The Bank Vault Mystery

by Louis F. Booth

  The sun had dropped behind the tall buildings to the west and their long shadows extended themselves completely across the site before a sobered Maxwell Fenner roused himself from a speculative reverie and betook himself back to Bryce’s headquarters. Here another surprise was in store for him.

  The inspector looked at him with grim satisfaction, waited deliberately until it was apparent that Fenner had nothing to disclose, then remarked with an abortive effort at casualness: “I know you’ve had something up your sleeve on this case since Tuesday. I don’t know how Morton’s accident yesterday affected it, but see how this fits in: The bird we’ve been looking for, who went to Knoeckler’s shop ahead of Morton and the girl last Thursday evening, was none other than Stephen Coles. He was looking for his lady love.”

  “No!”

  “No less! I got it from the girl a while ago. I ran into her at the hospital and buzzed her a little about him. I asked her when Coles had first started being obnoxious about Morton. She said it was only since the weekend. She’d played sick to get away from the office Thursday and he’d come around to the store that night and hadn’t found her. That’s what started him off. She says he raised hell when he saw her Wednesday morning.”

  Fenner sat for a moment assimilating the disclosure, attempting to relate this new fact to the maze of other facts already known. Presently he said slowly: “This may be precisely the fact I’ve been looking for. It wasn’t quite crystallized in my mind, but now I realize that the puzzling thing up to this moment has been Coles’ connection to the case. The jealousy motive was strong enough, but unconnected unless we assume pure coincidence. There has been too much of that already. But this may tie him in. I don’t see quite how, yet, but I feel that it does.” He paused, lost in thought, then went on, slowly voicing the thoughts: “Morton was attacked—killed as far as the attacker’s intentions went—as a direct result of the vault robbery and the tag was left upon him to attract suspicion; whereupon Coles, who it now appears has become involved in the case, disappears completely. The inference is obvious.” Again he paused. “In fact, it’s too utterly obvious.”

  Fenner got up and paced the floor. “Any leads on him yet?”

  “The boys found a couple of good photos in his room,” Bryce replied. “Some papers and letters, too. His home’s upstate near Rochester. They’re on the lookout around there. We’re getting out a circular, too.”

  “Well, I suppose it can’t do any harm,” was Fenner’s enigmatic comment.

  VIII. FRIDAY, APRIL 8th

  1

  AT half past eight the next morning, unconscionably early for Fenner, he sat again in Bryce’s office. He was attempting, though without much success, the role of Pollyanna, for he had found the inspector in low spirits indeed. Bryce made no effort to conceal his mortification at the turn the case had taken and at their slow progress.

  “We certainly muffed this up,” he moaned. “I wish to God I had stuck to my original hunch on Morton. He’d be in a cell instead of the hospital, and while I don’t know where the bank’s dough would be right now, it’s a cinch it wouldn’t be halfway across the continent or maybe in Canada with Stephen Coles.”

  “If I was convinced that that was the case I’m not sure I wouldn’t feel better about the whole business than I do,” Fenner confessed soberly. He forced a lightness into his tone. “From your remarks, Inspector, I gather you haven’t yet put the bracelets on your fugitive.”

  “Not so’s you’d notice it! Not even a decent lead so far.”

  “And,” Fenner pressed, “having slept upon the matter, do you feel he’s gone because he double-crossed Morton and took the money or because he brained him in a fit of jealousy over the girl?”

  “He’s gone. What difference does it make?” Fenner shrugged his shoulders. Next he asked: “What’s the word from the hospital this morning?” “A little more encouraging. He’s still in a critical condition but the doctor says that, having come through the night, his chances are now definitely good.”

  “Has he become conscious?”

  “He came out of the coma late last night but they put him to sleep again. The doctor says it’ll be about a week before we can talk to him.”

  “By that time we may tell him more than he tells us,” Fenner commented hopefully.

  “Yeah? I wish I could share your optimism.”

  “Let’s get down to cases. Anything out of order yet in our ‘little daily stories’?”

  Bryce opened his book. “I see from this report that Miss Knoeckler spent a pleasant quarter of an hour in Morton’s office with us yesterday. I suppose that might be considered compromising. That’s about all.” He turned serious. “Were you able to get anything out of her at the hospital the other evening?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Fenner replied. “Morton hasn’t taken her into his confidence much. She knows less of his financial affairs than we do. She did tell me he’s planning a divorce so he can marry her. I flashed the tag on her and told her where it came from. Thought I’d frighten something out of her, but no such thing! She insists it’s either a mistake or Morton can explain it. When this is all over I’m going to congratulate the man upon his selection of mistresses. She’s loyal if ever a girl has been.”

  “I imagine he’d be delighted to hear you refer to her in those terms,” Bryce said dryly.

  “I didn’t use the word disparagingly,” Fenner objected. “The more I see of Miss Knoeckler, the higher my opinion of her becomes. She’s taken a lot of hard knocks these last few days, with scarce a whimper. As for her affair, it’s just that—her own affair.”

  Bryce regarded Fenner curiously. “If I had never met Mrs. Fenner I’d be inclined to suspect you of falling a little for the girl yourself.”

  Fenner laughed. “Nonsense! But I never pro-fessed to complete insusceptibility. That’s a state I reserve for older age than I hope to attain. But let’s get back to business. What next?”

  Bryce turned back to his notes. “From Morton’s office she went to the hospital and was there until dinner time. Had dinner uptown at a tea-shop near where she’s staying and then went in. Not out yet this morning.

  “Now, here’s the Donegans: Jerry in fair spirits and apparently resigned to waiting for something to happen. Sticks to his original story and told me yesterday that inasmuch as he was innocent he wasn’t worrying because certainly no one could prove him guilty. Sounded fairly convincing. His father went to see him again last evening. Their talk was very restrained. I believed they suspected they were being listened to. Sometimes I have a feeling there’s something fishy about the old gent, but I can’t quite pin it down. But anyway, he’s followed his routine so regularly that you could almost set a watch by his movements. Then, of course, his record is so long—”

  Fenner waved his hand as if to discard the entire suggestion. “To my way of thinking he’s out. If I’m mistaken, then this is simply going to settle into one hell of a protracted wait. He can wait forever. Go on.”

  “Now Dickson and Borden: Both of them stayed on the job until late in the afternoon. Dickson called up the hospital several times during the day and Borden also called once or twice. They both seem concerned about him, though I suppose it’s natural. Dickson went to his main office about half past four. He went home by the usual route and wasn’t out of the house all evening. He left home at the usual hour this morning. Here’s something that gave me a start for a minute: When Borden left the job yesterday he went around the corner to a pay-phone booth and talked for five or six minutes. That was about ten minutes before six. McFadden—he’s one of the men on him—got the number from the operator but it turned out to be only his house phone. Borden went home, had dinner, went to the “Y” for his Thursday class, then home as usual. He left the house at the usual time this morning and is on the job now.”

  Bryce closed the book and settled back into his chair, folding his hands across his ample girth resignedly. “That’s all except Hanley. The morning dope on him hasn’
t come in yet, but if there was to be anything special I’d have heard by now.” He sighed his disgust and pushed the book away from him, concluding wearily: “If you can find anything in any of that you’ve got a better nose than I have.”

  Fenner got up and walked to the window. The sky had been heavily overcast since dawn; now a steady drizzle was falling. He stared into the gloomy murk speculatively. “You know,” he said slowly, “that bit about the pay phone intrigues me. Let me have the time and the telephone number of the booth, will you?”

  Bryce leafed through the notes and read off the phone number. “At five-fifty P.M.,” he added as Fenner jotted it down.

  “Perhaps we can make something of it. Anyway, ‘No stone unturned,’ you know.” Fenner folded the slip of paper and tucked it into his vest pocket. He picked up his hat and umbrella and went out into the rain.

  2

  Bryce turned to his desk after Fenner had departed and began going through the small daily quota of routine work that accompanied his position. After a brief, desultory attack, however, he thrust the sheaf of papers aside, unable to focus his attention upon them and unable to expel from his thoughts the perplexities of the Consolidated Bank case.

  Inactivity had always irked him. Fenner’s theories of watchful waiting had always rasped upon a certain spot of raw impatience in his makeup, but seldom quite so exasperatingly as on this particular morning. And yet he could not deny their proved effectiveness in the past, nor at this moment could he suggest any practicable substitute.

  Laboriously he got up out of the chair and moved over to the window. The old station building with its massive, forbidding walls and barred windows was a gloomy place at best, but on days like this when the skies were grayed with storm and the feeble play of daylight that somehow found its way in was dimmed, the place assumed a deadly repressiveness that the yellow electric lights and bustling activity could never quite allay. Even Bryce, case-hardened, immunized by years beneath the heavy atmosphere, sometimes felt its pressure.

  On this morning he could feel it, a somber, intangible heaviness, as he watched the wind and rain swirling in the dismal courtyard, splattering maliciously against the high windows, dripping monotonously off the stone sills. Through the gates at the end of the court he could see an occasional dray rumbling along the river front, the driver soaked, the horses steaming in the foggy morning. Heavy trucks thundered ponderously along; lighter ones sputtered in and out among them. The steady rush of the wind and rain against the window panes was punctuated, with monotonous regularity, by the shrill blasts of a traffic policeman’s whistle around the corner, as often by the strident squawking of taxi horns, and now and again more pleasantly by the melancholy throatings of tugs and freighters making their steady way up the East River.

  Bryce thought of Fenner out in the rain. He wondered what his colleague could have hit upon to take him forth into such cheerless weather. Borden had called up his home from a pay-telephone booth, superficially not a suspicion-inviting departure from normal action, for if he suspected the job phone was tapped and used an outside phone for that reason surely he would know by the same token that he himself was under surveillance and would do nothing quite so obvious.

  The more Bryce pondered the matter, the more perplexed he became. His first inclination would have been to dismiss it from his mind, but he knew that if Fenner attached significance to the event then suspicion was extremely likely to be justified. But his puzzling got him nowhere and gradually the subject slipped out of his thoughts.

  He went back to his desk and resumed his work, but without enthusiasm and again not for long. The distracting question that ran through his mind this time was why Fenner had said nothing to Hanley of the discovery of the tag. Fenner had not seen the bank manager since the event—that Bryce realized—but certainly the development was of sufficient import to warrant getting in touch with him. Perhaps Fenner suspected Hanley of possessing firsthand guilty knowledge of the tag and was waiting for an overt slip. Hanley had been in the excavation when Morton was hurt. He had had as much opportunity to plant the tag as anyone, if Morton was being framed. Yet if Fenner suspected Hanley of any duplicity, he would not put the man on his guard by failing to report a find which Hanley, if involved, would certainly know had been made. Quite the contrary, he would have immediately rushed to him and disarmed any suspicion by telling him all about it and probably would have discussed the find and its implications at as much length as Hanley desired. On the other hand, if Fenner was sure of Hanley, why had he not reported the incident as would have been the natural thing to do? Bryce found no answer, and with a mental note to quiz Fenner he turned back to his papers.

  Thus the morning limped on—a long morning, boring, endless, with Bryce conscious of the passage of every minute of the time. Noon approached and he was becoming more and more impatient for some word from Fenner when the phone bell at his elbow jangled. He picked up the receiver, nervous, a vague premonition assailing him that something at long last had happened. It had. The voice at the other end of the wire was that of his aid, McFadden.

  “Say, chief,” he reported, “we ain’t sure yet, but it looks like Borden might’ve give us the slip.”

  “Given you the slip? When? Where? What do you mean?” Bryce bit the words off savagely.

  “Well, you see,” his lieutenant explained, “it’s rainin’ like hell down here—has been all morning. All these fellows have got on yellow oilskin slickers and hats. From ten feet away or from behind you can’t tell one from the next—laborers, bosses, everybody. Borden was hangin’ around the office shanty keepin’ dry most of the morning. Quade says he acted like he might’ve had something on his mind. About half past ten he put on a slicker and went down into the job. Quade give me the high sign and I seen him go down the ladder. Then the rain got so bad the job knocked off. The men come on up and checked out, but not Borden. I got hold of Quade right away and he slipped down and took a walk around the bottom. He says there’s not a soul around but a few pump mechanics. Bert is over watching the restaurant Borden generally uses. Maybe we’ll pick him up there. It’s almost noon—” McFadden hesitated, awaiting an outburst from his superior, but the storm failed to materialize.

  Instead Bryce simply instructed: “Hang around there. I’m coming over. If Borden’s not on the job we’ll pick him up somewhere. Tell Quade to stay there too. I want to talk to him.”

  The inspector hung up, thought a moment, then phoned Fenner’s office but was not surprised to learn that his colleague’s whereabouts was unknown. Bryce pressed a button, issued rapid instructions to the lieutenant who appeared, and went out into the rain, knowing that even as he crossed the threshold his handful of brief commands had set into motion the ponderous machinery of the law, that already its tentacles were extending and spreading, swiftly, implacably; that many wires were humming in the vast city network, that dozens of watchful eyes were waiting alert in railway stations, ferry houses, and at a hundred strategic points in the department’s ramified system. But the knowledge afforded Bryce only a limited measure of comfort. The system was good, he knew, but to the wary fugitive a thousand loopholes offered. At least, Borden hadn’t had much of a start. Coles had had a whole night, which made a great deal of difference. Still, if Borden was staging a planned getaway, their chances were not better than average, but Bryce was not convinced that this was the case. McFadden and Quade were not infallible. Borden could have very well quite unconsciously walked out of their ken. In that case he might shortly just as innocently walk back in again.

  Bryce found McFadden waiting across the street from the job gate. He had no more than arrived when Quade also put in an appearance, sauntering up the ramp and across the street to join them. With the noonday throngs reduced by the weather to a hurrying minimum, and the clamor stilled that ordinarily rose up from the new building site, the street assumed an unaccustomed holiday quiet. Bryce and his two aides huddled in the shelter of a building entrance. In a low voice and in sca
rcely more detail McFadden repeated what he had told his chief over the telephone. Quade could add little to the account. Borden, he said, had stayed in the office shanty most of the morning, passing the time of day with the superintendent and doing a little figuring over the plans but mostly watching the rain pour down. It had been decided to “knock off” the job for the day if the rain did not subside by eleven o’clock. A quarter of an hour before that time Borden had donned one of the company issue of oilskins and had gone down into the cellar for a final look around. The men had checked out and gone home, but Borden had not appeared. Casual inquiry by Quade had elicited the fact that the superintendent had not seen Borden after he left the shanty. Quade had taken a hasty walk through the cellar and had then communicated with McFadden. Since then he had made a more thorough tour, examining every nook and corner. He was satisfied that Borden was no longer on the job.

  Bryce digested this information for a moment, then turned to McFadden and commanded: “Chase around to that restaurant. He may have come in there by now. I’ll be either here or in the phone booth in the lobby.”

  When McFadden had gone, Bryce telephoned the construction company’s office and talked to Dickson, asking for Borden. The engineer was not a little curious as to this sudden burst of official interest in his assistant, but he could give no clue as to Borden’s immediate whereabouts, stating only that Borden was supposed to be at the job. When Bryce countered that the job had been shut down on account of the rain, Dickson somewhat testily suggested that in all likelihood, then, Borden was at lunch or on his way uptown to the office.