The Bank Vault Mystery

by Louis F. Booth

  “If Morton had anything to do with it,” Fenner rejoined, “he’s such a consummately clever actor that Miss Knoeckler might not suspect it, and that in spite of having spent the intervening time with him.” He fell to thinking.

  Bryce broke into his speculations. “We mustn’t forget that maybe Knoeckler did have a stroke and fall down on his head. In fact, I’d be willing to concede that and forget that angle of the business if somebody would give me a new track on the bank robbery.”

  “A new track! We’ve got plenty of tracks now, only they don’t lead anywhere. If only they’d round some curves or do something interesting! Which reminds me—How about all of our clients? Anything develop the last twenty-four hours?”

  “Nothing much. Hanley gave us the run around for a while last night, but I guess he didn’t mean anything. I meant to tell you earlier this morning, but this Knoeckler business drove it out of my head. Hanley started out about six-thirty last evening in his car, chauffeur driving, of course. They went through the Holland Tunnel and later turned off down the Belleville Turnpike. They were looping right along, and, with the homeward bound Sunday traffic to contend with, the boys had quite a job keeping them in sight, but they managed all right until they got a bad break at the Passaic River draw. The bridge opened between them, and that ended it. They picked him up at this end of the tunnel coming back about eleven-thirty, and he went straight home. You can pump Hanley about it when you see him this afternoon.”

  Fenner had listened attentively. “Six-thirty to eleven-thirty. Five hours’ running time. They could cover quite a little ground in that time. Well, we’ll see. Anything more? Anything on the others?”

  “Not a blessed thing!” Bryce reached into his pocket for the little book but Fenner stopped him.

  “Never mind. I’ll take your word for it. I suppose now you’ve started a page for Randolph Morton, too?”

  Bryce admitted he had.

  “And Elsa Knoeckler?”

  “Yeah; sure.”

  Fenner smiled. “I should think one page would pretty well do for the two of them.”

  “I suppose they’ll be sticking pretty close, at that.” The inspector grumbled on, “We seem to be tied up again waiting for something else to break. Young Donegan’s pinched and we haven’t got a shadow of a case against him and don’t even really suspect him. Progress! What!” His own summation seemed to make Bryce more disgusted and dejected than he had been before.

  Fenner was exasperatingly cheerful. “We’re just temporarily delayed, that’s all. We have to be content with waiting. We’re all set up with our fingers on all the strings. The other fellow is bound to make a break. I’ve seen a lot of cases where everything seemed at an impasse, and just when they seemed quietest something popped and it was all over but the shouting.”

  Bryce smiled doubtfully, a little encouraged by Fenner’s optimism but far from convinced. “I only hope you’re right.”

  6

  When Fenner got to the bank he found that Hanley was engaged in a meeting that might last for some time. He settled into an easy chair in the manager’s office, welcoming the opportunity for undisturbed reflection. The rattle and clank of derricks, the chugging of dirt trucks across the street, the whir of electric hoists, all mingled with the screeching of brakes, taxi sirens, police whistles, and the other street noises of downtown New York, combined to form a subdued, throbbing roar that attacked his mind the moment he started to relax.

  Spring was in the air; Fenner had lunched heartily; he felt an increasing lassitude but he forced his problem before his mind, examining it, revolving it, ever probing. The cacophonous din floating up through the open windows seemed to fall away; Fenner’s drowsiness gradually fled. From the pigeonholes of his brain he drew forth the characters of his play, ticking off on his finger tips the salient facts he’d learned about each of them. Jeremy, Young Jerry, Dickson, Borden, Morton—all paraded across the stage of his consciousness, even Hanley and Elsa Knoeckler bringing up the rear.

  He reviewed the scenes as he had learned of them from others, as he had seen them with his own eyes: The party examining the vault, talking, measuring, swarming about its tiny confines and around a hand truck laden with a dozen fortunes. The discovery of the theft, father and son eying each other askance, awaiting the arrival of the law to wreak punishment upon whom they knew not, or feared to suspect. The inquisitions of Jerry, the old man, Borden, Dickson, and then today of Morton and Elsa Knoeckler. In his mind’s eye he saw Morton and Elsa driving into the Jersey countryside in the cool of the evening while old Adolph sprawled lifeless in the inky cellar, his bald skull flattened against the concrete, a clammy, ghastly center to a slowly widening dark pool. He saw old Schmidt seated before his store watching with unrealizing eyes the disjointed steps of a drama enacted before him. He saw Dickson, haunted by margin clerks, fleeing swinging stone skips; Borden, laughing, calling old Knoeckler a robber; Hanley, disheveled, sleepless on Friday morning and neat and businesslike today. He saw Morton, indignant, clapping a deposit box key on Hanley’s desk, Morton defiant, a slow flush creeping over him at the expose of his affair with Elsa.

  Carefully, thoughtfully, Fenner assembled the various components—assorting, rearranging, shifting, sifting, searching for the thread of purpose which must pervade the whole; and, as he pondered, his brain clarified. Illogicalities stood out; he lopped them off. Then in an illuminated moment he suddenly found one answer—a possible answer. He tested it from various angles and found it at least within the limits of physical possibility. Details hitherto meaningless assumed a new significance. But there were gaps and loopholes galore. Still—it was simply up to him to fill them in, t© order subsequent events that would fill them in. He rose from the chair and for a moment paced the room in suppressed excitement, then crossed to the window and stood looking into the excavation below. Hanley found him thus, absorbed in thought, when he returned to his office about midafternoon.

  “Anything new?” the bank manager asked.

  “Not especially, but we’re getting along,” Fenner replied cautiously. “How is your vault standing up—the one that started all this trouble?”

  “All right, I guess. Jeremy says the door works about the same, and there are no new cracks. The bulk of the blasting will be finished today so I guess we won’t have to worry about any more settlement.”

  “Is that so? Good! That fits in with an idea of mine better than I could have hoped. I’ll tell you what I’d like to do, Hanley, or rather, to have you do. I’d like to have you call up Morton and Dickson and tell them that, inasmuch as the blasting is about done, you’d like to have them come over and make another examination of the vault to see if it has gotten any worse or settled any more since last Thursday. Get the same crowd in here as before, at the same time in the morning. Can you do that?”

  “Oh, I see; the old game of reenacting the crime, eh?” Hanley smiled.

  “Not exactly, but somewhat along those lines.

  There are some things puzzling me that I might get a line on in that way.”

  “But there won’t be any startling dénouements?”

  “I’d like to be able to promise something like that but I’m afraid I can’t. In fact, I can guarantee against it.”

  “They’ll all be disappointed,” Hanley chided. Fenner ignored the vein of levity. “Another thing I want you to do is to let them know about young Donegan. Don’t make a point of it, of course, but just casually mention that you believe the theft has been solved, or something of the sort. You can say we’ve found enough evidence to satisfy us as to his guilt but haven’t assembled our case yet. Be sure to tell them he’s under arrest, though.”

  “All right; I’ll see what I can do,” Hanley agreed cheerfully. He telephoned Morton and asked him to come to the bank in the morning, explaining that he thought it advisable to have the vault looked over again. Morton fell in with the plan, not only agreeing that it would be well to examine the vault but suggesting also that it wou
ld now be apropos to discuss ways and means of restoring it to its original level. Hanley had some difficulty in locating Dickson but when he did and extended the same invitation, Dickson, too, thought the idea a good one and promised to be on hand with Borden the next morning.

  Observing that the arrangements were completed, Fenner got up, well satisfied with what he hoped would turn out to be the beginning of the end. He was about to leave when, after a gentle tap, the door was pushed open and Jeremy Donegan stepped in.

  The old man was still in his uniform, though it was late enough for him to have changed to his street clothing. He looked at Hanley bitterly, unable to keep tears back from his eyes.

  “I understand ye’ve arrested the boy, Mr. Hanley,” he choked, and at the manager’s mute nod went on: “You’re all wrong. God knows how wrong you are! I’ll swear my boy had nothing to do with that shortage. Why, man! Ye know it as well as I.”

  “I don’t know anything of the sort.” It was with an effort that Hanley was able to instill the coolness in his retort.

  “Ye’ve known the boy—years. He’s as honest as they make ‘em. Ye’ve got nothing on him and arrest him just the same—like a common crook—just to arrest somebody!”

  Fenner cut in: “You’re at liberty to see your son. Tell him this: that when he tells me the truth about what he did during his lunch hour last Thursday, and also tells me why he lied about it in the first place, I’ll be more inclined to believe whatever else he tells me.”

  Old Jeremy blanched as if struck an unexpected blow. Hanley, pitying him, said gently: “Jeremy, the truth will come out. If Jerry’s in this, God help him! If he’s not, he’ll be cleared and no harm’ll come of it. I’ll see that he gets an even show, you know you can depend on that.” He turned back to his desk.

  Jeremy nodded dumbly, accepting the dismissal, and shuffled dazedly out. Fenner watched him go.

  “Tougher on him than on the boy,” he commented.

  “Yes; Jerry has simply shut up like a clam. He’s not excited and not alarmed, though his feelings are damned well hurt.”

  “So Bryce was telling me. Well, it’ll all come out in the wash!” With this trite comment Fenner left Hanley and returned to his own office to finish his day’s work.

  That operation consisted of participating in three very brief, cryptically worded, telephone conversations. One was with Bryce from whom he learned that Elsa Knoeckler had been established with a spinster sister of Randolph Morton’s in an apartment in the Columbus Circle section of the city, also that Jerry Donegan was so far thriving upon prison fare. The second was with a semi-agent of his own who informed him that Mr. Christopher Dickson had posted no further collateral against his brokerage loans since the deposit of certain Liberty Bonds on Thursday last. And the third was with another agent who told him, among other things, that during the course of the day Mr. T. Jerome Hanley had arranged for the deposit of $30,000 in cash to bolster his by then practically extinct margins.

  The last bit of information bid fair to leave Maxwell Fenner completely flabbergasted. It set him off upon a tack he had once already abandoned. If Hanley was involved in the shortage, Fenner had once concluded, the bank manager would not have called him into the case. But perhaps Hanley was thinking one step ahead and expected Fenner to follow just that reasoning. He would then have deliberately invited him into the case. But if Hanley’s mind worked in that direction, would he stop there? Would he not reason ahead another step and realize that Fenner would perceive his, Hanley’s, method of figuring, and therefore not have invited him into the case? Or still another step—It could go on forever. Whether you came out right or wrong depended upon which step you stopped at. Like the old Chinese odd-and-even finger game, Fenner thought to himself with disgust, except that in China the host was bound to do his utmost to permit his guest to guess correctly. Jerome Hanley, Fenner concluded, would make anything but a proficient Chinese host.

  V. TUESDAY, APRIL 5th

  1

  MORTON came in a few minutes ahead of the others the next morning. Hanley was busy at his desk but he stopped long enough to indicate a chair for the engineer, then excused himself and turned back to his papers. If Morton thought it unusual, there was nothing he could say, so he simply sat figuratively twirling his thumbs and gazing around the office. Soon, however, to his relief, Dickson and Borden were ushered in. Hanley glanced at his watch, shoved his work aside and got to his feet.

  “I don’t want to take too much of your time, gentlemen,” he began. “I asked you in this morning to look over our vault again and see if it’s any worse than last week. Then we’ll try to decide on something in the way of fixing it up. I understand that the bulk of the blasting across the street is over now.” He looked toward Dickson and Borden.

  “That’s right,” Dickson said. “Of course there will be smaller shots for a week or two yet, while the column footings are being excavated; but they won’t compare in strength or frequency with the charges required for the general rock removal.”

  “Would they affect anything we might try in the way of shoring up the vault?”

  Dickson seemed uncertain. “It’s hard to say. They might possibly, but I rather think not.”

  Morton broke in: “Shoring that vault is going to be a ticklish operation at best. In my opinion it would be very inadvisable to monkey with it before the blasting is completely done and over with. It’s true that nothing might happen, but it’s also true that you might get enough additional settlement to prevent the door from operating. Then you’d be put to all sorts of trouble. Why take the chance? You’re not in any particular hurry, are you?” The last was to Hanley.

  “No, but we don’t want to let it go too long. The door is very difficult to operate, you know—“ He broke off. “Well, let’s go down.” He led the way out of the office but paused outside the door. “By the way, I suppose you’ll be interested in hearing that we’ve got a line on the shortage that was troubling us last week.” The remark was addressed to the group in general.

  All seemed to gather closer, interested.

  “You don’t say! I’m glad to hear that,” Dickson spoke up. “It’s none of my business but I’m curious to know who was involved.”

  “Why, we believe Jerry Done—Well, one of our assistant cashiers is behind it. He denies everything, of course, but he’s very vague in his statements and can’t account for himself during the noon hour of the day it happened. He’s under arrest and I think he’ll come clean presently.”

  “Didn’t take you long to dig it out,” Dickson commented.

  “We haven’t got the cash back yet,” Hanley reminded him, “so we’re not congratulating ourselves for a while.”

  Both Morton and Borden had listened interestedly but neither made any comment. They all went downstairs to the vault. Old Jeremy was inside, seated at his small desk. His face bore a gray pallor, his eyes were sunk and listless. He appeared to have aged ten years in the four days since the men had seen him before. He looked up at them with curious apathy for a moment, then turned his face away, with only a nod for greeting. In a chair beside him sat Maxwell Fenner. He had been talking earnestly to the older man but stopped when the engineers came in.

  “Oh, you’re here early this morning.” Hanley pretended surprise at finding Fenner there. The latter quickly got up.

  “Am I in your way here?” he asked, playing up to Hanley’s pretense.

  “No; not at all. Sit down. We shall only be a few minutes.” Fenner let himself back into the chair.

  “Set up your level and try the corners again,” Dickson instructed Borden curtly. He turned to Morton. “No change in the condition of the cracks that I can see.” Obviously it was his intention to establish at the outset that the operations of his company across the street had caused no further damage.

  Morton only mumbled an unintelligible reply, not proposing to commit himself until he had had a chance to look the situation over.

  Borden spread the legs of his
tripod and set it up in one of the rear corners and attached his level. Dickson opened a folding rule and held it in turn in the four corners of the vault for Borden to read. The results indicated that the vault had tipped no farther.

  Fenner sat beside Jeremy’s desk gazing around vacantly, idly drumming the desk top with his nails or twirling his gold-capped pocket pencil. His wandering gaze missed not the smallest detail. Morton moved around the walls.

  “I can’t see any difference in any of the cracks,” he finally conceded to Dickson. “None of them seem to have opened up. I think we may safely assume that the settlement has stopped. Just the same I think we would do well to postpone any underpinning for another ten days.”

  The remark precipitated a brief discussion between Hanley and Dickson and himself as to ways and means of shoring the vault. Fenner got up and moved over to Borden.

  “Quite an instrument you have there,” he remarked. “How does it work?”

  “Why, it’s just a telescope with cross hairs in it and a spirit level attached. When you get the bubble in the middle the line of sight of the telescope is exactly level. That’s all. You read a rule through it—in two corners there, say. You find one reading shorter by a half inch than the other, which means that it’s a half inch higher. That’s what we did the other day, and now today we find the same difference, which means the vault hasn’t moved.”

  “Pretty delicate machine, I suppose?”

  “Yes, they get out of whack easily; but not if you’re reasonably careful with them. They get out of adjustment more from the knocks they get being lugged around than they do from actual use. The cases are pretty well padded, though.”

  The talk between Morton and Dickson and Hanley terminated abruptly. At a sign from Dickson, Borden dismantled his instrument and collapsed the tripod.