2
On that same Monday morning a very unhappy Mr. Stephen Coles, slightly to his surprise and considerably to his annoyance, found that it was necessary for him to unlock the offices of Marten, Morton & Purcell. Usually Miss Knoeckler arrived ahead of him—sufficiently ahead of him to have the place unlocked and aired out by the time he got there. Not so, however, this morning.
Coles tried bravely to pretend to himself that the annoyance arose from the necessity for fingering through his keys to unlock the office door, and for raising four shades and opening four windows. This harmless deception occupied his mind but fooled him not at all. The real source of his trouble—it was rapidly becoming too acute to be termed merely annoyance—or rather, the source of the particular accession of it on this Monday morning, was that Miss Knoeckler’s casual tardiness afforded the last tiny increment to a ghastly, torturing suspicion which had been forming in his mind since last Thursday forenoon. Elsa and old Morton! The idea, when he permitted himself actually to formulate it, drove him almost mad; and the recurring waves of increasing, jealous suspicion had intermittently flooded his mind for the past three days.
During saner moments between times, he rejected his suspicions angrily. During one or two rare moments of exceptional lucidity, he even admitted that it was none of his business. But the rational moments were all too few and brief. That Elsa had from the beginning firmly rejected his own attentions, Coles could not deny; it had been a bitter and disappointing pill to assimilate. But that she should then lavish herself on Randolph Morton, a married man old enough to be her father, was infinitely harder for Coles to bear. That she had, Coles could not be sure, but each mounting surge of envy left him less doubtful.
When he had opened the windows he flopped discouragedly into his chair, buried his face in his hands, and for the first time gave way to his despair. If only he could forget her—put her out of his mind and heart! Then there would be emptiness but peace. But there could be no forgetting while her distracting person worked diagonally across a small room from him the better part of six days each week. He would have it out with her today; then he would quit.
But perhaps he was mistaken. He laughed bitterly at the thought. He’d been simply blind for months. A score of little incidents, unnoticed at the time, returned to torture him with new significance. Morton leaning over Elsa to amend a letter yet in her typewriter—Elsa and Morton repeatedly happening to work late the same evenings—Elsa and Morton laughing together, an alien, exclusive laughter that somehow died when Coles came into the room.
On only Thursday last he’d thought nothing of it that Morton had told Elsa to take the few days off while he was to be away. She’d not been looking-well and needed a rest. At the time he’d wondered why the boss could not have told him also to take at least the Saturday off. Then the queer business at the Consolidated Bank had come up. When it developed that Morton’s supposed business trip to Detroit was a blind to cover an absence of another sort, Coles had not been slow to suspect its nature. The torturing truth had been mercilessly quick to dawn upon him. Then Thursday evening he hadn’t found her at home.
The ardent and repeated efforts of Mr. Hanley and a number of men who seemed suspiciously like police to locate Mr. Morton had proved an inadequate distraction to Coles’ tormented soul. He had read with what interest he could muster the few accounts of the Consolidated Bank theft he found in the newspapers, but there was little real information in any of them. He hoped, maliciously, that Morton’s return would be marked by a warm reception. It had not occurred to him actually to connect his employer with the theft, though on account of the disturbed state of his emotions he hadn’t given that aspect much thought. He suddenly wondered if Morton had chanced upon a paper or had in any way heard of the affair, but suspected not.
Coles straightened up in his chair and made an effort to pull himself together. There was work to be done:—detail, detail, detail! The detail mostly fell upon Stephen Coles, for Marten, Morton & Purcell consisted only of Randolph Morton. Marten had retired several years before and Purcell was as many years dead. Coles thought of the days when he had first been hired. There had been a staff of half a dozen draftsmen, designers and several typists. Times had changed; the bottom had fallen out of the market; all industry was in the throes of depression; in men’s minds hope had been displaced by fear. Little building or construction was being planned, and the business of Marten, Morton & Purcell had dwindled to an insignificant proportion of its former volume. The office force had dwindled with it until now it consisted of Morton himself, Coles, and Elsa Knoeckler. Even the field inspectors had been let go, and Morton went out on the job, or sent Coles.
Today, Coles suddenly remembered, there would be plenty to do over at the Consolidated foundations. He’d better get caught up and ready. He stepped to the washbasin in the corner, splashed cold water over his face and wrists, slicked back his hair and instantly felt better. One way to forget Elsa was to keep thoroughly busy.
He had barely finished slitting open the mail and putting Morton’s jumbled desk in order when that gentleman walked in fully a half hour ahead of his customary time. He gave Coles a cheery “Good morning!” and crossed over to his desk, leaning over it without sitting down and shuffling rapidly through the small pile of papers. “Anything new?” he asked absently.
“Nothing, sir, except that Mr. Hanley is anxious to get in touch with you. He’s phoned a half dozen times since you left Thursday.” Coles watched for his employer’s reaction but was disappointed; Morton did not even look up.
“What’s he want?”
“He hasn’t said, though I’m pretty sure I know what it is.” Coles volunteered the last with an air of hesitancy.
“Yes? What’s that?”
Instead of replying Coles handed Morton a newspaper with an article circled in red. “I was afraid you might not run across this so I saved it.”
Morton read the article through carefully and then glanced up at the date of the paper. Coles could see a slow flush creep up the back of his neck.
“Well, I’m damned!” he exclaimed in a moment.
“There have been several other men to see you, but none would leave any names or messages. I presume they were here in connection with the same business.”
“Get Hanley on the phone for me, will you,” Morton ordered abruptly.
The bank manager, it developed, had not yet arrived. Coles left word for him to call Mr. Morton.
Morton peeled off his gloves and sat down at his desk. He attacked the pile of papers, penciling notes on the margins of some and placing them to one side, crunching others into small wads which he tossed into the wastebasket. He had almost reached the bottom when the telephone rang. Morton took the call himself and heard Hanley at the other end of the wire.
“I understand you’re looking for me?”
Hanley started a reply which would have been a cross between an explanation and an apology but Morton cut him short.
“I know. Coles showed me a clipping. I’m sorry I didn’t happen to see it sooner; I’d have certainly gotten in touch with you. I’ll run over now, anyway.”
He clapped on his hat and hurried out without so much as a word to Coles. The assistant concealed a smile until Morton had left the office, when he broke into a broad grin. But in a moment the grin gave way to perplexity, then to quick rage, for it occurred to Coles that Morton had not commented at all on the absence of Elsa Knoeckler, apparently had not expected her. For the first time in a hitherto simple and orderly life Stephen Coles knew the meaning of cold, deadly, growing hate!
3
When Morton was ushered into Hanley’s office he found, in addition to the bank manager, Inspector Bryce and Maxwell Fenner. He acknowledged Hanley’s introduction of the two with cold civility. Hanley opened the interview by reciting briefly the details of the discovery of the vault shortage immediately after the inspection trip of the previous Thursday. Morton listened attentively. Hanley concluded by ask
ing, somewhat awkwardly, if Morton could tell them anything that would shed any light on the matter.
Morton perceptibly bristled. “You’re not by any chance accusing me of being connected with your shortage?” he demanded indignantly. “Why, I never heard of such—”
Fenner broke in placatingly: “Not at all, Mr. Morton; not at all. But upon reflection I think you can see for yourself that under the circumstances we are justified in questioning the members of that inspection party. However, we don’t pretend to stand upon any of our particular rights in this matter. We’re simply trying to get, in as much detail as we can, exactly what happened in the vault on Thursday morning. There were five men in the vault—including Mr. Hanley and the custodian, Donegan. Of the five, each might have observed some little detail that escaped the notice of the others. Some little detail you may have observed might prove very helpful taken in connection with everything else.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry we weren’t able to go over this with you earlier while the thing was fresh in your memory.” Fenner watched Morton’s face closely as he made the last remark.
Morton looked away a moment, then said more agreeably: “I’ll tell you everything I can. I don’t know how much it’ll help you. We went to the vault—that is, Hanley and Dickson and young Borden and myself—some time around half past ten, it must have been. We tried the door a couple of times and looked at a few cracks in the wall and talked, mostly talked. Oh, yes, and Borden took some level shots on the. floor in the four corners. We found the vault structure had tipped back bodily and discussed shoring it up. That’s about all I remember.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked at them as if to say: “I don’t see how it will help you much.”
“Do you remember a hand truck full of money being in the vault at the time?” Fenner asked.
Morton thought for a moment. “Yes; there was one:—that is, a truck full of little sacks and bundles. I suppose it was money.”
“Do you recall the position of the truck in the vault?”
“I can’t say that I do. I just remember seeing it there. I believe we moved it or something.”
“That’s right; you did.”
“Not me. I didn’t touch it.” Morton was emphatic.
“Do you remember who did?”
“I’m not sure. It seems to me the guard moved it—or maybe it was Borden when he set up his level.”
“You see, your memory’s better than you realized. Your recollection agrees in almost every particular with the stories of the others the same day it happened.”
Morton looked somewhat relieved and considerably less ruffled.
“Do you remember what time you left the bank?” Fenner pursued the inquiry.
“About noon, I think.”
“Where did you go from there?”
“I went—Look here! What has that got to do with your shortage? I’ll tell you this: I was tending strictly to my own business.” Again Morton was becoming indignant.
“I’ll tell you where you went,” Bryce broke in, chewing his unlit cigar savagely. “You went to the Mercantile Bank and visited your safe deposit box, and from there you—”
“Wait a minute,” Fenner stopped Bryce soothingly and turned to Morton. “We want to be fair with you, Mr. Morton. There are a lot of angles to this affair of which you’re not yet aware. I think you have unwittingly placed yourself in a very unfortunate position. Now I am going to tell you one or two things frankly, and in return I expect complete candor from you. Nothing you say need pass the four walls of this room. Indeed, as far as that’s concerned, I think Mr. Hanley would excuse us.”
Hanley had been sitting by observing with growing astonishment and no little curiosity the turn which the inquiry was taking. With ill-concealed reluctance he got to his feet. “Why, if you gentlemen think you’ll be able to talk more freely without me I’ll certainly be glad to withdraw.”
It was Morton’s turn to interrupt. “Not so fast,” he said quickly. “What is all this about, anyway? Sit down, Hanley. I’ve known you quite a while; I don’t know either of these other chaps from Adam. Now, Mr. Fenner, go on with what you were saying.
Fenner looked at Bryce, then replied: “Well, the first thing is that I talked to your er—secretary a little while ago.” He stopped and waited.
Morton was silent for a long moment. He looked at the faces of his interrogators, then away out of the window. They waited for him to speak and saw his face slowly tauten. Presently his clenched fist came down on the table, startling them.
“So that’s the way it is,” he muttered. “All right; I’ll tell you this: I’ve done nothing of which I’m ashamed.” His tone was low but it was even and carried conviction. “If you’ve talked to her, though, I don’t see why it’s necessary to question me; and, furthermore, I don’t see what it’s got to do with—”
“Possibly nothing at all, but before we get through you will quite well understand the reasons for this interrogation,” Fenner assured him. “Now will you be good enough to go ahead from where you left off? You needn’t mention any names.”
Morton hesitated and looked toward Hanley. Obviously he regretted his impulse of the moment before. However, he shrugged his shoulders and began to talk: “As you remarked”—there was the faintest suspicion of sarcasm in his nod toward Bryce—“I went to the Mercantile Bank where I visited my box and deposited some stock certificates I had recently acquired.” He reached into his pocket for a keyring from which he detached a key and placed it on Hanley’s desk. “You’re welcome to examine the box all you please. I also cashed a sizable check as my pocket money was running low and I had reason to believe I might need some over the weekend.
“From the bank I went to the Grand Central Station where I had an engagement. I met a very dear friend of mine there and have been in her company ever since. Now, there you have it. Surely there isn’t anything more you can want to know.” He smiled a little wanly.
“I’m sorry, but there is,” Fenner replied. “What did you do after you left the Grand Central Terminal?”
“We had lunch—my friend and I—at the Biltmore. We made some plans and I left her there to wait for me while I went to a garage in East 44th Street for my car. I called back for her and we drove up into the country—up Westchester way—for most of the afternoon. We came back in time for an early dinner. Then we went to my friend’s home—she needed some clothing and things. After that we drove out to a small summer cabin in Jersey—on a little lake near Morristown. We drove back to town this morning,” Morton finished simply.
“When you stopped for your friend’s things on Thursday, did you go inside or did you wait in your car?” Fenner asked thoughtfully.
Morton hesitated, apparently puzzled at the nature of the question. “Well, I was going to wait outside. We had decided it would be better not to meet anybody there. But after Miss—that is, after my friend had gone in, I began to think things over and concluded it would be as well to go on in and perhaps get a lot of unpleasant arranging over with—clean slate to begin with, you know—so I went inside. I stood around in the store—that is, downstairs—until my friend came down with her bag. I carried it out to the car and we left.”
“Did you see anyone while you were waiting downstairs?” Fenner asked.
“No; not a soul.”
“Now, think carefully, did you leave the front door unlocked when you left?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that. We just went out and let the door slam. I don’t know whether it was locked or not. But what the devil has this got to do with—?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Fenner cut him off quickly. “Mr. Adolph Knoeckler was killed in his store, accidentally or otherwise, late Thursday afternoon or early Thursday evening.” Fenner watched the engineer as he hurled this information at him. The latter started up, then sank into his chair, his face ashen; he could not find his voice. The man was either genuinely surprised, Fenner decided, or an unconscionably clever actor. Fenner turned in time to see that Ha
nley, whose countenance to now had been a picture of bewilderment, was also watching Morton intently.
When Morton found his voice he gasped: “Poor Elsa! This is terrible!” The thought evidently set his faculties working again, for he asked quickly: “Where is she? What have you done with her?”
“She’s all right,” Fenner assured him. “All things considered, she’s bearing up remarkably well. She’s being temporarily detained at the station house, but you need not be concerned about her. She’s in excellent hands.”
“I must see her! I must see her at once!” Morton started to rise. “Tell me more about it, please, and then you’ll have to excuse me.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” Fenner answered. “Mr. Knoeckler was found early Friday afternoon stretched out at the foot of the cellar steps, dead of a fractured skull. The coroner puts the time of his death at between five and nine o’clock Thursday evening. He believes that the injury could have been caused by a fall from the first floor, but he hasn’t yet officially reported. We have also ascertained from Knoeckler’s physician that his health was in a precarious state and that he was likely at any time to suffer a stroke that might carry him off or leave him paralyzed. Mr. Knoeckler’s death may be purely accidental; I hope it was. But there have been just enough odd little inexplicable factors to arouse suspicion. That’s about all I can tell you now.”
Morton got up to leave. “Well, what’s the next step?”
“I believe the coroner will report an accidental death,” Fenner answered, “but if he decides that circumstances warrant it he will turn over what facts he has to the District Attorney’s Office. That will mean further investigation, possibly more difficult to ‘gag.’ That’s what I meant before when I said you had put yourself into an unfortunate position. Perhaps I am prematurely alarming you; it may come to nothing. For your sake and Miss Knoeckler’s, I hope so.” Fenner, too, got up, indicating that so far as he was concerned the interview was over.
The Bank Vault Mystery Page 9
