ERNEST BRAMAH Ultimate Collection: 20+ Novels & Short Stories in One Volume. Bramah Ernest

more remarkable series might be brought about by design?”

      “Our tawny friend?”

      “Possibly. Only he was not really tawny.” Mr Carlyle’s easy attitude suddenly stiffened into rigid attention. “He wore a false moustache.”

      “He wore a false moustache!” repeated the amazed gentleman. “And you cannot see! No, really, Max, this is beyond the limit!”

      “If only you would not trust your dear, blundering old eyes so implicitly you would get nearer that limit yourself,” retorted Carrados. “The man carried a five-yard aura of spirit gum, emphasized by a warm, perspiring skin. That inevitably suggested one thing. I looked for further evidence of making-up and found it—these preparations all smell. The hair you described was characteristically that of a wig—worn long to hide the joining and made wavy to minimize the length. All these things are trifles. As yet we have not gone beyond the initial stage of suspicion. I will tell you another trifle. When this man retired to a compartment with his deed-box, he never even opened it. Possibly it contains a brick and a newspaper. He is only watching.”

      “Watching the bookmaker.”

      “True, but it may go far wider than that. Everything points to a plot of careful elaboration. Still, if you are satisfied——”

      “I am quite satisfied,” replied Mr Carlyle gallantly. “I regard ‘The Safe’ almost as a national institution, and as such I have an implicit faith in its precautions against every kind of force or fraud.” So far Mr Carlyle’s attitude had been suggestive of a rock, but at this point he took out his watch, hummed a little to pass the time, consulted his watch again, and continued: “I am afraid that there were one or two papers which I overlooked. It would perhaps save me coming again to-morrow if I went back now——”

      “Quite so,” acquiesced Carrados, with perfect gravity. “I will wait for you.”

      For twenty minutes he sat there, drinking an occasional tiny cup of boiled coffee and to all appearance placidly enjoying the quaint atmosphere which Mr Mehmed had contrived to transplant from the shore of the Persian Gulf.

      At the end of that period Carlyle returned, politely effusive about the time he had kept his friend waiting but otherwise bland and unassailable. Anyone with eyes might have noticed that he carried a parcel of about the same size and dimensions as the deed-box that fitted his safe.

      The next day Carrados presented himself at the safe-deposit as an intending renter. The manager showed him over the vaults and strong-rooms, explaining the various precautions taken to render the guile or force of man impotent: the strength of the chilled-steel walls, the casing of electricity-resisting concrete, the stupendous isolation of the whole inner fabric on metal pillars so that the watchman, while inside the building, could walk above, below, and all round the outer walls of what was really—although it bore no actual relationship to the advertising device of the front—a monstrous safe; and, finally, the arrangement which would enable the basement to be flooded with steam within three minutes of an alarm. These details were public property. “The Safe” was a showplace and its directors held that no harm could come of displaying a strong hand.

      Accompanied by the observant eyes of Parkinson, Carrados gave an adventurous but not a hopeful attention to these particulars. Submitting the problem of the tawny man to his own ingenuity, he was constantly putting before himself the question: How shall I set about robbing this place? and he had already dismissed force as impracticable. Nor, when it came to the consideration of fraud, did the simple but effective safeguards which Mr Carlyle had specified seem to offer any loophole.

      “As I am blind I may as well sign in the book,” he suggested, when the manager passed to him a gummed slip for the purpose. The precaution against one acquiring particulars of another client might well be deemed superfluous in his case.

      But the manager did not fall into the trap.

      “It is our invariable rule in all cases, sir,” he replied courteously. “What word will you take?” Parkinson, it may be said, had been left in the hall.

      “Suppose I happen to forget it? How do we proceed?”

      “In that case I am afraid that I might have to trouble you to establish your identity,” the manager explained. “It rarely happens.”

      “Then we will say ‘Conspiracy.’”

      The word was written down and the book closed.

      “Here is your key, sir. If you will allow me—your key- ring——”

      A week went by and Carrados was no nearer the absolute solution of the problem he had set himself. He had, indeed, evolved several ways by which the contents of the safes might be reached, some simple and desperate, hanging on the razor-edge of chance to fall this way or that; others more elaborate, safer on the whole, but more liable to break down at some point of their ingenious intricacy. And setting aside complicity on the part of the manager—a condition that Carrados had satisfied himself did not exist—they all depended on a relaxation of the forms by which security was assured. Carrados continued to have several occasions to visit the safe during the week, and he “watched” with a quiet persistence that was deadly in its scope. But from beginning to end there was no indication of slackness in the business-like methods of the place; nor during any of his visits did the “tawny man” appear in that or any other disguise. Another week passed; Mr Carlyle was becoming inexpressibly waggish, and Carrados himself, although he did not abate a jot of his conviction, was compelled to bend to the realities of the situation. The manager, with the obstinacy of a conscientious man who had become obsessed with the pervading note of security, excused himself from discussing abstract methods of fraud. Carrados was not in a position to formulate a detailed charge; he withdrew from active investigation, content to await his time.

      It came, to be precise, on a certain Friday morning, seventeen days after his first visit to “The Safe.” Returning late on the Thursday night, he was informed that a man giving the name of Draycott had called to see him. Apparently the matter had been of some importance to the visitor for he had returned three hours later on the chance of finding Mr Carrados in. Disappointed in this, he had left a note. Carrados cut open the envelope and ran a finger along the following words:—

      “Dear Sir,—I have to-day consulted Mr Louis Carlyle, who thinks that you would like to see me. I will call again in the morning, say at nine o’clock. If this is too soon or otherwise inconvenient I entreat you to leave a message fixing as early an hour as possible.

      Yours faithfully, Herbert Draycott.”

      “P.S.—I should add that I am the renter of a safe at the Lucas Street depository. H.D.”

      A description of Mr Draycott made it clear that he was not the West-End bookmaker. The caller, the servant explained, was a thin, wiry, keen-faced man. Carrados felt agreeably interested in this development, which seemed to justify his suspicion of a plot.

      At five minutes to nine the next morning Mr Draycott again presented himself.

      “Very good of you to see me so soon, sir,” he apologized, on Carrados at once receiving him. “I don’t know much of English ways—I’m an Australian—and I was afraid it might be too early.”

      “You could have made it a couple of hours earlier as far as I am concerned,” replied Carrados. “Or you either for that matter, I imagine,” he added, “for I don’t think that you slept much last night.”

      “I didn’t sleep at all last night,” corrected Mr Draycott. “But it’s strange that you should have seen that. I understood from Mr Carlyle that you—excuse me if I am mistaken, sir—but I understood that you were blind.”

      Carrados laughed his admission lightly.

      “Oh yes,” he said. “But never mind that. What is the trouble?”

      “I’m afraid it means more than just trouble for me, Mr Carrados.” The man had steady, half-closed eyes, with the suggestion of