“I am at your service,” interposed Craig quietly, “but you will have to enlighten me as to the facts in the case. As to that, I know no more than the newspapers.”
“Oh, certainly, certainly. That is to say, you know nothing at all and can approach it without bias.” He paused and then, seeming to notice something in Craig’s manner, added hastily: “I’ll be perfectly frank with you. The policy in question is for one hundred thousand dollars, and is incontestable. His wife is the beneficiary. The company is perfectly willing to pay, but we want to be sure that it is all straight first. There are certain suspicious circumstances that in justice to ourselves we think should be cleared up. That is all—believe me. We are not seeking to avoid an honest liability.”
“What are these suspicious circumstances?” asked Craig, apparently satisfied with the explanation.
“This is in strict confidence, gentlemen,” began Mr. Andrews. “Mr. Morowitch, according to the story as it comes to us, returned home late one night last week, apparently from his office, in a very weakened, a semiconscious, condition. His family physician, Doctor Thornton, was summoned, not at once, but shortly. He pronounced Mr. Morowitch to be suffering from a congestion of the lungs that was very like a sudden attack of pneumonia.
“Mr. Morowitch had at once gone to bed, or at least was in bed, when the doctor arrived, but his condition grew worse so rapidly that the doctor hastily resorted to oxygen, under which treatment he seemed to revive. The doctor had just stepped out to see another patient when a hurry call was sent to him that Mr. Morowitch was rapidly sinking. He died before the doctor could return. No statement whatever concerning the cause of his sudden illness was made by Mr. Morowitch, and the death-certificate, a copy of which I have, gives pneumonia as the cause of death. One of our men has seen Doctor Thornton, but has been able to get nothing out of him. Mrs. Morowitch was the only person with her, husband at the time.”
There was something in his tone that made me take particular note of this last fact, especially as he paused for an instant.
“Now, perhaps there would be nothing surprising about it all, so far at least, were it not for the fact that the following morning, when his junior partner, Mr. Kahan, opened the place of business, or rather went to it, for it was to remain closed, of course, he found that during the night someone had visited it. The lock on the great safe, which contained thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds, was intact; but in the top of the safe a huge hole was found—an irregular, round hole, big enough to put your foot through. Imagine it, Professor Kennedy, a great hole in a safe that is made of chrome steel, a safe that, short of a safety-deposit vault, ought to be about the strongest thing on earth.
“Why, that steel would dull and splinter even the finest diamond-drill before it made an impression. The mere taking out and refitting of drills into the brace would be a most lengthy process. Eighteen or twenty hours is the time by actual test which it would take to bore such a hole through those laminated plates, even if there were means of exerting artificial pressure. As for the police, they haven’t even a theory yet.”
“And the diamonds”
“All gone—everything of any value was gone. Even the letter-files were ransacked. His desk was broken open, and papers of some nature had been taken out of it. Thorough is no name for the job. Isn’t that enough to arouse suspicion?”
“I should like to see that safe,” was all Kennedy said.
“So you shall, so you shall,” said Mr. Andrews. “Then we may retain you in our service? My car is waiting downstairs. We can go right down to Maiden Lane if you wish.”
“You may retain me on one condition,” said Craig without moving. “I am to be free to get at the truth whether it benefits or hurts the company, and the case is to be entirely in my hands.”
“Hats on,” agreed Mr. Andrews, reaching in his vest pocket and pulling out three or four brevas. “My chauffeur is quite a driver. He can almost beat the subway down.”
“First, to my laboratory,” interposed Craig. “It will take only a few minutes.”
We drove up to the university and stopped on the campus while Craig hurried into the Chemistry Building to get something.
“I like your professor of criminal science;” said Andrews to me, blowing a huge fragrant cloud of smoke.
I, for my part, liked the vice-president. He was a man who seemed thoroughly to enjoy life, to have most of the good things, and a capacity for getting out of them all that was humanly possible. He seemed to be particularly enjoying this Morowitch case.
“He has solved some knotty cases,” was all I said. “I’ve come to believe there is no limit to his resourcefulness.”
“I hope not. He’s up against a tough one this trip, though, my boy.”
I did not even resent the “my boy.” Andrews was one of those men in whom we newspaper writers instinctively believe. I knew that it would be “pens lifted” only so long as the case was incomplete. When the time comes with such men they are ready to furnish us the best “copy” in the world.
Kennedy quickly rejoined us, carrying a couple of little glass bottles with ground-glass stoppers.
Morowitch & Co. was, of course, closed when we arrived, but we had no trouble in being admitted by the Central Office man who had been detailed to lock the barn door after the horse was stolen. It was precisely as Mr. Andrews had said. Mr. Kahan showed us the safe. Through the top a great hole had been made—I say made, for at the moment I was at a loss to know whether it had been cut, drilled, burned, blown out, or what-not.
Kennedy examined the edges of the hole carefully, and just the trace of a smile of satisfaction flitted over his face as he did so. Without saying a word he took the glass stopper out of the larger bottle which he had brought and poured the contents on the top of the safe near the hole. There it lay, a little mound of reddish powder.
Kennedy took a little powder of another kind from the other bottle and lighted it with a match.
“Stand back—close to the wall,” he called as he dropped the burning mass on the red powder. In two or three leaps he joined us at the far end of the room.
Almost instantly a dazzling, intense flame broke out, and sizzled and crackled. With bated breath we watched. It was almost incredible, but that glowing mass of powder seemed literally to be sinking, sinking right down into the cold steel. In tense silence we waited. On the ceiling we could still see the reflection of the molten mass in the cup which it had burned for itself in the top of the safe.
At last it fell through into the safe—fell as the burning roof of a frame building would fall into the building. No one spoke a word, but as we cautiously peered over the top of the safe we instinctively turned to Kennedy for an explanation. The Central Office man, with eyes as big as half-dollars, acted almost as if he would have liked to clap the irons on Kennedy. For there in the top of the safe was another hole, smaller but identical in nature with the first one.
“Thermit,” was all Kennedy said.
“Thermit?” echoed Andrews, shifting the cigar which he had allowed to go out in the excitement.
“Yes, an invention of a chemist named Goldschmidt, of Essen, Germany. It is a compound of iron oxide, such as comes off a blacksmith’s anvil or the rolls of a rolling-mill, and powdered metallic aluminum. You could thrust a red-hot bar into it without setting it off, but when you light a little magnesium powder and drop it on thermit, a combustion is started that quickly reaches fifty-four hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It has the peculiar property of concentrating its heat to the immediate spot on which it is placed. It is one of the most powerful oxidising agents known, and it doesn’t even melt