CHAPTER I. THE AMATEUR SAFE SMASHER

On the night of May 27th, 1925, the office of Gilderheim, Pascoe and Company, diamond merchants, of Little Hatton Garden, presented no unusual appearance to the patrolling constable who examined the lock and tried the door in the ordinary course of his duty. Until nine o’clock in the evening the office had been occupied by Mr. Gilderheim and his head clerk, and a plain clothes officer, whose duty it was to inquire into unusual happenings had deemed that the light in the window on the first floor fell within his scope, and had gone up to discover the reason for its appearance. The 27th was a Saturday, and it is usual for the offices in Hatton Garden to be clear of clerks and their principals by three at the latest.

Mr. Gilderheim, a pleasant gentleman, had been relieved to discover that the knock which brought him to the door, gripping a revolver in his pocket in case of accidents, produced no more startling adventure than a chat with a police officer who was known to him. He explained that he had to-day received a parcel of diamonds from an Amsterdam house, and was classifying the stones before leaving for the night, and with a few jocular remarks on the temptation which sixty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds offered to the unscrupulous “night of darkness,” the officer left.

At nine-forty Mr. Gilderheim locked up the jewels in his big safe, before which an electric light burnt day and night, and accompanied by his clerk, left No. 93 Little Hatton Garden and walked in the direction of Holborn.

The constable on point duty bade them good-night, and the plain clothes officer, who was then at the Holborn end of the thoroughfare, exchanged a word or two.

“You will be on duty all night?” asked Mr. Gilderheim as his clerk hailed a cab.

“Yes, sir,” said the officer.

“Good!” said the merchant. “I’d like you to keep a special eye upon my place. I am rather nervous about leaving so large a sum in the safe.”

The officer smiled.

“I don’t think you need worry, sir,” he said, and after the cab containing Mr. Gilderheim had driven off he walked back to No. 93.

But in that brief space of time between the diamond merchant leaving and the return of the detective many things had happened. Scarcely had Gilderheim reached the detective than two men walked briskly along the thoroughfare from the other end. Without hesitation the first turned into No. 93, opened the door with a key, and passed in. The second man followed. There was no hesitation, nothing furtive in their movements. They might have been lifelong tenants of the house, so confident were they in every action.

Not half a minute after the second man had entered a third came from the same direction, turned into the building, unlocked the door with that calm confidence which had distinguished the action of the first comer, and went in.

Three minutes later two of the three were upstairs.

With extraordinary expedition one had produced two small iron bottles from his pockets and had deftly fixed the rubber tubes and adjusted the little blow-pipe of his lamp, and the second had spread out on the floor a small kit of tools of delicate temper and beautiful finish.

Neither man spoke. They lay flat on the ground, making no attempt to extinguish the light which shone before the safe. They worked in silence for some little while, then the stouter of the two remarked, looking up at the reflector fixed at an angle to the ceiling and affording a view of the upper part of the safe to the passer-by in the street below—

“Even the mirrors do not give us away, I suppose?”

The second burglar was a slight, young-looking man with a shock of hair that suggested the musician.

He shook his head.

“Unless all the rules of optics have been specially reversed for the occasion,” he said with just a trace of a foreign accent, “we cannot possibly be seen.”

“I am relieved,” said the first.

He half whistled, half hummed a little tune to himself as he plied the hissing flame to the steel door.

He was carefully burning out the lock, and had no doubt in his mind that he would succeed, for the safe was an old-fashioned one.

No further word was exchanged for half an hour. The man with the blow-pipe continued in his work, the other watching with silent interest, ready to play his part when the operation was sufficiently advanced.

At the end of half an hour the elder of the two wiped his streaming forehead with the back of his hand, for the heat which the flame gave back from the steel door was fairly trying.

“Why did you make such a row closing the door?” he asked. “You are not usually so careless, Calli.”

The other looked down at him in mild astonishment.

“I made no noise whatever, my dear George,” he said. “If you had been standing in the passage you could not have heard it; in fact, I closed the door as noiselessly as I opened it.”

The perspiring man on the ground smiled.

“That would be fairly noiseless,” he said.

“Why?” asked the other.

“Because I did not close it. You walked in after me.”

Something in the silence which greeted his words made him look up. There was a puzzled look upon his companion’s face.

“I opened the door with my own key,” said the younger man slowly.

“You opened——” The man called George frowned. “I do not understand you, Callidino. I left the door open, and you walked in after me; I went straight up the stairs, and you followed.”

Callidino looked at the other and shook his head.

“I opened the door myself with the key,” he said quietly. “If anybody came in after you—why, it is up to us, George, to see who it is.”

“You mean——?”

“I mean,” said the little Italian, “that it would be extremely awkward if there is a third gentleman present on this inconvenient occasion.”

“It would, indeed,” said the other.

“Why?”

Both men turned with a start, for the voice that asked the question without any trace of emotion was the voice of a third man, and he stood in the doorway screened from all possibility of observation from the window by the angle of the room.

He was dressed in an evening suit, and he carried a light overcoat across his arm.

What manner of man he was, and how he looked, they had no means of judging, for from his chin to his forehead his face was covered by a black mask.

“Please do not move,” he said, “and do not regard the revolver I am holding in the light of a menace. I merely carry it for self-defence, and you will admit that under the circumstances, and knowing the extreme delicacy of my position, I am fairly well justified in taking this precaution.”

George Wallis laughed a little under his breath.

“Sir,” he said, without shifting his position, “you may be a man after my own heart, but I shall know better when you have told me exactly what you want.”

“I want to learn,” said the stranger.

He stood there regarding the pair with obvious interest. The eyes which shone through the holes of the mask were alive and keen.

“Go on with your work, please,” he said. “I should hate to interrupt you.”

George Wallis picked up the blow-pipe and addressed himself again to the safe door. He was a most adaptable man, and the situation in which he found himself nonplussed had yet to occur.

“Since,” he said, “it makes absolutely no difference as to whether I leave off or whether I go on, if you are a representative of law and order, I may as well go on, because if you are not a representative of those two admirable, excellent and necessary qualities I might at least save half the swag with you.”

“You may save the lot,” said the man sharply. “I do not wish to share the proceeds of your robbery, but I want to know how you do it—that is all.”

“You shall learn,” said George Wallis, that most notorious of burglars, “and at the hands of an expert, I beg you to believe.”

“That I know,” said the other calmly.

Wallis went on with his task apparently undisturbed by this extraordinary interruption. The little Italian’s hands had twitched nervously, and here might have been trouble, but the strength of the other man, who was evidently the leader of the two, and his self-possession had heartened his companion to accept whatever consequences the presence of this man might threaten. It was the masked stranger who broke the silence.

“Isn’t it an extraordinary thing,” he said, “that whilst technical schools exist for teaching every kind of trade, art and craft, there is none which engage in teaching the art of destruction. Believe me, I am very grateful that I have had this opportunity of sitting at the feet of a master.”

His voice was not unpleasant, but there was a certain hardness which was not in harmony with the flippant tone he adopted.

The man on the floor went on with his work for a little while, then he said without turning his head—

“I am anxious to know exactly how you got in.”

“I followed close behind you,” said the masked man. “I knew there would be a reasonable interval between the two of you. You see,” he went on, “you have been watching this office for the greater part of a week; one of you has been on duty practically every night. You rented a small office higher up this street which offered a view of these premises. I gathered that you had chosen to-night because you brought your gas with you this morning. You were waiting in the dark hall-way of the building in which your office is situated, one of you watching for the light to go out and Mr. Gilderheim depart. When he had gone, you, sir”—he addressed the man on the floor—“came out immediately, your companion did not follow so soon. Moreover, he stopped to pick up a small bundle of letters which had apparently been dropped by some careless person, and since these letters included two sealed packets such as the merchants of Hatton Garden send to their clients, I was able to escape the observation of the second man and keep reasonably close to you.”

Callidino laughed softly.

“That is true,” he said, with a nod to the man on the floor. “It was very clever. I suppose you dropped the packet?”

The masked man inclined his head.

“Please go on,” he said, “do not let me interrupt you.”

“What is going to happen when I have finished?” asked George, still keeping his face to the safe.

“As far as I am concerned, nothing. Just as soon as you have got through your work, and have extracted whatever booty there is to be extracted, I shall retire.”

“You want your share, I suppose?”

“Not at all,” said the other calmly. “I do not want my share by any means. I am not entitled to it. My position in society prevents me from going farther down the slippery path than to connive at your larceny.”

“Felony,” corrected the man on the floor.

“Felony,” agreed the other.

He waited until without a sound the heavy door of the safe swung open and George had put his hand inside to extract the contents, and then, without a word, he passed through the door, closing it behind him.

The two men sat up tensely and listened. They heard nothing more until the soft thud of the outer door told them that their remarkable visitor had departed.

They exchanged glances—interest on the one face, amusement on the other.

“That is a remarkable man,” said Callidino.

The other nodded.

“Most remarkable,” he said, “and more remarkable will it be if we get out of Hatton Garden to-night with the loot.”

It would seem that the “more than most” remarkable happening of all actually occurred, for none saw the jewel thieves go, and the smashing of Gilderheim’s jewel safe provided an excellent alternative topic for conversation to the prospect of Sunstar for the Derby.

CHAPTER II. SUNSTAR’S DERBY

There it was again!

Above the babel of sound, the low roar of voices, soft and sorrowful, now heard, now lost, a vagrant thread of gold caught in the drab woof of shoddy life gleaming and vanishing.… Gilbert Standerton sat tensely straining to locate the sound.

It was the “Melody in F” that the unseen musician played.

“There’s going to be a storm.”

Gilbert did not hear the voice. He sat on the box-seat of the coach, clasping his knees, the perspiration streaming from his face.

There was something tragic, something a little terrifying in his pose. The profile turned to his exasperated friend was a perfect one—forehead high and well-shaped, the nose a little long, perhaps, the chin strong and resolute.

Leslie Frankfort, looking up at the unconscious dreamer, was reminded of the Dante of convention, though Dante never wore a top-hat or found a Derby Day crowd so entirely absorbing.

“There’s going to be a storm.”

Leslie climbed up the short step-ladder, and swung himself into the seat by Gilbert’s side.

The other awoke from his reverie with a start.

“Is there?” he asked, and wiped his forehead.

Yet as he looked around it was not the murky clouds banking up over Banstead that held his eye; it was this packed mass of men and women, these gay placards extolling loudly the honesty and the establishment of “the old firm,” the booths on the hill, the long succession of canvas screens which had been erected to advertise somebody’s whisky, the flimsy-looking stands on the far side of the course, the bustle, the pandemonium and the vitality of that vast, uncountable throng made such things as June thunderstorms of little importance.

“If you only knew how the low brows are pitying you,” said Leslie Frankfort, with good-natured annoyance, “you would not be posing for a picture of ‘The Ruined Gambler.’ My dear chap, you look for all the world, sitting up here with your long, ugly mug adroop, like a model for the coloured plate to be issued with the Christmas Number of the Anti-Gambling Gazette. I suppose they have a gazette.”

Gilbert laughed a little.

“These people interest me,” he said, rousing himself to speak. “Don’t you realise what they all mean? Every one of them with a separate and distinct individuality, every one with a hope or a fear hugged tight in his bosom, every one with the capacity for love, or hate, or sorrow. Look at that man!” he said, and pointed with his long, nervous finger.

The man he indicated stood in a little oasis of green. Hereabouts the people on the course had so directed their movements as to leave an open space, and in the centre stood a man of medium height, a black bowler on the back of his head, a long, thin cigar between his white, even teeth. He was too far away for Leslie to distinguish these particulars, but Gilbert Standerton’s imagination filled in the deficiencies of vision, for he had seen this man before.

As if conscious of the scrutiny, the man turned and came slowly towards the rails where the coach stood. He took the cigar from his mouth and smiled as he recognised the occupant of the box-seat.

“How do you do, sir?”

His voice sounded shrill and faint, as if an immeasurable distance separated them, but he was evidently shouting to raise his voice above the growling voices of the crowd. Gilbert waved his hand with a smile, and the man turned with a raise of his hat, and was swallowed up in a detachment of the crowd which came eddying about him.

“A thief,” said Gilbert, “on a fairly large scale—his name is Wallis; there are many Wallises here. A crowd is a terrible spectacle to the man who thinks,” he said half to himself.

The other glanced at him keenly.

“They’re terrible things to get through in a thunderstorm,” he said, practically. “I vote we go along and claim the car.”

Gilbert nodded.

He rose stiffly, like a man with cramp, and stepped slowly down the little ladder to the ground. They passed through the barrier and crossed the course, penetrated the little unsaddling enclosure, through the long passages where press-men, jockeys and stewards jostled one another every moment of race days, to the roadway without.

In the roped garage they found their car, and, more remarkable, their chauffeur.

The first flicker of blue lightning had stabbed twice to the Downs, and the heralding crash of thunder had reverberated through the charged air, when the car began to thread the traffic toward London. The storm, which had been brewing all the afternoon, broke with terrific fury over Epsom. The lightning was incessant, the rain streamed down in an almost solid wall of water, crash after crash of thunder deafened them.

The great throng upon the hill was dissolving as though it was something soluble; its edges frayed into long black streamers of hurrying people moving toward the three railway stations. It required more than ordinary agility to extricate the car from the chaos of charabancs and motor-cabs in which it found itself.

Standerton had taken his seat by the driver’s side, though the car was a closed one. He was a man quick to observe, and on the second flash he had seen the chauffeur’s face grow white and his lips twitching. A darkness almost as of night covered the heavens. The horizon about was rimmed with a dull, angry orange haze; so terrifying a storm had not been witnessed in England for many years.

The rain was coming down in sheets, but the young man by the chauffeur’s side paid no heed. He was watching the nervous hands of the man twist this way and that as the car made detour after detour to avoid the congested road.

Suddenly a jagged streak of light flicked before the car, and Standerton was deafened by an explosion more terrifying than any of the previous peals.

The chauffeur instinctively shrank back, his face white and drawn; his trembling hands left the wheel, and his foot released the pedal. The car would have come to a standstill, but for the fact that they were at the top of a declivity.

“My God!” he whimpered, “it’s awful. I can’t go on, sir.”

Gilbert Standerton’s hand was on the wheel, his neatly-booted foot had closed on the brake pedal.

“Get out of it!” he muttered. “Get over here, quick!”

The man obeyed. He moved shivering to his master’s place, his hands before his face, and Standerton slipped into the driver’s seat and threw in the clutch.

It was fortunate that he was a driver of extraordinary ability, but he needed every scrap of knowledge as he put the car to the slope which led to the lumpy Downs. As they jolted forward the downpour increased, the ground was running with water as though it had been recently flooded. The wheels of the car slipped and skidded over the greasy surface, but the man at the steering-wheel kept his head, and by and by he brought the big car slithering down a little slope on to the main way again. The road was sprinkled with hurrying, tramping people. He moved forward slowly, his horn sounding all the time, and then of a sudden the car stopped with a jerk.

“What is it?”

Leslie Frankfort had opened the window which separated the driver’s seat from the occupants of the car.

“There’s an old chap there,” said Gilbert, speaking over his shoulder, “would you mind taking him into the car? I’ll tell you why after.”

He pointed to two woe-begone figures that stood on the side of the road. They were of an old man and a girl; Leslie could not see their faces distinctly. They stood with their backs to the storm, one thin coat spread about them both.

Gilbert shouted something, and at his voice the old man turned. He had a beautiful face, thin, refined, intellectual; it was the face of an artist. His grey hair straggled over his collar, and under the cloak he clutched something, the care of which seemed to concern him more than his protection from the merciless downpour.

The girl at his side might have been seventeen, a solemn child, with great fearless eyes that surveyed the occupants of the car gravely. The old man hesitated at Gilbert’s invitation, but as he beckoned impatiently he brought the girl down to the road and Leslie opened the door.

“Jump in quickly,” he said. “My word, you’re wet!”