The Ear in the Wall Read online

  III

  THE SAFE ROBBERY

  It was late that night that Kennedy and I left Carton after laying outa campaign and setting in motion various forces, official andunofficial, which might serve to keep us in touch with what Dorgan andthe organization were doing.

  Not until the following morning, however, did anything new develop insuch a way that we could work on it.

  Kennedy had picked up the morning papers which had been left at thedoor of our apartment and was hastily running his eye over theheadlines on the first page, as was his custom.

  "By Jove, Walter," I heard him exclaim. "What do you think of that--arobbery below the deadline--and in Langhorne's office, too."

  I hurried out of my room and glanced at the papers, also. Sure enough,there it was:

  SAFE ROBBED IN WALL ST. OFFICE

  Door Into Office of Langhorne & Westlake, Brokers, Forced and SafeRobbed.

  One of the strangest robberies ever perpetrated was pulled off lastnight in the office of Langhorne & Westlake, the brokers, at-----WallStreet, some time during the regular closing time of the office andeight o'clock.

  Mr. Langhorne had returned to his office after dining with some friendsin order to work on some papers. When he arrived, about eight o'clock,he found that the door had been forced. The office was in darkness, butwhen he switched on the lights it was discovered that the office safehad been entered.

  Nothing was said about the manner in which the safe robbery wasperpetrated, but it is understood to have been very peculiar. So far nodetails have been announced and the robbery was not reported to thepolice until a late hour.

  Mr. Langhorne, when seen by the reporters, stated positively thatnothing of great value had been taken and that the firm would notsuffer in any way as a result of the robbery.

  One of the stenographers in the office, Miss Betty Blackwell, who actedas private secretary to Mr. Langhorne, is missing and the case hasalready attracted wide attention. Whether or not her disappearance hadanything to do with the robbery is not known.

  "Naturally he would not report it to the police," commented Kennedy;"that is, if it had anything to do with that Black Book, as I am surethat it must have had."

  "It was certainly a most peculiar affair if it did not," I remarked."There must be some way of finding that out. It's strange about BettyBlackwell."

  Kennedy was turning something over in his mind. "Of course," heremarked, "we don't want to come out into the open just yet, but itwould be interesting to know what happened down there at Langhorne's.Have you any objection to going down with me and posing as a reporterfrom the Star?"

  "None whatever," I returned.

  We stopped at the laboratory on the campus of the University whereCraig still retained his professorship. Kennedy secured a rather bulkypiece of apparatus, which, as nearly as I can describe, consisted of asteel frame, which could be attached by screws to any wooden table. Itcontained a lower plate which could move forward and back, two lateraluprights stiffened by curved braces, and a cross piece of steelattached by strong bolts to the tops of the posts. In the face of themachine was a dial with a pointer.

  Kennedy quickly took the apparatus apart and made it up into twopackages so that between us we could carry it easily, and at about thetime that Wall Street offices were opening we were on our way downtown.

  Langhorne proved to be a tall, rather slim, man of what might be calledyoungish middle age. One did not have to be introduced to him to readhis character or his occupation. Every line of his faultlessly fittingclothes and every expression of his keen and carefully cared-for facebetokened the plunger, the man who lived by his wits and found theprocess both fascinating and congenial.

  "Mr. Langhorne," began Kennedy, after I had taken upon myself the dutyof introducing ourselves as reporters, "we are preparing an article forour paper about a new apparatus which the Star has imported especiallyfrom Paris. It is a machine invented by Monsieur Bertillon just beforehe died, for the purpose of furnishing exact measurements of themuscular efforts exerted in the violent entry of a door or desk bymaking it possible to reproduce the traces of the work that a burglarhas left on doors and articles of furniture. We've been waiting for acase that the instrument would fit into and it seemed to us thatperhaps it might be of some use to you in getting at the real robber ofyour office. Would you mind if we made an attempt to apply it?"

  Langhorne could not very well refuse to allow us to try the thing,though it was plainly evident that he did not want to talk and did notrelish the publicity that the news of the morning had brought him.

  Kennedy had laid the apparatus down on a table as he spoke and wasassembling the parts which he had separated in order to carry it.

  "These are the marks on the door, I presume?" he continued, examiningsome indentations of the woodwork near the lock.

  Langhorne assented.

  "The door was open when you returned?" asked Kennedy.

  "Closed," replied Langhorne briefly. "Before I put the key into thelock, I turned the knob, as I have a habit of doing. Instead ofcatching, it yielded and the door swung open without any trouble."

  He repeated the story substantially as we had already read it in thepapers.

  Kennedy had taken a step or two into the office, and was now facing thesafe. It was not a large safe, but was one of the most modernconstruction and was supposed to be burglar proof.

  "And you say you lost practically nothing?" persisted Craig.

  "Nothing of importance," reiterated Langhorne.

  Kennedy had been watching him closely. The man was at least baffling.There was nothing excited or perturbed about his manner. Indeed, onemight easily have thought that it was not his safe at all that had beenrobbed. I wondered whether, after all, he had had the Black Book.Certainly, I felt, if he had lost it he was very cool about the loss.

  Craig had by this time reached the safe itself. In spite of Langhorne'sreluctance, his assurance had taken Kennedy even up to the point whichhe wished. He was examining the safe.

  On the front it showed no evidence of having been "souped" or drilled.There was not a mark on it. Nor, as we learned later from the police,was there any evidence of a finger-print having been left by theburglar.

  Langhorne now but ill concealed his interest. It was natural, too, forhere he had one of the most modern of small strong-boxes, built up ofthe latest chrome steel and designed to withstand any reasonableassault of cracksman or fire.

  I was on the point of inquiring how on earth it had been possible torob the safe, when Kennedy, standing on a chair, as Langhorne directed,uttered a low exclamation.

  I craned my neck to look also.

  There, in the very top of the safe, yawned a huge hole large enough tothrust one's arm through, with something to spare.

  As I looked at the yawning dark hole in the top of what had been only ashort time ago a safe worthy of the latest state of the art, it seemedincomprehensible.

  Try as I could to reason it out, I could find no explanation. How ithad been possible for a burglar to make such an opening in the littlemore than two hours between closing and the arrival of Langhorne afterdinner, I could not even guess. As far as I knew it would have takenmany long hours of patient labour with the finest bits to have madeanything at all comparable to the destruction which we saw before us.

  A score of questions were on my lips, but I said nothing, although Icould not help noticing the strange look on Langhorne's face. Itplainly showed that he would like to have known what had taken placeduring the two or more hours when his office had been unguarded, yetwas averse to betraying any such interest.

  Mystified as I was by what I saw, I was even more amazed at the coolmanner in which Kennedy passed it all by.

  He seemed merely to be giving the hole in the top of the safe a passingglance, as though it was of no importance that someone should have insuch an incredibly short time made a hole through which one mighteasily reach his arm and secure anything he wanted out of the interiorof the powerful lit
tle safe.

  Langhorne, too, seemed surprised at Kennedy's matter of fact passing byof what was almost beyond the range of possibility.

  "After all," remarked Kennedy, "it is not the safe that we care tostudy so much as the door. For one thing, I want to make sure whetherthe marks show a genuine breaking and entering or whether they wereplaced there afterwards merely to cover the trail, supposing someonehad used a key to get into the office."

  The remark suggested many things to me. Was it that he meant to implythat, after all, the missing Betty Blackwell had had something to dowith it? In fact, could the thing have been done by a woman?

  "Most persons," remarked Craig, as he studied the marks on the door,"don't know enough about jimmies. Against them an ordinary door-lock orwindow-catch is no protection. With a jimmy eighteen inches long, evenan anemic burglar can exert a pressure sufficient to lift two tons. Notone door-lock in ten thousand can stand this strain. It's like using ahammer to kill a fly. Really, the only use of locks is to keep outsneak thieves and to compel the modern, scientific educated burglar tomake a noise. This fellow, however, was no sneak thief."

  He continued to adjust the machine which he had brought. Langhornewatched minutely, but did not say anything.

  "Bertillon used to call this his mechanical burglar detector,"continued Kennedy. "As you see, this frame carries two dynamometers ofunequal power. The stronger, which has a high maximum capacity ofseveral tons, is designed for the measurement of vertical efforts. Theother measures horizontal efforts. The test is made by inserting theend of a jimmy or other burglar's tool and endeavouring to produceimpressions similar to those which have been found on doors or windows.The index of the dynamometer moves in such a way as to make a permanentrecord of the pressure exerted. The horizontal or traction dynamometerregisters the other component of pressure."

  He pressed down on the machine. "There was a pressure here ofconsiderably over two tons," he remarked at length, "with a very highhorizontal traction of over four hundred pounds. What I wanted to getat was whether this could have been done by a man, woman, or child, orperhaps by several persons. In this case, it was clearly no mere faketo cover up the opening of the door by a key. It was a genuine attempt.Nor could it have been done by a woman. No, that is the work of a man,a powerful man, too, accustomed to the use of the jimmy."

  I fancied that a shade of satisfaction crossed the otherwise impassiveface of Langhorne. Was it because the Bertillon dynamometer appeared atfirst sight to exonerate Betty Blackwell, at least so far, from anyconnection with the crime? It was difficult to say.

  Important though it was, however, to clear up at the start just whatsort of person was connected with the breaking of the door I could notbut feel that Kennedy had some purpose in deferring and minimizing forthe present what, to me at least, was the greater mystery, the enteringof the safe itself.

  He was still studying and comparing the marks on the door and therecord made on the dynamometer, when the office telephone rang andLanghorne was summoned to answer it. Instead of taking the call in hisown office, he chose to answer it at the switchboard, perhaps becausethat would allow him to keep an eye also on us.

  Whatever his purpose, it likewise enabled us to keep an ear on him, andit was with surprise which both Kennedy and I had great difficulty inconcealing, that we heard him reply, "Hello--yes--oh, Mrs. Ogleby,good-morning. How are you? That's good. So you, too, read the papers.No, I haven't lost anything of importance, thank you. Nothing serious,you know. The papers like to get hold of such things and play them up.I have a couple of reporters here now. Heaven knows what they aredoing, but I can foresee some more unpaid advertising for the firm init. Thank you again for your interest. You haven't forgotten the studiodance I'm giving on the twelfth? No--that's fine. I hope you'll come,even if Martin has another engagement. Fine. Well-good-bye."

  He hung up the receiver with a mingled air of gratification andexasperation, I fancied.

  "Haven't you fellows finished yet?" he asked finally, coming over tous, a little brusquely.

  "Just about," returned Kennedy, who had by this time begun slowly todismember and pack up the dynamometer, determined to take advantage ofevery minute both to observe Langhorne and to fix in his mind thegeneral lay-out of the office.

  "Everybody seems to be interested in me this morning," he observed, forthe moment forgetting the embargo he had imposed on his own words.

  As for myself, I saw at once that others besides ourselves were keenlyinterested in this robbery.

  "There," remarked Kennedy when at last he had finished packing up thedynamometer into two packages. "At least, Mr. Langhorne, you have thesatisfaction of knowing that it was in all probability a man, a strongman, and one experienced in forcing doors who succeeded in enteringyour office during your brief absence last night."

  Langhorne shrugged his shoulders non-committally, but it was evidentthat he was greatly relieved and he could not conceal his interest inwhat Kennedy was doing, even though he had succeeded in conveying theimpression that it was a matter of indifference to him.

  "I suppose you keep a great many of your valuable papers in safetydeposit vaults," ventured Kennedy, finishing up the wrapping of the twopackages, "as well as your personal papers perhaps at home."

  He made the remark in a casual manner, but Langhorne was too keen tofall into the trap.

  "Really," he said with an air of finality, "I must decline to beinterviewed at present. Good-day, gentlemen."

  "A slippery customer," was Craig's comment when we reached the streetoutside the office. "By the way, evidently Mrs. Ogleby is leaving nostone unturned in her effort to locate that Black Book and protectherself."

  I said nothing. Langhorne's manner, self-confident to the point ofbravado, had baffled me. I began to feel that even if he had lost thedetectaphone record, his was the nature to carry out the bluff of stillhaving it, in much the same manner that he would have played the marketon a shoestring or made the most of an unfilled four-card flush in agame of poker.

  Kennedy was far from being discouraged, however. Indeed, it seemed asif he really enjoyed matching his wit against the subtlety of a manlike Langhorne, even more than against one the type of Dorgan andMurtha.

  "I want to see Carton and I don't want to carry these bundles all overthe city," he remarked, changing the subject for the moment, as heturned into a public pay station. "I'll ring him up and have him meetus at the laboratory, if I can."

  A moment later he emerged, excited, perspiring from the closeness ofthe telephone booth.

  "Carton has some news--a letter--that's all he would say," heexclaimed. "He'll meet us at the laboratory."

  We hastily resumed our uptown journey.

  "What do you think it is?" I asked. "About Betty Blackwell?"

  Kennedy shook his head non-committally. "I don't know. But he has someof his county detectives watching Dorgan and Murtha in that Black Bookcase, I know. They are worried. It doesn't look as though they, atleast, had the record--that is, if Langhorne has really lost it."

  I wondered whether Langhorne might not, after all, as Kennedy hadhinted, have concealed it elsewhere. The activity of Dorgan and Murthamight indicate that they knew more about the robbery than appeared yeton the surface. Had they failed in it? Had they been double-crossed bythe man they had chosen for the work, assuming that they knew of andhad planned the "job"?

  The safe-breaking and the way Langhorne took it had served tocomplicate the case even further. While we had before been reasonablysure that Langhorne had the book, now we were sure of nothing.