“That cleared the way to freedom perfectly. Early in the evening of the last day of my imprisonment, when it was dark, I planned to cut the feed wire which was only a few feet from my window, reaching it with an acid-tipped wire I had. That would make that side of the prison perfectly dark while the electricians were searching for the break. That would also bring Mr. Hatch into the prison yard.

  “There was only one more thing to do before I actually began the work of setting myself free. This was to arrange final details with Mr. Hatch through our speaking tube. I did this within half an hour after the warden left my cell on the fourth night of my imprisonment. Mr. Hatch again had serious difficulty in understanding me, and I repeated the word ‘acid’ to him several times, and later the words: ‘Number eight hat’—that’s my size—and these were the things which made a prisoner upstairs confess to murder, so one of the jailers told me next day. This prisoner heard our voices, confused of course, through the pipe, which also went to his cell. The cell directly over me was not occupied, hence no one else heard.

  “Of course the actual work of cutting the steel bars out of the window and door was comparatively easy with nitric acid, which I got through the pipe in thin bottles, but it took time. Hour after hour on the fifth and sixth and seven days the guard below was looking at me as I worked on the bars of the window with the acid on a piece of wire. I used the tooth powder to prevent the acid spreading. I looked away abstractedly as I worked and each minute the acid cut deeper into the metal. I noticed that the jailers always tried the door by shaking the upper part, never the lower bars, therefore I cut the lower bars, leaving them hanging in place by thin strips of metal. But that was a bit of dare-deviltry. I could not have gone that way so easily.”

  The Thinking Machine sat silent for several minutes.

  “I think that makes everything clear,” he went on. “Whatever points I have not explained were merely to confuse the warden and jailers. These things in my bed I brought in to please Mr. Hatch, who wanted to improve the story. Of course, the wig was necessary in my plan. The special delivery letter I wrote and directed in my cell with Mr. Hatch’s fountain pen, then sent it out to him and he mailed it. That’s all, I think.”

  “But your actually leaving the prison grounds and then coming in through the outer gate to my office?” asked the warden.

  “Perfectly simple,” said the scientist. “I cut the electric light wire with acid, as I said, when the current was off. Therefore when the current was turned on, the arc light didn’t light. I knew it would take some time to find out what was the matter and make repairs. When the guard went to report to you the yard was dark. I crept out the window—it was a tight fit, too—replaced the bars by standing on a narrow ledge and remained in a shadow until the force of electricians arrived. Mr. Hatch was one of them.

  “When I saw him I spoke and he handed me a cap, a jumper and overalls, which I put on within ten feet of you, Mr. Warden, while you were in the yard. Later Mr. Hatch called me, presumably as a workman, and together we went out the gate to get something out of the wagon. The gate guard let us pass out readily as two workmen who had just passed in. We changed our clothing and reappeared, asking to see you. We saw you. That’s all.”

  There was silence for several minutes. Dr. Ransome was first to speak.

  “Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Perfectly amazing.”

  “How did Mr. Hatch happen to come with the electricians?” asked Mr. Fielding.

  “His father is manager of the company,” replied The Thinking Machine.

  “But what if there had been no Mr. Hatch outside to help?”

  “Every prisoner has one friend outside who would help him escape if he could.”

  “Suppose—just suppose—there had been no old plumbing system there?” asked the warden, curiously.

  “There were two other ways out,” said The Thinking Machine, enigmatically.

  Ten minutes later the telephone bell rang. It was a request for the warden.

  “Light all right, eh?” the warden asked, through the telephone. “Good. Wire cut beside Cell 13? Yes, I know. One electrician too many? What’s that? Two came out?”

  The warden turned to the others with a puzzled expression.

  “He only let in four electricians, he has let out two and says there are three left.”

  “I was the odd one,” said The Thinking Machine.

  “Oh,” said the warden. “I see.” Then through the telephone: “Let the fifth man go. He’s all right.”

  THE MYSTERY OF THE RALSTON BANK BURGLARY

  WITH expert fingers Phillip Dunston, receiving teller, verified the last package of one-hundred-dollar bills he had made up—ten thousand dollars in all—and tossed it over on the pile beside him, while he checked off a memorandum. It was correct; there were eighteen packages of bills, containing $107,231. Then he took the bundles, one by one, and on each placed his initials, “P. D.” This was a system of checking in the Ralston National Bank.

  It was care in such trivial details, perhaps, that had a great deal to do with the fact that the Ralston National had advanced from a small beginning to the first rank of those banks which were financial powers. President Quinton Fraser had inaugurated the system under which the Ralston National had so prospered, and now, despite his seventy-four years, he was still its active head. For fifty years he had been in its employ; for thirty-five years of that time he had been its president.

  Publicly the aged banker was credited with the possession of a vast fortune, this public estimate being based on large sums he had given to charity. But as a matter of fact the private fortune of the old man, who had no one to share it save his wife, was not large; it was merely a comfortable living sum for an aged couple of simple tastes.

  Dunston gathered up the packages of money and took them into the cashier’s private office, where he dumped them on the great flat-top desk at which that official, Randolph West, sat figuring. The cashier thrust the sheet of paper on which he had been working into his pocket and took the memorandum which Dunston offered.

  “All right?” he asked.

  “It tallies perfectly,” Dunston replied.

  “Thanks. You may go now.”

  It was an hour after closing time. Dunston was just pulling on his coat when he saw West come out of his private office with the money to put it away in the big steel safe which stood between depositors and thieves. The cashier paused a moment to allow the janitor, Harris, to sweep the space in front of the safe. It was the late afternoon scrubbing and sweeping.

  “Hurry up,” the cashier complained, impatiently.

  Harris hurried, and West placed the money in the safe. There were eighteen packages.

  “All right, sir?” Dunston inquired.

  “Yes.”

  West was disposing of the last bundle when Miss Clarke—Louise Clarke—private secretary to President Fraser, came out of his office with a long envelope in her hand. Dunston glanced at her and she smiled at him.

  “Please, Mr. West,” she said to the cashier, “Mr. Fraser told me before he went to put these papers in the safe. I had almost forgotten.”

  She glanced into the open safe and her pretty blue eyes opened wide. Mr. West took the envelope, stowed it away with the money without a word, the girl looking on interestedly, and then swung the heavy door closed. She turned away with a quick, reassuring smile at Dunston, and disappeared inside the private office.

  West had shot the bolts of the safe into place and had taken hold of the combination dial to throw it on, when the street door opened and President Fraser entered hurriedly.

  “Just a moment, West,” he called. “Did Miss Clarke give you an envelope to go in there?”

  “Yes. I just put it in.”

  “One moment,” and the aged president came through a gate which Dunston held open and went to the safe. The cashier pulled the steel door open, unlocked the money compartment where the envelope had been placed, and the president took it out.

  West turned and spoke to Dunston, leaving the president looking over the contents of the envelope. When the cashier turned back to the safe the president was just taking his hand away from his inside coat pocket.

  “It’s all right, West,” he instructed. “Lock it up.”

  Again the heavy door closed, the bolts were shot and the combination dial turned. President Fraser stood looking on curiously; it just happened that he had never witnessed this operation before.

  “How much have you got in there tonight?” he asked.

  “One hundred and twenty-nine thousand,” replied the cashier. “And all the securities, of course.”

  “Hum,” mused the president. “That would be a good haul for some one—if they could get it, eh, West?” and he chuckled dryly.

  “Excellent,” returned West, smilingly. “But they can’t.”

  Miss Clarke, dressed for the street, her handsome face almost concealed by a veil which was intended to protect her pink cheeks from boisterous winds, was standing in the door of the president’s office.

  “Oh, Miss Clarke, before you go, would you write just a short note for me?” asked the president.

  “Certainly,” she responded, and she returned to the private office. Mr. Fraser followed her.

  West and Dunston stood outside the bank railing, Dunston waiting for Miss Clarke. Every evening he walked over to the subway with her. His opinion of her was an open secret. West was waiting for the janitor to finish sweeping.

  “Hurry up, Harris,” he said again.

  “Yes, sir,” came the reply, and the janitor applied the broom more vigorously. “Just a little bit more. I’ve finished inside.”

  Dunston glanced through the railing. The floor was spick and span and the hardwood glistened cleanly. Various bits of paper came down the corridor before Harris’s broom. The janitor swept it all up into a dustpan just as Miss Clarke came out of the president’s room. With Dunston she walked up the street. As they were going they saw Cashier West come out the front door, with his handkerchief in his hand, and then walk away rapidly.

  “Mr. Fraser is doing some figuring,” Miss Clarke explained to Dunston. “He said he might be there for another hour.”

  “You are beautiful,” replied Dunston, irrelevantly.

  * * * *

  These, then, were the happenings in detail in the Ralston National Bank from 4:15 o’clock on the afternoon of November 11. That night the bank was robbed. The great steel safe which was considered impregnable was blown and $129,000 was missing.

  The night watchman of the bank, William Haney, was found senseless, bound and gagged, inside the bank. His revolver lay beside him with all the cartridges out. He had been beaten into insensibility; at the hospital it was stated that there was only a bare chance of his recovery.

  The locks, hinges and bolts of the steel safe had been smashed by some powerful explosive, possibly nitroglycerine. Thc tiny dial of the time-lock showed that the explosion came at 2:39; the remainder of the lock was blown to pieces.

  Thus was fixed definitely the moment at which the robbery occurred. It was shown that the policeman on the beat had been four blocks away. It was perfectly possible that no one heard the explosion, because the bank was situated in a part of the city wholly given over to business and deserted at night.

  The burglars had entered the building through a window of the cashier’s private office, in the full glare of an electric light. Thc window sash here had been found unfastened and the protecting steel bars, outside from top to bottom, seemed to have been dragged from their sockets in the solid granite. The granite crumbled away, as if it had been chalk.

  Only one possible clue was found. This was a white linen handkerchief, picked up in front of the blown safe. It must have been dropped there at the time of the burglary, because Dunston distinctly recalled it was not there before he left the bank. He would have noticed it while the janitor was sweeping.

  This handkerchief was the property of Cashier West. The cashier did not deny it, but could offer no explanation of how it came there. Miss Clarke and Dunston both said that they had seen him leave the bank with a handkerchief in his hand.

  II

  President Fraser reached the bank at ten o’clock and was informed of the robbery. He retired to his office, and there he sat, apparently stunned into inactivity by the blow, his head bowed on his arms. Miss Clarke, at her typewriter, frequently glanced at the aged figure with an expression of pity on her face. Her eyes seemed weary, too. Outside, through the closed door, they could hear the detectives.

  From time to time employees of the bank and detectives entered the office to ask questions. The banker answered as if dazed; then the board of directors met and voted to personally make good the loss sustained. There was no uneasiness among depositors, because they knew the resources of the bank were practically unlimited.

  Cashier West was not arrested. The directors wouldn’t listen to such a thing; he had been cashier for eighteen years, and they trusted him implicitly. Yet he could offer no possible explanation of how his handkerchief had come there. He asserted stoutly that he had not been in the bank from the moment Miss Clarke and Dunston saw him leave it.

  After investigation the police placed the burglary to the credit of certain expert cracksmen, identity unknown. A general alarm, which meant a rounding up of all suspicious persons, was sent out, and this drag-net was expected to bring important facts to light. Detective Mallory said so, and the bank officials placed great reliance on his word.

  Thus the situation at the luncheon hour. Then Miss Clarke, who, wholly unnoticed, had been waiting all morning at her typewriter, arose and went over to Fraser.

  “If you don’t need me now,” she said, “I’ll run out to luncheon.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” he responded, with a slight start. He had apparently forgotten her existence.

  She stood silently looking at him for a moment.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” she said, at last, and her lips trembled slightly.

  “Thanks,” said the banker, and he smiled faintly. “It’s a shock, the worst I ever had.”

  Miss Clarke passed out with quiet tread, pausing for a moment in the outer office to stare curiously at the shattered steel safe. The banker arose with sudden determination and called to West, who entered immediately.

  “I know a man who can throw some light on this thing,” said Fraser, positively. “I think I’ll ask him to come over and take a look. It might aid the police, anyway. You may know him? Professor Van Dusen.”

  “Never heard of him,” said West, tersely, “but I’ll welcome anybody who can solve it. My position is uncomfortable.”

  President Fraser called Professor Van Dusen—The Thinking Machine—and talked for a moment through the telephone. Then he turned back to West.

  “He’ll come,” he said, with an air of relief. “I was able to do him a favor once by putting an invention on the market.”

  Within an hour The Thinking Machine, accompanied by Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, appeared. President Fraser knew the scientist well, but on West the strange figure made a startling, almost uncanny, impression. Every known fact was placed before The Thinking Machine. He listened without comment, then arose and wandered aimlessly about the offices. The employees were amused by his manner; Hatch was a silent looker-on.

  “Where was the handkerchief found?” demanded The Thinking Machine, at last.

  “Here,” replied West, and he indicated the exact spot.

  “Any draught through the office—ever?”

  “None. We have a patent ventilating system which prevents that.”

  The Thinking Machine squinted for several minutes at the window which had been unfastened—the window in the cashier’s private room—with the steel bars guarding it, now torn out of their sockets, and at the chalklike softness of the granite about the sockets. After awhile he turned to the president and cashier.

  “Where is the handkerchief?”

  “In my desk,” Fraser replied. “The police thought it of no consequence, save, perhaps—perhaps—,” and he looked at West.

  “Except that it might implicate me,” said West, hotly.

  “Tut, tut, tut,” said Fraser, reprovingly. “No one thinks for a—”

  “Well, well, the handkerchief?” interrupted The Thinking Machine, in annoyance.

  “Come into my office,” suggested the president.

  The Thinking Machine started in, saw a woman—Miss Clarke, who had returned from luncheon—and stopped. There was one thing on earth he was afraid of—a woman.

  “Bring it out here,” he requested.

  President Fraser brought it and placed it in the slender hands of the scientist, who examined it closely by a window, turning it over and over. At last he sniffed at it. There was the faint, clinging odor of violet perfume. Then abruptly, irrelevantly, he turned to Fraser.

  “How many women employed in the bank?” he asked.

  “Three,” was the reply; “Miss Clarke, who is my secretary, and two general stenographers in the outer office.”

  “How many men?”

  “Fourteen, including myself.”

  If the president and Cashier West had been surprised at the actions of The Thinking Machine up to this point, now they were amazed. He thrust the handkerchief at Hatch, took his own handkerchief, briskly scrubbed his hands with it, and also passed that to Hatch.

  “Keep those,” he commanded.

  He sniffed at his hands, then walked into the outer office, straight toward the desk of one of the young women stenographers. He leaned over her, and asked one question:

  “What system of shorthand do you write?”

  “Pitman,” was the astonished reply.

  The scientist sniffed. Yes, it was unmistakably a sniff. He left her suddenly and went to the other stenographer. Precisely the same thing happened; standing close to her he asked one question, and at her answer sniffed. Miss Clarke passed through the outer office to mail a letter. She, too, had to answer the question as the scientist squinted into her eyes, and sniffed.

 

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