watch and commented audibly upon the time, 10:48, and walked out into the crowded street.

That makes it just a little more unusual — eh, what? But don't be impatient or jump at conclusions. There is more to come.

On one of those fine Italian spring mornings that pass for summer in the Puget Sound country there entered the Rainier Grand Hotel, Seattle, a man who ordinarily—

Well, there's no use going through it all again in the style of "One dark and stormy night in the Carpathian mountains a robber band gathered about their chief—"

To clinch the matter, a man of exactly the same appearance as described above entered, at the same hour and minute, signed the same name in the same handwriting, did exactly the same things, made the same remarks, and left at the same minute, not only the Savoy and Butler, but also the Rainier Grand, Washington, Lincoln, Seattle and Frye Hotels.

Hotel clerks are observing people, as men go, and each of them, of all seven hotels, not only stated the facts as here set down but swore to them, with many additional and confirmatory details you have not been bothered with.

Talk about your alibis! Most men are content with proving that they were at some one other place at a given time, but here was a man — if the singular pronoun be correct — who was in seven different places at the same time, with some thirty-odd reputable witnesses able to testify to the fact, if it was a fact.

That sort of thing isn't an alibi — it is the fourth dimension.

Chapter II

You never would have taken Jim Carranaugh for a detective. He was too obvious. Entirely too big. Too big by a number of inches, both ways.

To be sure, he could and had, by strenuous starvation, trained down to two hundred and eighty pounds; also, he had reached four hundred and one. Some place between these two extremes might be called normal, if Jim could be called a normal human at any time. Four inches and a half above six feet and almost an equal distance around his equator makes a fairly sizable man, so it is no wonder he attracted and held attention wherever he went.

But for all his size, Carranaugh was nimble of hand and foot as well as of wit, and could catch a car or a culprit as readily as the point of a joke. His command of polyglot American was the marvel and joy of his friends. The English language could not be broken into too small or too irregular pieces to escape his power of mimicry. Had he not been the able detective he was, he would have made a rare character actor; had he not been so good an actor he might not have been so efficient an officer of the law.

Chapter III

The Totem National Bank of Seattle occupies a one-story building of its own just off Pioneer Square in the older part of the city, close to the wholesale and commission firms, warehouses and shipping interests that form the bulk of its depositors.

Westward to the present shore or wharfline is all made ground. The lower layers of this are, or were, sawdust and slabs from the sawmills that were one of the earliest industries of the little town that was to become a great city. To this substratum was added the refuse of the growing community, until finally the casual and indeterminate merged into the planned and ordered earth-and-stone fill upon which paved streets and huge buildings rest.

The outer and western edge of this district still is, however, in more or less of its earlier formative state, piled and planked over for much of the area between Western Avenue and Elliott Bay. Beneath these streets and their wooden structures, the rising and falling tides slosh about and the industrious toredo lunches on fir and spruce with creosote dressing.

On a certain summer Monday morning the steamship Bertha arrived at her dock in Seattle, bringing from Alaska via Skagway a shipment of $200,000 in gold — bars, nuggets and dust — consigned to the Totem National Bank. As was sometimes the custom in those days, this gold was displayed heaped up in the bank's windows to satisfy the curiosity, whet the avaricious appetite and inspire the confidence of passersby.

This comfortable fortune was exhibited during banking hours on Tuesday and Wednesday under the jealous eyes of two guards stationed within the bank and two others at either side of the window on the street outside. There really was no danger of robbery. The heap of gold weighed over a thousand pounds and the window was heavily and closely barred inside and out. The guards were nearly as much a part of the peep-show as the gold, the additional and necessary touch to give it the proper importance in the public eye. At night the gold was transferred from the window to the bank vault, with due ceremony, lapsing there to its proper measure of importance in a bank that reckoned its resources by the million.

So much for the stage setting. Now for the first scene of the comedy-drama.

Chapter IV

Perhaps it had better be called prologue, since it happened nearly a week before the arrival and display of the gold — to be exact, on the very day that the Bertha cleared from Skagway. At that time it attracted no greater attention than any other of the many routine transactions of the Totem National, being merely the leasing of a safe-deposit box, one of the largest, such as generally is used for the safe keeping of large books or other bulky records of value.

The lessor gave his name as Seth C. Seeley; address, temporary, Hotel Savoy, Seattle; permanent. Bankers' Trust Company, New York; business, dealer in securities.. In less than an hour after receiving his card of identification and key Seeley returned with a large parcel heavily wrapped and corded, apparently of considerable weight and of a size that just fitted into and filled the box. Remarking pettishly that the Totem National should be prepared to supply its customers with more adequate accommodations, Seeley grumblingly hired the two adjoining boxes of the same size as the first and in turn filled them with similar parcels. These, like the first, he carried and put in place with his own hands, despite their evident weight, roughly declining all assistance proffered by the banks employees.

Thursday morning of that week Daniels, first assistant cashier of the Totem National, unlocked the vault to withdraw the cash necessary for the day's business and to superintend the removal of the $200,000 gold to its place in the limelight. He took one step within the battleship-armored doorway, gasped, and took two steps backward, yelling for help.

There were two entirely sufficient causes for the first assistant cashier's excitement. The most apparent was the body of a man lying sprawled on the vault floor, very evidently and most completely dead. The second, to Daniels' trained eyes, the almost equally obvious fact that the vault had been looted — of the $200,000 in gold and he did not know how much more.

For reasons that all bankers will understand and sympathize with, but toward which newspaper men hold very different attitudes, the officials of the Totem National made every effort and used every means at their command to keep all news of the robbery from the public, to such good effect that no suspicion of any of the happenings here related reached the newspapers until the whole incident was history. The body of the dead man added annoying complications to this hushing-up process, but the power of money is great even when it lies fallow in banks, so no insinuation of bribe tendering or acceptance is intended here.

Far be it from me to even remotely suggest that a banker would give or a policeman take money for the suppression of the truth. The police were only too willing to keep the whole thing quiet until they should have arrested the thief and murderer, which consummation, they assured the bank, would be a matter of only hours or days, as is the optimistic, not to say egotistic way of policemen the world over.

Whatever the views on publicity held by the board of directors of the Totem National, they were not disposed to take their loss philosophically or inactively. While they assured Chief Stein, of the Seattle police, that they had every confidence in his zeal and ability to both capture the thief or thieves and recover the stolen valuables, they also availed themselves of the additional services of the Pinkertons and the Government secret service men, the latter being interested by reason of the fact that part of the loot taken was some thousands of dollars' worth of revenue and excise stamps temporarily in the care of the bank while in transit to other points of distribution.

As this indicates, the $200,000 worth of gold was not all of the treasure that was missing, the total figure reaching to over the million mark when, the careful check of the vault's contents had been made. This sum was made up, in addition to the gold brought by the Bertha, of gold coin, bank notes and easily negotiable securities. Silver specie, bills of small denomination, and papers of problematical value to the thieves were found scattered about the floor of the vault around and under the dead body, discarded as contemptuously as this now insensate and useless clay.

The body was that of a man about five feet eleven inches in height, weight one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds, in his late thirties or early forties, with neatly trimmed brown mustache and Vandyke beard. It was dressed in a suit of blue serge, double-breasted coat, tan shoes. On the floor near by lay a lightweight gray overcoat, a broad brimmed black soft hat, the broken pieces of what had been spectacles with large, rimless, egg-shaped lenses, a black Gladstone bag and a sole-leather suitcase.

The last named was empty, but the bag was partially filled with pajamas, shirts, collars and the usual toilet accessories of a man particular about his appearance. In the pockets of the clothes there was found nothing by which to identify the dead man except a card-case stamped with and containing cards engraved with the name, "Samuel Smith," and receipted bills made out in the same name and all bearing the same date, that of the previous day, from seven Seattle hotels.

But the foregoing might apply in a general way to the body of any dead man under normal circumstances. What took this body out of the ordinary was not only its inexplicable presence in the locked and guarded vault but also the fact that from the back there protruded the handle of a large hunting knife — one of the elkhorn variety never carried except by chechahco hunters. The long blade was buried in the body just below and to the right of the left shoulder-blade, between it and the spine, and had been driven in with such a forceful blow that the haft made an indentation in the flesh about the wound.

An inquiry, conducted quietly and circumspectly out of regard for the tender feelings of the Totem National, developed the fact that a man answering to this description and the name of Samuel Smith had stopped at each and all of the hotels indicated by the bills, that he had settled his accounts and departed the day before, Wednesday, for a destination unknown to any of the clerks, leaving no forwarding address. But the policeman in plain clothes who reported on this feature of the case was not gifted with imagination above "carrying a message to Garcia," and so he did only what he was told to do and asked only what he had been told to ask, thus he overlooked the coincidence in the times of arrival and departure of the said Smith, which later was developed.

The Chief of Police and the city detectives working under him on the case were unanimous in their opinion of the dead man's part in the problem. There was not the slightest doubt, Chief Stein declared, and the others echoed, that the man must have been one of the gang that turned the trick, and that he had been murdered by his confederates during a quarrel over the division of the spoils.

The suitcase, they pointed out, unquestionably had been provided for carrying away this Smith's share of the proceeds of the robbery, and its emptiness was conclusive evidence that he, in turn, had been cheated of that share and stabbed when he attempted to protest. To them, the police, the dead man simply was one crook the less to require their attention — and good riddance. Nor, to them, did he even provide one of their dearly beloved clues.

The government officers were not interested at all in the death or murder, except for its possible value as an indication of the gang's identity, presupposing that there was a gang that had turned the trick. The man's face and description were not on file at any police headquarters in the country and cabled inquiry abroad did not serve to identify him as a known or suspected criminal.

The Pinkerton operatives, acting directly for the bank and the Bankers' Protective Association, were, like the secret service men, far more interested in the recovery of the vanished treasure than in avenging the death of an unknown and, presumably, unimportant stranger, who probably had received only his just deserts.

So the main facts of the case were, and so they remained without a single illuminating ray of enlightenment at the end of a week after the discovery of the crime. Of course the police arrested a number of tramps, I. W. W.'s, ex-convicts and others known unfavorably to the force, but were forced reluctantly to let them go again, for lack of a single item of even police evidence that would warrant their further detention as suspicious characters. That is one of the annoyances of police administration under our puerile system of limiting the power of the guardians of our wealth and safety. Now in Russia—

Oh, yes, Stein reported daily to the officials of the Totem National that he was "making progress." But nothing whatever had been discovered to indicate the means taken by the thieves to enter or leave the vault or the bank building itself. The guards, regular and special watchmen, the patrolman on the beat, had seen nothing, heard nothing. All doors and locks were in perfect condition, as they had been left the night before the robbery. There were no signs of violence other than the dead body and the litter within the vault. No tool-marks, no finger-prints, no tampering with combinations, nothing that appeared in any way different from the way it should be.

The treasure had disappeared. The dead man's body had appeared.

That was all and it remained all.

Until—

Chapter V

"I came in for a little help, Tom," said Jim Carranaugh to.Tom Peiperson, head of the Seattle Advertising Service, as the big man entered his friend's office.

"Sorry, but I'm down to small change. If that will do you any—"

"It's not bracing you I am — this time. I want a little advice, maybe a little help into the bargain."

"Cheapest thing I know."

"I'm up against a queer sort of proposition."

"Let's have it."

"You noticed about that last shipment of gold from Skagway — two hundred thousand dollars' worth on the Bertha?"

"Yes. Saw it in the window of the Totem National. Now if they only would let me handle their advertising I'd—"

"Never mind about that now, Tom. If you can help me pull off this stunt I'll whack up more than all the banks in Seattle would spend for advertising in a year."

"That sounds reasonable. Proceed."

"Can you — will you keep mum if I tell you something that the newspapers would break their city editors' necks to get hold of?"

"I can and will."

"Listen: That two hundred thousand in gold, along with over eight hundred thousand more in money and securities, was stolen from the Totem National a week ago last night."

"What! Who? Stolen! When? I haven't seen a word about it in the papers. Where'd you get the story? Have they caught—"

" 'Cease firing.' The 'what' I've just told you. I'll give you details in a minute. The 'who' is for us to find out. You haven't seen anything about it in the papers for the very good reason that they neither know nor suspect anything about it — and are not apt to unless and until the thing is cleared up."

"Then how, where did you—"

"I've just come from an interview with old man Snedeker — president of the Totem, you know. He sent for me this morning, swore me to secrecy by every oath a banker knows and told me all about it. Seems Stein, the Pinkertons, and the secret service men have been working at the case for a week without finding the smell of a smell. Snedeker said he was disgusted with the whole outfit, had heard of the work I did in that 'Praxiteles' affair — I didn't interrupt to tell him that you did as much or more than I in clearing that up — and that if I could do as well in this case for him there'd be a cool fifty thousand in it for me — and no questions asked. I gathered that he meant he was much more anxious about the bank's recovering the money than about catching the thieves, though of course he wants them snagged too if possible. So it's up to us. Think of it, Tom! Fifty thousand bucks!"

"Sounds very luscious. But why the 'us'? Where do I come in?"

"Fifty-fifty with me. Or, better — twenty-five — twenty-five."

"But you're the only original Sherlock, Jim. I'm ready to tackle any problem in the advertising line, but when it comes to—"

"How about the 'Praxiteles' case?"

"That wasn't de-teck-eting. That was just advertising. You don't expect me to run a personal, do you, saying: 'The gentlemen who robbed the Totem National Bank will learn of something to their disadvantage if they will call at the office of James Carranaugh, Sleuth.'?"

"No-o-o. Not quite that."

" 'Not quite'! What in the name of the Chilkat gods do you expect me to do?"

"Nothing — that is, I want you to tell me. I thought you might be able to help me locate or find out something about a chap by the name of 'Samuel Smith,' who stopped at seven Seattle hotels one day last week."

"What's that? At seven hotels? Is this Smith a man or a convention?"

"That's one of the things that I don't know, that we have to find out. But he, or they, is, are — that is, were—"

"Give her more gas, Jim, your engine's missing fire."

"Don't josh, Tom. This is the biggest thing I've ever had a chance to tackle, one of the biggest ever pulled off on the Coast, and if I — we can make good before the government men, Pinkertons and police, our reputation's made, and with that reward we can buy that island in the South Seas and all—"

"Wait until you catch your hare. To return to this Samuel Smith — where does he come in?"

"He stopped at seven hotels—"

"So you said. That's unusual but not necessarily criminal."

"And they found him in the vault."

"Hold on! What's that? 'Found him in the vault'? I thought you said, a minute ago, that they hadn't caught anyone, didn't know who did it? If they've got him what's the use of—"

"They've got Smith all right — at the morgue. But that hasn't helped any — yet."

"At the — he's dead?"

"As dead as they make 'em. About eight inches of knife in his back."

"Better back 'way up, Jim, and tell me the whole story if you want me to help, if I can help you at all. It's beginning to get interesting."

"It'll get a heap more SO before we're through, or I miss my guess. Well, Snedeker told me—"

There is no need of repeating what Carranaugh told Peiperson of what Snedeker had told him.

When the detective had finished recounting the details of the robbery the advertising man smoked thoughtfully for nearly five minutes, gazing out of his window at the Olympics with their perennial snow peaks like old men in nightcaps. Coming out of his trance with a jerk Peiperson grabbed his hat and was halfway out of the door of his private office before Carranaugh could heave himself to his feet.

"Where're you going?"

"To those hotels. Come on! Hurry! You have the list? Must get busy. There's something queer there. Might as well start at that as well as at any other place, now that you've roped me into this. And I'd have murdered you if you had left me out! Then we can go down to the morgue and the bank and—"

The rest was lost to Carranaugh as Peiperson stopped to tell Chris, his office boy, that he probably would not be back that afternoon and to tell any possible callers that he was busy figuring on a big contract. "And that's no lie!" he said to Jim as they ran for the descending elevator.

Going from one hotel to another until they had talked with the clerks and attaches of all seven they gradually pieced together the amazing and perplexing problem of the apparent sevenfold identity of Samuel Smith.

As they left the Hotel Butler, the last on Carranaugh's list, Jim uttered a piously emphatic belief in his future eternal condemnation, and Tom Peiperson agreed, for both of them. Mulling, wordless, over this mystery within a mystery, they walked over to the morgue and as silently checked up the items of the dead man's former appearance that coincided exactly with the seven times told description they had just listened to. Discuss it from every angle, they were no nearer a solution when, within a block of the Totem National, Peiperson halted, saying:

"No use both of us covering the same ground — there's plenty for each of us to do, and then some. You go on to the bank and have Snedeker let you examine that vault, as you suggested, and pick up anything more you can about the way the body of Smith looked when they found it. I don't suppose any of 'em had the brains to take a flashlight of the vault interior before they disturbed the lay-out. That's what comes of keeping the newspaper boys out of it! If they had been let in on it from the jump-off we wouldn't have to be depending upon the alleged memories of a lot of incompetent witnesses who have probably forgotten most of what they did see and imagine a lot that never was, they'd have a detailed and exact description by someone who knew how to see and what to look for. This hush stunt makes me tired."

"But in that case maybe we wouldn't have had a chance at the fifty thousand."

"That's so. Maybe not. Anyway, it's too late now. While you are at the bank I'll get busy and see if I can learn any more about this 'Samuel Smith'. Talk about your alibis! Meet me at my office — wait for me or I will for you. Adios."

Chapter VI

It was close to nine o'clock that evening when a tired, hungry, perplexed and perspiring advertising man let himself into his office to find an equally hungry and perplexed detective awaiting him.

"Well, what'd you find?"

"How about it?"

"Your lead, Tom."

"It won't take me long to tell. Smith left town the day before the bank was burgled."

"Left town! But the dead—"

"No, alive. Six times or six of him. He took boat for Victoria, San Francisco and Skagway, and train for Spokane, Portland, and Vancouver, B. C."

"The same day?"

"The same day."

"The same Smith?"

"The same Samuel Smith — or a man who is described as looking exactly like him and who used that name."

"But I tell you he's dead."

"Maybe so, maybe so. But he wasn't last Wednesday, not six of him."

"But he couldn't—"

"No, he couldn't, any more than he could have done the same things at the same times at seven different hotels. But they could."

"I get you! There were seven of him — then."

"Seven is right — seven men who looked alike, who dressed and acted in the same way according to a carefully prepared and rehearsed schedule, each of whom appeared, did his little stunt, and disappeared by and on the appointed minutes."

"But that lets them out of cracking the vault — if they left the day before. Everything was all right up to midnight Wednesday a week ago."

"Six of them left town that Tuesday."

"Six? Six! Then the seventh turned the trick and—"

"Aren't you forgetting the dead man found in the vault with a knife in his ribs?"

"Well, I'll be—"

"You probably will, if you continue to insist on it. But don't let's worry about that — yet. I'm anxious to hear what you found at the bank. There's nothing except the results that is interesting about my afternoon's work. I simply made the rounds of the railroads and steamship offices, depots and docks, until I satisfied myself beyond any doubt that all six and only six Samuel Smiths had left for the places I named, that they actually had gone and not merely pretended to. I would have thought the seventh one had taken an automobile for his getaway if it had not been for the man in the vault. He completes the count."

"That surely lets them out of it — at least of getting away with the million. But if they didn't — then why all the acting? They must have been mixed up in it in some way, or one of them wouldn't be in the morgue. And I was almost ready to finger Snedeker's check! Damn!"

"Then you found something at the bank?"

"I did — or I think I did. I can't be sure until — but wait until I tell you. I told Snedeker what I wanted and he gave me the run of the whole place — but with that idiot Daniels tagging at my heels and blatting every second about the 'effrontery of the miscreants' in picking on the Totem National for their 'dastardly outrage.' To hear him you'd think that the Totem was the only bank that ever had been cracked, that it was nothing short of sacrilege and high treason for rude hands to touch even a deposit slip belonging to it. If Daniels was judge and jury the thieves would be convicted on sight and boiled in oil — when they're caught. And he thinks the whole city, state and country administration should come to a halt until the heavy hand of the law is laid upon them — and that of the Totem National on its million. He got on my nerves until I wanted to hit him, choke him, anything to stop his incessant cackle — until I discovered what I think I discovered. Then I didn't hear his clack any more, though he kept it up without interruption. He—"

"Oh, cut the Daniels part now, Jim. Tell me what you found."

"Well, I think I found the way the thieves or thief got into the vault."

"You did?"

"Think, mind you. I'm not sure and can't be until I get a chance to investigate further. If I'm right I don't want Snedeker to know about it — yet. Not until we are ready to spring the whole story. He might go blabbing to the cops and spill our fat in the fire. They would try to grab all the credit and nose in on the reward. Then where would our island be? We don't want—"

"For the love of Mike, Jim, can the soliloquy and get down to cases. What did you find?"

"I'm telling you fast as I can, ain't I? Of course, if you want to call in every flattie on the force to share our pie or take it all away from us and put that island in the 'too muchee bimeby'—"

Peiperson threw up his hands in mock despair and Jim, grinning, got down to cases as exhorted.

"I had gone over every inch of the vault — walls, floor, ceiling, every nook and corner — several times without seeing a single thing out of kilter, and was standing thinking what to do next, wishing Daniels would shut up long enough to let me think uninterruptedly for a second, when I noticed one of the plates in the floor."

"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.

Meanwhile Carranaugh had put in an equally busy morning at the Totem National going over the records of the safe-deposit department, making numerous inquiries of the bank official directly in charge and generally, in the opinion of that official and of Daniels, making a pronounced and utterly useless nuisance of himself.

"Instead of going right out and catching the thieves and returning our money to us," as Daniels phrased it to his fellow employe, who agreed wholeheartedly, adding that "asking foolish and impertinent questions about respectable customers who rented safe-deposit boxes" was not the way he would have set about catching bank burglars if he had been a detective, which, he was devoutly thankful to say, he was not.

"Little better than burglars themselves," declared Daniels. "No wonder they talk about 'setting a thief to catch a thief.'"

And so on in undertones during the interims between Carranaugh's countless inquiries of who, why, when and whither about the men who held the keys to those boxes.

Finally Carranaugh discovered the specific something for which he had been looking as evidently as had Peiperson, made an entry consisting of three numbers in his note book, smiled contentedly in self-appreciation that would have been no whit lessened had he overheard the opinions that had so recently been expressed about detectives in general and one in particular, and betook himself to the appointed rendezvous with Peiperson.

About six o'clock that evening Carranaugh and Peiperson, dressed in old clothes and rubber hip-boots, rowed out into the Bay in a boat, in which fishing tackle was prominently displayed and other equipment as carefully concealed.

At nightfall they had not returned but the boat owner, knowing both intimately as fishermen and men, neither worried nor waited.

They would "get back when they returned" this safety-first-prophet declared and was satisfied to let it go at that.

Chapter VIII

It was high tide and dark when Tom and Jim rowed in from the Bay, heading for the lights of the West Seattle ferry slip.

They did not stop at any of the landing-floats but pulled slowly along the face of the wharves until they came to an opening between the piles near the foot of Yesler Way. Here they shipped the oars, eased the boat through the gap and so beneath the wharf and, pulling and pushing with their hands, continued eastward until they felt the bow bring up softly against the ooze a hundred yards or so in from the dockline of Railroad Avenue.

With large electric torches to light their way and using the oars for poling they slipped and slid still further through the liquid muck until they were stopped by comparatively solid ground. Here they tied the boat's painter to a stringpiece and with grimaces of disgust stepped overboard, sinking at once almost to the tops of their hip-boots into what seemed to be nothing more than a semi-solidified smell. Stifling their gorge they made their way inland, Carranaugh floundering like a stranded whale spouting unseemly language, Peiperson, long, lean and lank, not having a much better time of it.

What the one suffered on account of weight the other equaled by greater ease of penetration. But all things mundane must have an end, and eventually Peiperson exclaimed in an excited whisper:

"There it is! Dead ahead. Just where I said it would be!"

"It," in the flare of their flashlights, was a six-foot circle of even deeper darkness than the surrounding gloom.

In another minute they had entered the old wooden-stave sewer pipe that had been indicated by the parallel dashes marked "Abandoned" on that map in the city engineer's office. To their gratification and yet according to their hopeful expectations they found this ancient sewer-pipe not only in an excellent state of preservation, due to the thick cedar staves of which it had been constructed, but unchoked to a remarkable degree by the debris of years that normally would have been looked for.

"Chain!" called Carranaugh, a hundred feet in the rear, as the surveyor's steel hundred-foot tape tautened, giving the signal to indicate that another length of the "chain" had been measured. And, as he came up with Peiperson, who pointed to the tally mark. "That makes five hundred."

"Guess we can thank our friends for this easy going," remarked Tom, as he prepared to go on again.

"Unh-hunh. Must 'a' been a nice job of house-cleaning," puffed Jim, who very nearly filled even that six-foot passageway. "I'm glad the old sourdoughs who built this boulevard made it sizable enough for a. man to squeeze through, or I sure would have been up against it taking part in this expedition. We ought to be nearly there. Keep your eye peeled for signs of their work. Watch the ceiling."

"About four hundred feet more, if my estimate of the distance was correct. Look out for a big snag here."

"Chain" was called three more times and Peiperson had dragged out more than half the length of the tape again when Carranaugh heard a muffled shout from the darkness ahead, where he could just make out the flare of his friend's torch.

Dropping his end of the tape, Jim plunged ahead at as near a run as he could achieve in the, for him, cramped quarters, until he joined Peiperson, who was pointing dramatically with his hand holding the torch at something over his head and with the other at something else evidently lying in the darkness at his feet.

"Was I right?" panted Carranaugh as he came up.

"Right as the seventh son of a seventh son, you son of a gun of a prophet! Look!"

Carranaugh looked up.

Directly above their heads was an opening, similar to what miners call a "raise," roughly squared six feet by six, cut through the stave pipe and continuing upward as far as the light of their torches penetrated.

At one side was the lower end of a crude but strong ladder, rising into the darkness. At their feet, upon a mixture of mud, rotted planks and sawdust, broken concrete and general debris, lay several hand drills, short-handled sledges, picks, shovels, a hand pneumatic pump, what looked like a complicated variety of plumbers' blowpipe, a headpiece such as is used by electric welders, a V-shaped trough about five feet long and a foot deep made of some highly glazed material resembling porcelain, a broken electric torch, and odds and ends of tools — axes, saws, braces and bits, nails, a small iron pot for melting glue or lead, all the miscellany of a small workshop.

"Our friends the Samuel Smiths evidently knew what they wanted when they wanted it," commented Peiperson. "And you're a wiz for doping out their plan of campaign, Jim. My kindest regards."

Carranaugh only grunted in reply as he heaved himself up the ladder, gingerly testing each rung to see if it would bear a weight not usually required of such a makeshift.

"Well! I'll be eternally and everlastingly—" floated down to Peiperson from the regions above as he scrambled quickly upward.

He found Carranaugh standing on a small platform of heavy timbers, set solidly into the earth at either end. In the center of this there was raised another box-shaped structure about five feet square, and upon this were set four jacks such as are used by contractors for raising and upholding buildings. The upper ends of the jacks, thrust through a space that had been filled with the reinforced concrete that extended from the hole in all directions, were resting against or, rather, were rested upon by a steep plate. And if any identification of that plate had been necessary, it was supplied by a narrow streak on all four sides, outlined in dirty, steel-colored grease!

"So this is what holds up that vault plate," said Carranaugh, as he patted one of the jacks. "I wondered how they had managed that. Now let's see if my other guess was as good as this one."

They descended the ladder, went some twenty feet deeper into the abandoned sewer, and then saw that Carranaugh had guessed right both times.

Here a practical duplicate of the other "raise" and its several features led up to another similarly supported plate. They would only have to release the four jacks, lift out the plate section and raise themselves through the opening to be standing in the safe-deposit vault of the Totem National Bank.

But, fearing the possibility of heart disease afflicting the guardian, who probably was standing no more than three inches above their heads, and for reasons not unconnected with their own safety should that extra vigilant watchman suddenly see their heads above the floor level of the vault, they reluctantly postponed making the spectacular entrance into those sacred and supposedly safe precincts that would have been at once so easy and, to say the least, unexpected.

Two very tired and extremely dirty but almost hilariously elated fishermen tied up their boat in its appointed place some time after midnight and disappeared in the direction of the Alaska Club's Turkish baths. In these saponaceous quarters, as moist as those they recently had left, but gratefully clean, they luxuriated for a good part of the night.

Chapter IX

When U. P. Snedeker, president of the Totem National Bank, arrived at that institution shortly before ten o'clock the morning of the tenth day after the robbery he was in a very bad humor.

The board of directors, as well as several gentlemen who were powers in the financial world and coincidently in the affairs of the Totem National, had seen fit, the day before, to treat him, U. P. Snedeker, as he often was in the habit of treating lesser employees of that bank.

In a word, he had been "called upon the carpet" — the carpet of his own comfortable and handsomely furnished office, to speak literally as well as figuratively — and there also "called down." He had been spoken to in very plain, rude words, words that were not minced and that hurt his self-love and pride, pointed words that also seriously threatened to affect his almost equal love of pelf and position.

He, Snedeker, U. P. Snedeker, president and autocrat of his little realm, who daily was accustomed to making his power and personality felt by all with whom he came in contact in the bank or out, had been told in almost the same tone and terms he would have used to a mere bookkeeper that one more chance would be given for him to make good. Making good, in this case, signified the recovery of the lost million of the bank's most liquid assets, a loss, it was intimated more directly than diplomatically, which was due to his, Snedeker's, failure to foresee and provide adequate safeguards of the funds intrusted to him as the controlling official of the bank.

If he failed to restore — "restore" was the word they used — the funds within the additional time allotted to him by the aforesaid powers his resignation would be accepted — without regrets. Not only without regrets, but, it was intimated, with the possibility of civil or criminal action. They handed it to him good, with no more regard for his feelings or the facts than he himself would have shown.

So, as has been said, U. P. Snedeker was in a very bad humor. He barked at the doorman, snapped at the receiving teller and almost bit Daniels.

It was into this surcharged atmosphere, this mental and temperamental curtain of fire — and brimstone — that Jim Carranaugh entered a few minutes later. A very blithe and cocky Carranaugh, radiating peace on earth and good-will toward all men, including even burglars and bank presidents, one may almost say particularly toward burglars and bank presidents, since it was to the happy combination of gentlemen pursuing these more or less diverse activities that Carranaugh owed his present high spirits.

Nor were these spirits in the least ironed out or even dampened by the scowl of the doorman, the snarl of the receiving teller or the snap of Daniels. No, not even by the excellent imitation of a savage and surly dog given by Snedeker. The Honorable James J. was above and beyond the reach of all such petty irritations, human or canine.

"Good morning to you, Mr. Snedeker!"

Grunt.

"I've a bit of news for you."

Growl.

"You remember I promised to report progress this morning."

Grumble.

"But first I want to have a little understanding with you."

The substance of Snedeker's response, divested of its accompanying verbal adornment, was to the effect that Carranaugh certainly would come to an understanding that would leave no room for doubt about the bank president's opinion of all detectives in general and Carranaugh in particular.

When the cyclone had passed, Carranaugh, unruffled by so much as a single hair, continued:

"About that fifty thousand reward."

It is too bad that Snedeker's language at this part of the dialogue cannot be reported verbatim, but the rules of public print forbid. If beauty consists of artistic expression, then Snedeker's remarks were beautiful, however indecently nude. But beyond a smile of appreciation for successful effort, Carranaugh continued to be unimpressed, and unmoved from his line of thought and conversation.

"Will you pay it upon return of the money and securities, or must delivery be made of the thieves as well?"

Snedeker, with a banker's sense of the all-important when actual cash is the subject under discussion, immediately stopped wasting perfectly good words and countered:

"Have you found them?"

"The money or the thieves?"

"Both — either?"

"I think I have."

"Think! Think!' I'm not paying you to think! I'm paying you to know!"

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Snedeker. but you're not paying for either — yet. You are only promising to do so. And it is what that promise covers, or demands, that I want to know."

"Did I say 'fifty' thousand, Carranaugh? Wasn't 'five' the sum I mentioned? Seems to me, as far as I can remember—"

"You'll have to remember a good deal farther than that, Mr. Snedeker, if you want me to recover that million for you! If you are trying to crawfish because you think maybe I have succeeded where all the others failed, if you are trying to Jew me down because you think I'll be lucky, and glad, to get even five — anything you choose to pay — well, all I have to say is that you have another think coming! If that's the way you feel about it I'll say good morning and you can go to—"

"Tut, tut, Mr. Carranaugh, don't allow yourself to get so excited and jump at unwarranted conclusions. Maybe it was fifty thousand, I said. Maybe it was."

"No 'maybe' about it! Is it fifty?"

"Have you got them?"

"That depends, as I said before."

"Don't fence with me, man! This is serious. Very serious. Much more serious than you can imagine."

"I'm not fencing with you. I am trying to do business. Fifty thousand dollars' worth of business to me — a million dollars' worth to you. And if you'll kindly cut out the cuss words and the condescension, drop the rough stuff and talk like a gentleman as well as a banker, maybe we can do that business."

"What the devil do you mean? You impudent—"

"Oh, very well!" said Carranaugh, rising to his feet and picking up his hat. "If you are going to start that again I'll be on my way and see if Peter B. Far—"

One syllable of that "power's" name was enough, under the recent circumstances and Carranaugh's implied intent, to bring Snedeker to at least an outward semblance of politeness.

"Sit down, Mr. Carranaugh, sit down. I didn't mean to be hasty — but you don't know the load of responsibility I am carrying, what a strain I've been under the past ten days. Sit down and tell me all about what you think you have discovered and I'll try to restrain my natural impatience. Between my anxiety and the everlasting promises of 'tomorrow' of the score or more men I've had working on this case, you should not blame me for being sick of your tribe — I mean of your incompetent competitors."

"That's all right, Mr. Snedeker. I understand. Only don't class me with them or try to talk to me as you may to them. I'm apt to be fussy when I'm sworn at. And now, if you will answer my question, I will answer yours."

"What question?"

"Do you pay that reward of fifty thousand dollars for the return of the million, or must the thieves be included in the delivery?"

"Damn the thieves! That is, of course, you understand — we must do our duty to society, uphold law and order at whatever cost to ourselves, consider the public weal and the demands of justice, and—"

"Then, I understand, the money and the securities will be enough?"

"Have you negotiated for their return — eh — that is, I mean can you deliver them — if we don't insist on apprehending the—"

"I can."

"You can! You mean it? My dear Mr. Carranaugh! You don't know what a load you are lifting from my heart! You surely—?"

"I surely can."

"All of it?"

"Every sou — less the fifty thousand."

"You mean they—?"

"No. I mean me. If I turn over the whole thing to you, without a dollar or a bond missing, do I get the fifty thousand?"

Snedeker's eyes narrowed as he gazed straight into Carranaugh's and Carranaugh's eyes were blandly wide open as he gazed back. Snedeker sighed, cleared his throat twice as if something was sticking in his thorax, finally squeezed out:

"You do."

"Will you be good enough to put that on paper?"

"Do you doubt my—"

"I'm not doubting anything. Merely a matter of form, of business procedure, of — shall we say? — ordinary banking precaution, Mr. Snedeker."

"Can you do it?"

"You can lay your hands on that million in less than five minutes after you sign that promise to pay — or you needn't pay."

Snedeker wrote hastily for a few minutes, made the wholly illegible scrawl that passed for his signature and handed the paper to Carranaugh with an explosive:

"There! Now show me!"

Carranaugh read the instrument, nodded in satisfaction with its provisions, folded and placed it carefully in his wallet and the wallet in his inside vest pocket, and with a deliberation maddening to the banker, heaved himself to his feet.

"If you'll just step this way, Mr. Snedeker."

Leading the banker into the general offices of the Totem National, where they immediately became the focal point of every eye in the place, Carranaugh stopped in front of the treasure vault from which the million had so mysteriously disappeared.

"Open the door, please."

The guardian of the door looked from the big man to the president and the latter, frankly mystified and curious, nodded. As they stepped inside the detective said:

"I first want to show you how this vault was entered and the money taken out. If I turned it over to you first I'm afraid you would lose your interest in this feature of my discoveries."

"All right. Only hurry."

As had been said, Carranaugh would have made a good actor if he had not been a better detective, as his ensuing actions proved, nothing of their histrionic value being lost because his audience was limited to one.

With much the air of Macbeth in the "apparition scene" he advanced to the center of the vault, making an impressive gesture with his arm calling Snedeker's attention to the floor, upon which he tapped lightly with his foot.

It is permissible exaggeration to say that Snedeker's eyes threatened to pop out of his head as, fascinated, they saw one of the floor plates, one of the three-inch chrome steel supposedly impregnable floor plates, part company with its fellows and drop out of sight, to be replaced a moment later by the head and broad shoulders of a man who turned a very dirty but grinning face up to look into the banker's own, remarking:

"Hello, Jim. All O.K.?"

"Wh — wh — wh — what?" gasped Snedeker.

"This is my partner, Thomas Peiperson, of the Seattle Advertising Service, Mr. Snedeker. Mr. Snedeker — Mr. Peiperson. We'll explain all the details later. Just now you must be more interested in the money. Come on, Tom."

The banker nodded, having no words to express his feelings just then, and followed silently after Carranaugh and Peiperson as they led the way to the door of the safe-deposit vault.

It must be confessed, here and now, that for all his mystification, all his eagerness, Snedeker was not as nervous as his two outwardly calm but inwardly anxious guides, whose nerves were on a wire-edge. They had bet on a long shot, were gambling to a large extent upon what they felt were probabilities beyond reasonable doubt, but still probabilities.

It was just possible, for all the evidence upon which their belief was based, for all the feasibility of their theory, for all their confidence in their deductions, that the thieves had not hidden the million where Carranaugh and Peiperson felt they must have hidden it. They might even be right in the place of concealment originally chosen but again there was the possibility that it no longer held the treasure, that it subsequently had been removed to a place of greater safety for the thieves.

So it was that there were three, instead of only one, extremely nervous men who watched the vault attendant unlock with his masterkey boxes numbered 358-359-360, three of the largest boxes in the vault, the three boxes' that had been rented by one Seth C. Seeley.

Chapter X

Sometime later, when the contents of the three boxes had been most carefully counted and checked, when every dollar and ounce of gold, every bond and security, every item of value down to the last sheet of government revenue stamps that had been missing were accounted for, when that paper signed by Snedeker had been exchanged for a Totem National checking account made out to the joint credit of James Carranaugh and Thomas Peiperson, when Snedeker had telephoned to certain gentlemen in a tone of voice suggesting injured innocence triumphant over undeserved criticism, when Jim had told their story with such emendations and additions as his imagination suggested were called for by its proper presentation and to the due credit of one Peiperson and himself, when these and sundry lesser matters had been attended to, a smiling and affable Snedeker asked of a smiling and equally courteous Carranaugh:

"Now that everything of importance has been attended to, suppose you gentlemen go to lunch with me and later tell me how the trick was worked and how you are going to catch the thieves."

"The luncheon today — with pleasure. The explanation next week — with equal pleasure. But the thieves, Mr. Snedeker — don't you think it only fair to leave the glory of catching them to Chief Stein and his men? Surely we should grant them that consideration, not usurp their special prerogatives. Mr. Peiperson and I are not common cops, man hunters, bloodhounds willing to sacrifice value for victims. We are simply, may I say, mathematicians who put two and two together for the benefit of the financial interests of the community. Of course we could catch the men responsible for this outrage on you and your bank if we wanted to stoop to the lower problems of our arithmetical hobby — but you hardly would expect us to do that, I am sure, any more than you would stoop to the practices of a pawnbroker. I know you wouldn't. Your own position at the head of your profession enables you to appreciate our standing and feelings at the head of ours. So we may call the case closed, the problem solved, may we not? Thank you."

With which, to Peiperson, deliciously ironical effrontery, and, to Snedeker, properly phrased and satisfactory ending of what had been a very unpleasant experience which he would be glad to forget completely as soon as possible, Carranaugh rose to his feet and mutely signified his readiness to add several more superfluous pounds to his weight.

Chapter XI

But if Snedeker was so easily answered a certain married woman in Seattle was not. She demanded full explanation of several features of the mystery that the bank president was content to consider unimportant if not irrelevant details.

But then — the banker was a man and had recovered a lost million and a nearly lost place and prestige, while Mrs. Thomas Peiperson, though she had a proprietary interest in a certain fifty thousand dollars, still was a woman and a woman not disposed to forego her feminine and marital prerogatives. And as, moreover, she was the wife of a thoroughly home-broken and properly trained husband, her questions could not be so easily evaded, not even by the clever twistings of the tongues of that husband and their mutual intimate.

On an evening a week or so later, having "fed the brutes" according to the injunction of Mrs. Solomon, placed them in easy chairs before the big fireplace with a supply of tobacco and glasses that tinkled enticingly, and curled herself up on the couch in an entirely graceful and receptive attitude of beautiful.body and alert mind, she commanded:

"Now, begin. I know all about the seven Samuel Smiths stopping at the seven hotels, the six who went away and the one who — who stayed, how they stole and hid the money, and the wonderful work you two did finding it. What you are to tell me now is why and how the one was killed, how the money was taken after the six were gone and the seventh was dead, why they masqueraded that way when it was sure to attract attention, why they put the money in another vault of the same bank instead of taking it away with them, and — and all the rest of it. Go ahead. I'm listening."

"Guess it's up to you, Jim. Perform for the lady," said Peiperson.

Dropping into a touch of the brogue that he sometimes affected when in certain moods Carranaugh grinned back, saying:

"She's your wife, not mine — sorra be! It's too full I am of her dinner and good things to talk yet awhile. I'm too busy looking at her and thinkin' what a fool for luck y' are, Tom dear. Besides, I've gained another twenty pounds the past week and it's on my conscience I must bant again, bad luck to the fat of me! Let me meditate in peace upon the last man's meal I'll have for many's the day. Do you tell the girl. I'll add a word or two here and there should you forget, or correct you if you don't give me the credit that's due me, egregious egotist that y' are. Make him, Mary, there's the darlin'."

And Mary made him.

"Well, dear, it'll do no harm to confess in the bosom of our family that we only can guess at part of what you want to know, deduce other parts from circumstantial evidence, and be sure only of the little that remains. But if you will take the explanation as a mixture of all three and let it go at that without being too particular about which is which, here it is:

So that you will understand from the outset something that bothered us a good deal and very nearly threw us off the right track — as it was intended to do — I'll begin in the middle with the fact that the body found in the vault was not one of the original seven Samuel Smiths at all, was not murdered or killed by them or anyone else, and had nothing to do with the looting of the bank except as a bit of 'evidence' planted in the vault to complicate the case and confuse the police."

"The leader of the gang, the real 'Samuel Smith' or whatever his name is, saw very clearly that an attempt, at least, would be made to trace the movements of the seven men. He made the departing trails of his six assistants very easy to follow, once they had done their part of the heavy preliminary work in the old sewer. He figured that the police, finding six identical clues, would be so puzzled that they would simply begin to chase their tails. And even if they caught one or two of the six, they would still be beaten, for the money was still safe in the vault."

"But, since he himself was compelled to remain in the city to carry out the actual robbery and then wait until it would be reasonably safe to take the swag out of town without being caught at railroad station or steamship dock by the plain-clothes men on guard, it was necessary that the seventh 'member' also should be as easily accounted for.

"That's where the 'murdered' man came in as part of the setting of the scene. He had, it is probable, been provided for in advance and held in readiness for the silent but important part he played. It was no insuperable difficulty for such a clever and resourceful crook as 'Samuel Smith' to secure from some other city a body of a man with a Vandyke beard and looking sufficiently like himself and the other six to pass muster — especially since the police and we ourselves were only too ready to jump blindly at conclusions. It really needed no more than a fair suggestion of a likeness, coupled with the duplicate clothes and belongings, to turn the trick and make us all think that the entire gang was accounted for."

"And we would have let it go at that and probably never dispelled the mystery if it had not been for our sleepy friend here. Jim's suspicions were aroused the first time he visited the morgue and examined the body. The wound in the back didn't look just right to him as a basis for a burial certificate, and there was not nearly enough blood on the blade of the hunting knife to satisfy his demand for gore. He fussed around and made himself such a general nuisance to the coroner and the coroner's physician that, to get rid of his pestering, they agreed to perform an autopsy."

"They did. Jim was right. That wound in the back was not the cause of death. The knife had been driven into the body at least and probably more than forty-eight hours after the man had died of a hemorrhage of one of the large abdominal arteries, due to a malignant ulceration of the intestines. This was proved, not only by finding the very evident proof of the internal rupture, but also by the fact that all the blood in the body had drained into the abdominal cavity, where it had almost entirely coagulated. Also, there was no sign of bleeding in or about the region of the 'wound.' "

"So much for so much."

"I've just suggested the reason for their not taking the loot with them at once — every avenue of egress from the city would be watched for days afterward by the forces of the law. Well, then, what hiding place would be less likely to be suspected than the safe-deposit vault of the bank itself? Smith was evidently too experienced a crook to find any difficulty in getting hold of a master key. So he simply opened the boxes, took out his packages, emptied the rocks or old bricks that filled them into the sewer opening, and put in the gold, money and securities. Now he could come back, weeks or months afterward, take out his packages, and escape all suspicion. But Jim here doped it all out the moment he ran across the trail of the three boxes rented by 'Seth C. Seeley' — who of course was none other than the gang leader himself — after he had discovered the second loose plate."

"If you could have gone through that abandoned sewer with us — which your sensitive nose may be thankful you didn't — and seen the amount of work it must have taken to clear it of the debris of years, to cut those holes up to the concrete foundation and then chip it away under both plates through several feet reinforced with steel rods, and finally to burn those extremely narrow cuts through three inches of super-hardened steel, you would have wondered that it had not taken seventy men instead of seven. They must have been at it for weeks."

"The 'greasy dust' was paraffine mixed with fine steel filings and served simply to fill and hide the cuts made in the plates."

"About the 'masquerading,' as you call it, at the hotels. I think some of that performance was just that and no more — a touch of melodramatic theatricalism put on for its own sake and to gratify the whimsical humor of 'Samuel Smith,' who, I imagine, is a bit of a farceur in his way. Of course he had a serious purpose also. His plan — which he carried out exactly in every detail except the final disappearance with the million — called for the transference of the treasure from one vault to the other in a single night and by himself alone, after the plain departure of the six lesser crooks."

"This involved not only a number of hours of very hard work for him but also the running of the greatest degree of risk that had been taken. He planned, in the event of his being caught at any stage of the proceedings, except when he was actually handling the valuables, to be able to make all attempts at positive identification so ridiculous that no court would have held him on the evidence submitted."

"He would have some thirty-odd reputable witnesses to swear that he was in seven places doing the same things at the same times — and so discredit any police testimony about his actions at any other time. If the one was impossible — the other would or might appear equally so. Or, at any rate, the chance was worth the effort — the chances plus the pure whimsical humor of it."

"There you have the whole story."

"Do you mean to say that you are going to stop there, that that is all there is to it? Fiddle! It isn't a bit as exciting as I thought it was going to be. You've taken all the romance out of it. I want to know what became of 'Samuel Smith' and his six doubles or would you call it sextuples? What he did when he found you had opened those boxes instead of his — how he finally got away — and a whole lot of other things," expostulated Mary Peiperson, pouting at her husband and the somnolent Carranaugh.

"Sorry, Sweetheart, but I've told you all I know."

"And there isn't any dramatic ending?"

"Guess not. 'Them's the bare uninteresting facts' in a nutshell — unless you want to call an interchange of ads. dramatic."

"Ads.? What ads.?"

"One I wrote and one in reply from 'Samuel Smith'."

"That sounds a little encouraging."

"Thanks for the wild applause. I can quote them both from memory. Mine, published in all the large papers of the Northwest, ran:

"And he replied in the same papers: C. and P.