第11章 The Scientific Cracksman(3)

Craig asked the men if that usually happened.They were quite sure that the curve as a rule went gradually down until twelve o'clock, when the power was shut off.But they did not see anything remarkable in it."Oh, I suppose some of the big houses had guests," volunteered the foreman, "and just to show off the place perhaps they turned on all the lights.I don't know, sir, what it was, but it couldn't have been a heavy drain, or we would have noticed it at the time, and the lights would all have been dim.""Well," said Craig, "just watch and see if it occurs again to-night about the same time.""All right, sir."

"And when you close down the plant for the night, will you bring the record card up to Fletcherwood?" asked Craig, slipping a bill into the pocket of the foreman's shirt.

"I will, and thank you, sir."

It was nearly half-past eleven when Craig had got his apparatus set up in the library at Fletcherwood.Then he unscrewed all the bulbs from the chandelier in the library and attached in their places connections with the usual green silk-covered flexible wire rope.These were then joined up to a little instrument which to me looked like a drill.Next he muffed the drill with a wad of felt and applied it to the safe door.

I could hear the dull tat-tat of the drill.Going into the bedroom and closing the door, I found that it was still audible to me, but an old man, inclined to deafness and asleep, would scarcely have been awakened by it.In about ten minutes Craig displayed a neat little hole in the safe door opposite the one made by the cracksman in the combination.

"I'm glad you're honest," I said, "or else we might be afraid of you--perhaps even make you prove an alibi for last night's job!"He ignored my bantering and said in a tone such as he might have used before a class of students in the gentle art of scientific safe-cracking: "Now if the power company's curve is just the same to-night as last night, that will show how the thing was done.Iwanted to be sure of it, so I thought I'd try this apparatus which I smuggled in from Paris last year.I believe the old man happened to be wakeful and heard it."Then he pried off the door of the interior compartment which had been jimmied open."Perhaps we may learn something by looking at this door and studying the marks left by the jimmy, by means of this new instrument of mine," he said.

On the library table he fastened an arrangement with two upright posts supporting a dial which he called a "dynamometer." The uprights were braced in the back, and the whole thing reminded me of a miniature guillotine.

"This is my mechanical detective," said Craig proudly."It was devised by Bertillon himself, and he personally gave me permission to copy his own machine.You see, it is devised to measure pressure.Now let's take an ordinary jimmy and see just how much pressure it takes to duplicate those marks on this door."Craig laid the piece of steel on the dynamometer in the position it had occupied in the safe, and braced it tightly.Then he took a jimmy and pressed on it with all his strength.The steel door was connected with the indicator, and the needle spun around until it indicated a pressure such as only a strong man could have exerted.Comparing the marks made in the steel in the experiment and by the safe-cracker, it was evident that no such pressure had been necessary.Apparently the lock on the door was only a trifling affair, and the steel itself was not very, tough.

The safe-makers had relied on the first line of defence to repel attack.

Craig tried again and again, each time using less force.At last he got a mark just about similar to the original marks on the steel.

"Well, well, what do you think of that?" he exclaimed reflectively."A child could have done that part of the job."Just then the lights went off for the night.Craig lighted the oil-lamp, and sat in silence until the electric light plant foreman appeared with; the card-record, which showed a curve practically identical with that of the night before.

A few moments later Professor Fletcher's machine came up the driveway, and he joined us with a worried and preoccupied look on his face that he could not conceal."She's terribly broken up by the suddenness of it all," he murmured as he sank into an armchair."The shock has been too much for her.In fact, I hadn't the heart to tell her anything about the robbery, poor girl."Then in a moment he asked, "Any more clues yet, Kennedy?""Well, nothing of first importance.I have only been trying to reconstruct the story of the robbery so that I can reason out a motive and a few details; then when the real clues come along we won't have so much ground to cover.The cracksman was certainly clever.He used an electric drill to break the combination and ran it by the electric light current.""Whew!" exclaimed the professor, "is that so? He must have been above the average.That's interesting.""By the way, Fletcher," said Kennedy, "I wish you would introduce me to your fiancee tomorrow.I would like to know her.""Gladly," Fletcher replied, "only you must be careful what you talk about.Remember, the death of uncle has been quite a shock to her --he was her only relative besides myself.""I will," promised Kennedy, "and by the way, she may think it strange that I'm out here at a time like this.Perhaps you had better tell her I'm a nerve specialist or something of that sort --anything not to connect me with the robbery, which you say you haven't told her about."The next morning found Kennedy out bright and early, for he had not had a very good chance to do anything during the night except reconstruct the details.He was now down by the back gate with his camera, where I found him turning it end-down and photographing the road.Together we made a thorough search of the woods and the road about the gate, but could discover absolutely nothing.