Amazing Stories, Vol. 3, No. 2 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 After introducing himself, Dern presented his com- panion, who turned out to be Timothy Clancy, one of Dern’s most experienced lieutenants. Dern, a polished gentleman of forty-five, dressed in faultless taste, did not look at all like the conventional detective of fiction and the movies. Clancy came much closer to the commonly accepted idea of “Stealthy Steve, the Six-Eyed Sleuth.” He wore a derby hat tilted over one eye, and was constantly chewing on a long, black cigar. During the subsequent weeks that I associated with Clancy, I rarely saw him without his hat on and a cigar in his mouth, yet never once did I catch him with his stogie lighted. He was one of those “dry smokers” who chew an unlighted cigar until it looks as if it had been laundered in the family washing ma- chine and run through the wringer. When it became too macerated to hold comfortably in his mouth, he would throw it away and start mangling a fresh one. I must confess that I got quite a turn when I learned the identity of my visitors. Not that I had anything on my conscience, but I have heard so much about inno- cent persons being “framed” or otherwise caught in a net of circumstantial evidence, that I couldn't help won- dering just what crime I was suspected of having committed. Instead of setting me at ease, the opening words of the great detective only served to accentuate my anxiety. “T suppose you know all about the big safe deposit robberies?” Dern began. Ji an attempt to cover my nervousness with badinage, T answered, “I’m like Will Rogers—all I know about crime is what I read in the papers. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been interested enough in these rob- beries you speak of to read more than the headlines.” “Tn that case I'd better give you some of the details. You'll need to know them in order to get what we're driving at. For instance, it may interest you to learn that the total value of property which we know has been stolen from safe deposit vaults during the past three weeks—probably by one person—amounts to over a billion dollars,” “A billion dollars stolen by one individual in three weeks!’ I exclaimed. _ “Why, that’s inconceivable!” “Sure sounds fishy, I have to admit. But neverthe- less it’s true. And for all we know the amounts we have been able to check wp may be only a small frac- tion of the sums that have been taken without the owners knowing about it. As you probably know, a lot of people don’t go near their safe deposit boxes except - two or three times a year when interest coupons on their bonds fall due. And since the banks can’t open the boxes until the customers call in person, there’s no ay of knowing how much more may have been taken from boxes, which have not been opened recently.” “But what have I to do with all this?” I interposed. “T'm coming to that in a minute. First let me give you the high lights of the case. ‘the first of the safe deposit robberies happened at the - Utility National Bank of Milwaukee. Not so far from here, you'll notice.” = STARTED to ask him if he meant thst for an insinuation, but he hurried on. So far as we know, AMAZING STORIES “Except for an accident, it might not have become - known for some time after it happened. We have rea- son to believe, however, that one of the robberies at the Milwaukee bank was discovered the same e day it happened, “Tt started with the finding of a life insurance policy for ten thousand dollars in the waste-basket inside the vault. The man whose duty it was to unlock the boxes for patrons, discovered it just before closing time. He took it immediately to the clerk in charge of the safe deposit counter, who went through his records and found that the man whose name was on the policy had not opened his box for over a month. He got the cus- tomer on the phone and told him his policy had been found in the basket. The next morning, the owner opened his safe deposit box and found it absolutely empty. Approximately twenty thousand dollars worth of bonds had been removed from the box. Sore : “Within the next few days several other renters re- ported thefts aggregating about half a million dollars. “We were called into the case at the very outset, so we were able to get a complete record of everything that had happened: to date. “At first it looked like an inside job. Maybe you’ve heard of a similar series of robberies that happened in Los Angeles about three years ago. We hung that on the bank employee who had the job of opening ie customers’ boxes. _ ; “Of course you know how a sate deposit vault is run?” he digressed. “To tell you the truth, I do not. Since I never owned a bond or anything else worth safeguarding, I haven't had occasion to familiarize myself with the procedure employed in a safe deposit vault.” — “Maybe I'd better explain it then. When you rent a box, you get two keys which are duplicates and are the only ones in existence that will open your box. Even the company that installed the vault is not able to make a third key that will ft your lock. If you lose one key, you can have a duplicate made from the other one, but if both keys become lost at the same time, the only way to open your box is to force the door, which is a long hard job. This destroys the old door and necessitates installing a new door with a new set of keys. “Ordinarily, when you first rent a box, you would put one of the keys on your key-ring and, if you hap- pened to be married, you would hand the duplicate key to your wife, so if you got drowned at sea or disap- peared, she could open the box. The bank keeps on file a card with your signature and that of your wife or other person authorized to open the box. “Before you are allowed to enter the vault, you have to sign a slip in the presence of the attendant and this slip is compared with the signature on file. If someone happened to find or steal your key, the only way he could use it would be by forging your signa- ture while the bank employee is watching him—a thing — which is extremely difficult, if not impossible. “As an additional precaution, each box has two key- holes, one for your private key and the other for master key kept by the bank. Neither key alone wi . nes the box, but when both the bank’s key and yours comiehiook=heom)