LITMIR.BIZ

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Brice asked dryly. “Of what, sir? Any ideas?”

      “If my name were Merlin I might have. As it is, I’m completely stumped....”

      Now entirely alone in the strong vault, the two men continued to stare unbelievingly at its blank, metal-lined expanse. Then Sergeant Brice spoke again.

      “I’ve come up against a few things in my time, sir, but none of them was like this. There isn’t the vaguest hint of a clue, and usually there’s at least something.”

      He was on the point of speaking again when the fingerprint men and photographer arrived. They came into the strongroom with something of an air of wonder.

      “Morning, boys.” Hargraves gave a brief nod. “And what’s the matter with you? Never seen the inside of a strongroom before?”

      “It’s not that,” the photographer said, setting up his reflex. “We’ve heard the story of the vanish­ing gold and we’re just beginning to wonder if somebody didn’t dream the whole thing.”

      “Nobody dreamed anything,” Hargraves said grimly. “It’s all hard, relentless fact. And I’ve more than a sneaking suspicion that we’re going to be up against it. However—do your stuff.”

      For a long time there was silence as powder and insufflator came into operation. Hargraves stood in deep thought during the process, juggling the problem in his mind.

      When eventually the fingerprint man had finished Hargraves looked at him questioningly.

      “Well? Any joy?”

      “Plenty of fingerprints, chief inspector, but from the look of ’em I’d say they’re the sort of prints you’d expect to find from members of the staff. They’re in the same place—a complete jumble of them—and there isn’t a clear impression in the lot of ’em.”

      “Nothing on the walls?”

      “Not a thing.”

      “Where are these prints you mention?”

      “Around the door edges and on the lock, the sort of prints you would inevitably get by unlock­ing the door and then grabbing hold of it.”

      “Mmm—which doesn’t tell us much. Even if there were clear prints, the law doesn’t entitle me to check the bank staff’s prints for comparison.”

      Hargraves looked at the photographer. “Got your stuff, Terry?”

      “Usual views,” Terry replied phlegmatically. “A strongroom has no glamour angles anyhow.”

      “Okay. Leave the prints in my office when they’re done.”

      The photographer and fingerprint man both nodded and then went on their way. Hargraves sighed and scratched the back of his neck.

      “Frankly, sir,” Sergeant Brice said, “I just don’t know where to start. Usually there’s always some­thing—”

      “So you said before,” Hargraves remarked testily. “Well, there’s nothing more we can do here,” he decided. “We’d best get back to the office and decide our plan of campaign from there.”

      As they went up the basement steps, Hargraves added:

      “You had better pick up that night watchman’s address from Mac­kinley, and at the same time have somebody check on Burton’s alibi.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      At three o’clock that same afternoon Henry Ander­son, the night watchman at Mackinley’s Bank, found himself closeted with Chief Inspector Hargraves and the inevitable Sergeant Brice.

      Anderson was not looking immensely co-operative, either. He had been awakened from sleep in order to keep the appointment.

      “This won’t keep you long, Mr. Anderson,” Hargraves apologized, smiling. “It has to be done, though. I presume the sergeant has told you what has happened at the bank?”

      “Yes, I know.” Anderson moistened his lips and peered from his myopic gray eyes. “But you’re wasting your time picking on me. I did no thievin’. I’m an honest man.”

      “Nobody doubts that for a moment, Mr. Ander­son—but you fill a rather significant role in that you were the only person on hand at the approxi­mate time the gold was stolen.”

      “You know the time, then?”

      “I’m afraid not, but we know it happened dur­ing the night when you were on duty.”

      “How can you be sure of that?” The old man’s jaw began to project argumentatively.

      “Because it’s obvious,” Hargraves replied, quite controlled.

      “I say it isn’t. That gold, so I’m told, was put in the strongroom toward four in the afternoon. It was found to have gone when Mr. Burton opened up this morning. I don’t come on duty till seven. There’s three hours when something could have happened—three hours in which I was not there. Why pick on me?”

      Hargraves cleared his throat. “I agree that there were three hours in which something could have occurred, but I am quite satisfied that nothing did. The time when that gold was stolen was obviously when vigilance was at its slackest—during the night, when the normal bank staff were absent. Didn’t you, Mr. Anderson, hear anything during that time?”

      “Not a thing.”

      “How far were you from the strongroom?”

      “Quite a little distance. The strongroom is in the basement, as you know, and my small office where I have my chow and a sit-down is on the ground floor. Naturally, I always keep my office door open when I’m in there, and from it I have a clear view of the basement steps.”

      “And nobody went down them?”

      “No—or came up, either. I can swear to that. As I keep on telling you: there wasn’t a sound all night.”

      “What,” Hargraves asked, “is your office like?”

      “Ain’t much. There’s a chair and a table, on which are a telephone and a set of alarm buttons in case anything happens—which last night it didn’t. Oh, and a small radio. I spend a lot of time listening to it—turned down low, of course. I asked Mr. Mackinley if I could,” he added, as Hargraves raised an eyebrow in mild reproof.

      “Would it be loud enough to drown any slight sounds somewhere in the building?”

      Anderson thought for a moment, then he sighed. “Come to that, I suppose it would. But I’d hear anything loud,” he went on earnestly. “And I main­tain that nobody could’ve removed that much gold without making a sound of some kind.”

      “Quite true, but the fact that your attention was distracted by the radio is interesting because—”

      “Wait a minute!” Anderson exclaimed suddenly, a faraway look in his eyes. “I’ve just thought of something. I didn’t have the radio on last night after ten o’clock because of interference. It was so bad it drowned the program.”

      Hargraves frowned slightly. “Drowned the pro­gram? Around ten o’clock? What program was it?”

      “Singing festival from the Albert Hall. National program on the BBC.”

      “Hmmm. I listened to that for a time as well, but I didn’t notice any interference. Could have been a local trouble, of course.”

      “Whatever it was it finished things for me. I had to switch the radio off.”

      Hargraves nodded rather tiredly. “All right, Mr. Anderson. Thanks for coming along. Just routine, you understand.”

      Anderson grunted something, picked up his battered hat, and then departed.

      Hargraves sat in silence, lost in moody speculations.

      “Not much gravy in that, sir,”

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