SHORT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3334, 6 February 1918, Page 58

SHORT STORIES.

COX'S PATENT. By Bernard Cams. (Copyright.) Mr Gaster, manager of the Barstock branch of the Counties Deposit Bank, sat in his official snuggery one dusk November evening. It was past four o'clock and closing time, the last of the staff had departed, and the bank porter was in the act of securing the doors, when fch* sound of hurried voices accosting the man became audible to the manager in his den. .Probably some belated customer appealing uselessly to the Williams. Mr Gaster sat tight, impatiently, awaiting the intruder's withdrawal. _ He was a bachelor, he lived on the premises, and a cosy fire and an attractive novel before dinner appealed to him irresistibly from the upper story. In person he was small, with a somewhat droll face, thin string hair, and red eyebrows that came close together. They met now in a rather petulant frown. " Do for goodness' sake clear out," he muttered to himself. But the colloquy continued, and, driven beyond patience, the manager rose, opened his door, and looked out. There were two men in altercation with the porter at the half-closed entrance. Beyond, in the street, throbbed the lungs and shook the lights of a motor car. " What is it, Williams?" called the manager. "They say they must see you, sir," answered the porter, half turning. " I tell them it : s past closing time and agen the rules." " Who are they?" " One's a police officer, sir." y Mr Gaster stepped to the 'door. "Well?" he said. "Can we" see you private, sir?" protested one of the strangers—he in uniform. " We don't want to raisß a edandal." " Scandal about what?" " Marstbn's the name, sir. Your head ' cashier, isn't he?" "Well; he's away on a holiday." " He is," said the' stranger emphatically; "on a holiday—a rare one." "Come into my room, will you. Williams wait there and keep the door on the "latch for a little. _ , Mr Gaster led the way to his sanctum, and the visitors followed. Motioning them in, he closed -the door, and turned to regard the two. The one who had spoken stood sauare and upright, patently the expressionless official, spotless, and self-possessed—by his trim silvered cap and beltless jacket an inspector ; the other, a tall, bent, rather gasping weed of a man, in a long tight-waisted brown coat, was, as Mr Gaster learnt, a plain-clothes detective. / " Who are you ?" demanded the manager " Inspector Jar'vis, sir, of the Southsea police, / This, is P.C. Billikirf? We've got your gentleman under observation at*Southsea." "Mr Marston?" " Mr Marston." " He's stopping there, is. he? And why have you got him under obse nation, Inspector?" "For suspicions of our own sir, aggravated by a chance discovery." " What's that? I understand nothing of your implication at present." " Why, sir, when you see a young bank gentleman going it on his holiday, putting up at the best hotel in a place, flinging his money about in every direction, and spending seemingly at the rate of five thousand a year, you begin nat'rally to ask yourself questions. That's what the manager of the Portland did, and the failure of a satisfactory answer worried him. He came to me, bringing with him a piece of evidence that one of the ru:ids had found in the gentleman's vty>n\ tucked among his collars." " Wi*at was thns?" Th* fenector produced from his breast a folded cawas bag, which, on examination, was eeen to be imprinted with the bank jna''k and number. " Did_ that or did that not come from here*'' lie -lemanded. "It looks like it," said the manager. There was a note of keen distress in his voice, apparent for the first time. " You recognise it for the bank's property?" "Yes." " It is Bitch a bag M is used io contain rnonov—gold?" " Yes." " Had Mr M/u-sto?-. tree Jiocess to the etrongroom?" "I see what you mean.. For all practical piirposos—yes." "Ah!" The Inspector drew himself up from the hips, like a man relieved. " It give us the clue, that did. \'i thought I'd run over and make sure. Now, sir, the vest lies with you. Take my word for it, where the place of that ought to be you'll find a hole—possibly a row of holes." "'lt's easily proved. You had better come with me and look." He turned stiffly, obviously in part to command the emotion with which this Ugly relevation of a crime had overcome | him. " I hope you are mistaken, Inspector," he said a*little hoarsely. "It is a terrible charge—a terrible charge. And I had such complete faith in the man." He took some keys from a safe in the wall, and silently motioned the two men to follow him. As thev obeyed the inspector just glanced at t!ie detective, and tho detective at the inspector. The manager, leaving his room by the back, led the way across a little lobby to a flight of iron stairs, which descended thence to the basement. At the bottom he unlocked a massive iron door, which, »eing opened, admitted them into a little

close compartment, a mere four-square cell hewed out of fire-proof cement, having tho chilled steel door of the strongroom sunk in its further side. Switching on the electric light, he then closed and secured the first door, before proceeding to unlock and swing open the second, when the great maw of the strongroom yawned upon the visitors like the mouth of some cold subterranean monster. Mr Gaster, lea/ving the key in the lock, stepped in. \ It was a wonderful place, eloquent of a profound and impregnable security; solitude fast-locked in a' eternal mausoleum; sunk out of human .each like a treasure barque foundered in fathomless waters, and hugging its massed riches in a silence that no voice of man, no throb of life's pulses could penetrate. There were stacks of strong-boxes here, arranged on grilles, each box classified and docketed, the property, on deposit, of some customer of M;he bank. There were safes within the safe, and. beyond all, a night of impenetrable darkness. The manager, inserting a key into a hole in the wall, disclosed a recess, loaded shelf above shelf with canvas bags such as that produced by the inspector; only these bulged, and were fat with inviolate opulence. He ran his eye along the orderly rows. "No sign of) despoliation here," he said, and, with the word,, felt himself caught from behind in a staggering grip. He recognised the truth on the instant, and, after the shock, did not even struggle. " Right you are," said the voice of the weedy stranger, speaking, and for the first time, into his ear. "I've got him, Jemmy, tight as a trivet. Bale out the swag while I hold on."

The pseudo-inspector needed no urging. He cleared the safe of its treasure, Dag by bag, throwing each as he removed it upon the floor of the cemented cell. How many can we carry, Tim?" said he. " We've got to guy the porter, mind you." "Trust to my blessed coat-shirts. I've got the strength of a dozen porters in me k " Mr Gaster, "resigned to his hopeless position, fully endorsed the statement. The man's strength, for all his slack appearance, struck him as infernal. He felt" as limp as a mouse in a cat's jaws. "Nip his weasand there if he squeals," said Jemmy. "I'm not going to squeal," said the manager. "Nobody could hear me if I screamed my lungs hoarse. What are you going to do to me?" " No harm if you keep quiet," said Jemmy. "How about the flimsies, Tim?" "Leave.'em alone; I'm all for real property, and we've got our bellyful. Now, mister, by your leave?" The bags were all out, scattered upon the cell-floor. Gaster, reading a sudden determined purpose in the eyes turned upon him, struggled in the deadly grasp. "Good heavens!" he cried. "You are never going to do such a diabolical thing?" "Aren't we, though!" said the weedy man. " Where's the difficulty. The porter won't be long in smelling a rat; and there's plenty cubin feet, of air for you to draw on in the meantime. Come, you little devil!" Actually they were going to shut and lock him into the strongroom. The cruelty of the deed roused the manager to frenzy. He fought and maddened in the merciless grip. It was all of no avail. In a moment he was thrust in and the key turned upon him. " Phew!" said Tim, giving a little dry whistle. "What a spitfire!" He looked gloatingly upon the heaped bags, and began to unfasten his coat.' It was accommodated within the skirts with a number of ingeniously-contrived pockets, so calculated and placed as to give little hint of the weighty secrets they might contain. "Now for the loading, Jemmy." It took the two a considerable time to dispose to their satisfaction as much of the swag as they could safely carry; but at length the task was completed. "Now, look you, lad," said the uniformed criminal. " You go first, and I will follow, "Dretending, as I come, to speak back to the gentleman. Savvy?" " Go on, Jemmy. I wasn't pupped yesterday." *' Where's the keys, then. Oh, in the lock!" He took the little bunch from the strongroom door and stepped acroes to the "door of the cell, whose wards he manipulated for some time without result. "What," he said, "is the matter with the thing?" " Oh, here! let me try," said the other impatiently. " It needs a little coaxing, that's all." But he, too, had to desist after some minutes of barren prodding and twisting. "There some trick in the blamed thing," he said. "I've tried overv blessed key on the bunch, and——" "We shaii have to ask him." "Ask—Hullo, Jemmy, I've got it!" " Got it open?" "No. There must be a second bunch; that's it, and he's taken it in there with him." He came erect. The two rogues stood grinning at one another. "To think," said Jemmy, " of the cussed little sharp hoping to gammon us like that!" " We must have the things off him." '' No question of it. Unlock the strongroom again, my boy." Tho tall man took a hurried step, drove in tho key, swung open the. door. "Here, you, Gaster!" he called into the dentlis. "Come out of that. We want you." No answer whatever was vouchsafed. " He's skulking," said Jemmy. " Or— God o' mercy, ho can't have died o' fright!" There was an electric switch just within the cavern. He hastily snipped it on, and the gloom sprang into light. Together they plunged in. Not a sign, not a sound of the captive anywhero. He had vanished utterly. Suddenly Tim uttered a stifled roar. " Here's another door in the wall!" It was placed further in at right angles to the first—placed handy for any such

emergency as this. They had boxed up the manager, with the means to his own escape lying ready in his pocket. And he had got them securely trapped between two impassable exits. " Goosed us, by thunder!" whispered Tim. They staged at each other in blank dismay. Here, with all the treasures of the bank opened to their choice, they were worse than condemned paupers. They could only stand and curse one another's inanity, waiting for the end. It came soon enough. As, in a last frantic effort to falsify their own convictions, they were striving feverishly once more to force the outer lock, the door was swept open upon them, and there on the stairs thronged quite a posse of constables. The manager was waiting for his prisoners in the office above, when they were brought into him handcuffed. He rose with a chuckle and a bow. "Cox's patent, gentlemen," he said: "It was most considerate of you to have left me in possession of the second bunch of keys. Really, I calculated on that, you know, when I decided to lure you into the trap. Your story was extremely convincing, your possession of the canvas bag a real surprise, your scheme altogether very elaborately and cleverly worked out —only, unfortunatelv for its success, Mr Marston himself returned to his work this morning—from Broadstairs, and we happened to have tallied together our stock of gold. Cox's patent, gentlemen. Don't 1 ?t. It's full of surprises. You will find your, chauffeur outside waiting to take you—and himself—to the police station."