Hugo by Arnold Bennett (all ebook reader txt) 📖

queried, still listening.

'Then that vault can't be opened. But never you fear, Mr. Shawn. I'll have him here in three minutes. It's funny as he should have left anybody in there by accident--and Mr. Hugo of all people in this blessed world....'

The patrol's accents died away as he passed down the main corridor.

Within the next half-hour Simon, who had the rare virtue of being honest with himself, was freely admitting, in the privacy of his own mind, that the crisis had got beyond his power to grapple with it, and he had begun to fear complications more dreadful than he dared to put into words. For the patrol had failed to find Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown, head guardian of the Safe Deposit, had disappeared. Nor was this all. A renter had come to take his belongings from a safe in the third side-passage on the left, and the sub-guardian imprisoned in that passage could not open the grille between it and the main corridor. He had his key, but the key would not turn in the glittering lock. The renter, too impatient to wait, had departed very angrily at this excess of safety. Then it was gradually discovered that every sub-guardian in every side-passage was similarly imprisoned. Not a key in the entire place would turn. The patrol rushed to the main door. The three keys had clearly been turned while the door was opened, and the shot bolts prevented the door from closing. This explained why the door was ajar, but it did not explain the absence of the doorkeeper, who had apparently followed in the footsteps of his chief, Mr. Brown.

'The time-lock! Someone must have set it!' cried the patrol to Shawn, and the two hastened to the other end of the main corridor, where the dial of the machine glistened under an electric lamp.

And all the sub-guardians stirred and grumbled in their beautiful bright cages like wrathful lions. No such scene had ever been known in that Safe Deposit or any other safe deposit before.

The patrol was right. The dial of the time-lock showed that it had been set against every lock, great and small, in the Safe Deposit, until nine a.m. the next day.

'It's all up!' the patrol said solemnly.

'Do you mean to say nothing can be done to open that vault till nine to-morrow?' Simon demanded in despair.

'Nothing. The blooming Czar couldn't manage it with all his Cossacks! No, nor Bobs either! This is a Safe Deposit, this is, and if Mr. Hugo is in that vault, it's Mr. Hugo as knows it's a Safe Deposit by now.'

A brief silence ensued, and then Simon said:

'We must telephone to the police. There's a telephone in the waiting-room, isn't there?'

The patrol admitted that there was, but his manner hinted a low opinion of the utility of the police. He stood mute while Simon Shawn told the telephone receiver what had occurred in the bowels of the earth beneath Hugo's.

'Wait a minute,' said the telephone, and then, after a pause: 'Are you there? I'm Inspector Winter.'

'That's him as has charge of all the strong-room cases,' the patrol interjected to Simon.

'I've got Mr. Jack Galpin here, as it happens,' said the telephone.

'Mr. Jack Galpin?' Simon questioned.

'He's just done eighteen months for an attempt in Lombard Street,' the patrol explained. 'I've heard of him.'

'I'll come down with him immediately in a cab,' said the telephone.

When Simon returned to the impregnable door of Vault 39 he listened in vain for a sound. Then he knocked with his pen-knife on the polished steel, and presently there was an answering signal from within--a series of scarcely perceptible irregular taps. It struck him that the irregularity of the taps formed a rhythm, and after a few seconds he recognised the rhythm of the Intermezzo from 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' which he had played for Hugo that very morning.

It was at this moment that the messenger-boy attached to the department came whistling into the steel corridors, and delivered to the patrol a small white packet, which, he said, Mr. Brown had handed to him with instructions to hand it to the patrol. He had seen Mr. Brown in a cab outside the building, and Mr. Brown had the appearance of being very ill.

The packet contained the second key of Vault 39.

'But this'll be no use till to-morrow,' was the patrol's comment, 'and by then--'


CHAPTER XIII


MR. GALPIN

When the patrol and Simon between them had explained the mysterious and fatal situation to Mr. Jack Galpin, Mr. Jack Galpin leaned against one of the marble tables in the waiting-room, and roared with laughter.

'Well,' observed Mr. Galpin, 'he didn't have his Safe Deposit built for nothing, anyhow!'

And he laughed again.

'But he's slowly dying in there!' said Simon.

'Yes, I know,' said Mr. Galpin. 'That's what makes it such a good joke.'

'I don't see it, sir,' Simon remarked.

'Simply because your sense of humour is a bit off. What are you?'

'I am Mr. Hugo's man.'

'My respects.'

Mr. Galpin had arrived with Inspector Winter, and Inspector Winter had introduced him as knowing more about safes than any other man in England, or perhaps in Europe. After the introduction, Inspector Winter, being pressed for time, had departed. Mr. Galpin was aged about forty, and looked like an extremely successful commercial traveller. No one would have suspected that he had recently done eighteen months anywhere but in a first-class hotel; even his thin hands were white, and if his hair was a little short--well, the hair of very many respectable persons is often a little short. It appeared that he was under obligations to Inspector Winter, and anxious to oblige. The relations between distinguished law-breakers and distinguished detectives are frequently such as can only exist between artists who esteem each other. For the rest, Mr. Galpin had brought a brown bag.

'You see, the time-lock is placed so that--' began the patrol.

'Shut up!' said Mr. Galpin curtly. 'I know all that. I've got scale-plans of every Safe Deposit in London, and I decided long since that this one was too good to try. Of course, with the aid of the entire staff things might be a bit easier, but not much--not much!' he repeated scornfully. 'If I can manage a job at all, I can usually manage it alone, and in spite of the entire staff.'

'I suppose you couldn't burn the door of the vault with oxy-hydrogen?' Simon suggested.

'Yes, I could,' said Mr. Galpin; 'and with the brand of steel used here I should get through about this time to-morrow. I could blow the bally vault up with gun-cotton in something under two seconds, but no doubt your Mr. Hugo would go up with it, and then the Yard would be angry. No!'

He hummed an air, and strolled out into the main corridor to stare at the curious dial of the time-lock.

'Why not blow up the clock of the time-lock?' ventured the patrol.

'Look here!' said Mr. Galpin, '_you_ ought to know better than that, even if this other gent doesn't. Any violence to the clock automatically jams all the connecting levers. Stop the clock, and it's all up. Nothing but unbuilding the whole place would free the locks after that. And it would be a mighty smart firm that could unbuild this place inside a fortnight. No!' he said again. 'No gammon with the clock--unless we could make it go quicker.'

'Then there's nothing,' Simon stammered.

Mr. Galpin gazed at the young man.

'Assuming I do the job, what's the job worth?' he asked.

'It's worth anything.'

'Is it worth a hundred pounds?'

'Yes.'

'Cash?'

'Yes, I promise it. I will hand you my savings-bank book if you like.'

'I only ask because I have a sort of a notion about that clock. It's a pendulum clock, and you know how fast a clock ticks when you take the pendulum away, and the escapement can run free. It does an hour in about three minutes. Now, if I could get the pendulum out without alarming the clock ... it would be nine to-morrow morning in no time. See?'

'I see that,' said the patrol. 'I see that. But what I don't see--'

'Never mind what you don't see,' Mr. Jack Galpin murmured. 'Bring me my bag out of there. I may tell you,' he went on to Simon, 'that I thought of this scheme months ago, just as a pleasant sort of a fancy, but quite practical. It's a queer world, isn't it?'

'Here's your bag,' said the patrol.

'Now you two can just go into the waiting-room, and wait till I call you. Understand? And tell all these wild beasts round here to hold their tongues and sit tight. I haven't got to be disturbed in a job like this.... And it's a hundred pounds if I do it, mister, no more and no less, eh?'

Within exactly twenty-five minutes Mr. Galpin entered the waiting-room.

'See that?' he said, holding up a pendulum. 'That's _it_. You can come and look now. But I don't invite the public to see my own private melting process. Not me!'

He had burnt two holes through the half-inch plate of Bessemer steel in which the clock was enclosed, and by means of two pairs of tweezers (which must certainly have been imitated from the armoury of a dentist) he had detached the pendulum without stopping the clock. The hands of the clock could be plainly seen to move, and its ticking was furiously rapid.

Mr. Galpin made a calculation on his dazzling cuff.

'In three-quarters of an hour the clock will have run out,' he informed his audience, 'and you will be able to open any locks that you've got keys for. I shall call to-morrow morning, young man, for the swag. And don't you forget that there's only one Jack Galpin in the world. My address is 205, the Waterloo Road.'

He left, with his bag.

Simon rushed to Vault 39 to encourage the captive by continual knocking.

Then the messenger-boy, who had been despatched to obtain food for the prisoners behind the various grilles, came back with the desired food, and with a copy of the _Evening Herald_. The back page of the _Herald_ bore Hugo's immense advertisement. The front page was also chiefly devoted to Hugo. It displayed headings such as: 'Shocking Scenes at a Sloane Street Sale,' 'Women Injured,' 'Customers Complain of Wholesale Swindling,' 'Scandalous Mismanagement,' 'The Hugo Safe Deposit Suddenly Closed,' 'Reported Disappearance of Mr. Hugo,' 'Is He a Lunatic?'

And when the three-quarters of an hour had expired Simon and the patrol unlocked the massive portal of Vault 39, and swung it open, fearful of what they might see within. And Hugo, pale and feeble, but alive, staggered heavily forward, and put a hand on Simon's shoulder.

'Let us get away from this,' he whispered, as if in profound mental agony.

Ignoring everything, he passed out of the impregnable Safe Deposit, with its flashing steel walls, on Simon's obedient arm.


CHAPTER XIV


TEA

Arrived on the ground-floor, Simon managed to avoid the busy parts of the establishment, but he happened to choose a way to Hugo's private lift which led past the service-door of the Hugo Grand Central Restaurant. And Hugo, although apparently in a sort of torpor, noticed it.

'Tea!' he ejaculated. 'If I could have some at once!'