The Bank Vault Mystery by Louis F. Booth

Author:Louis F. Booth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Phocion Publishing
Published: 2019-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

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.

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