“And that,” he said, half smiling, “is all I want to know!”
With which he turned and left the door, and within a few seconds was again taking the stairs to the main floor.
Once there—and outside, in fact—he proceeded a couple of numbers further westward, where a great sign hung over the sidewalk reading:
CHICAGO LOCK AND HARDWARE COMPANY
Every Kind of Lock and Key in the World
Hardware, Too!
And into this place he hurried.
It was an exceedingly capacious store, having an elbow-shaped extension in the rear where a couple of adjoining stores did not require their full depth. And it was—though the young man did not know it—the foremost emporium for locks and keys in the entire Middle West.
Approaching a blond-moustached salesman at a counter which appeared to be devoted to locks only, he spoke, half inquiringly, and half dogmatically.
“The Waddington lock is, of course, an individual lock, supplied with one key only—”
“Oh yes,” the salesman replied, taking the tone of the words as a query instead of a statement—which very shortly it was to prove to be. “They are used for official police purposes because they positively cannot be picked, and are individual. But one key with each lock, and each lock sealed.”
A faint smile swept over the young man’s rouged face at the statement he had just heard.
“No doubt,” he said, suddenly, “you carry Copely padlocks?”
“Indeed we do!” the clerk affirmed. “The Copely line is—”
“I would like,” the young man interrupted, “a Copely Master Padlock—yes, the kind which can be opened by four different keys. Though I want a Type B padlock.”
“Right, sir.” And the clerk ran up a ladder, where he looked into a drawer. “I don’t suppose you would mind, would you,” he called down, “if it were a Type A—so long as it’s a Copely Master pa—”
“Must be Type B,” said the young man, frowning for the first time. “So, if you haven’t—”
“Wait!” The clerk went nimbly up another step. And took down an open hardware drawer from that level.
Which he brought all the way down. And from it, surveying it stintingly first, brought out a paper-sealed padlock. On which was printed, “Copely Master—Type B.”
The young man tore off the paper and inspected, quite critically, the lock inside, and its single key, as one who knows that goods within wrappers often belie the words printed thereon.
“I rather take it,” said the clerk, puzzledly, “that you are a little familiar with padlocks?”
The young man looked up. There was an amused light in his eye.
“A little—familiar’ Did you ever hear of Pepperduff Wainwright?”
“Pepperdu—Why Lord, yes! He was the greatest expert on padlocks and padlock mechanism in—in the world. And invented many. In fact, come to think of it—he—he invented this Copely lock. And—yes, by George, he evolved the Paddington lock too, if I’m not mistaken. For they’re both in the same category. And—but did you know him?”
“He was my grandfather,” said the young man simply. “And virtually brought me up, I lived padlocks day and night—had ’em at every meal!—had to undergo catechization on ’em every night before I could even go to bed. And I—but here, you can throw this in the junk box.”
“In—in the junk box? But here, sir, isn’t—”
The young man raised a hand patiently.
“The key of it is all I want,” he said. And because, evidently, of the extreme mystification on the clerk’s face, he added, “You see I’ve a trunk at home that I bought at auction—and it’s padlocked with an old Paddington police lock of—of certain type and number—anyway, this key, I happen to know, will open it.”
“Sa-ay—it’s a handy thing at times to know locks, isn’t it? I—”
“Do you wait on that counter yonder where those sledges stand?”
“I can—yes.” And the clerk started around the end of the counter and was almost immediately back of another counter across the narrow store space, the young man following. “But I don’t quite understand,” the clerk was saying. “A sledge, now?—well, why would you want to smash the lock if—”
“The trunk happens to have two padlocks on it,” said the young man wearily. “One, as I say, positively can be unlocked with this key. The other is a—a Zylline lock—unpickable and unremovable. I’ll take that short sledge over yonder. How much is it?”
“That one? It’s $4.50.”
“Wrap it, please, if you will.”
It was wrapped, right there at the counter. And the young man was outside within 9 minutes after he had entered, so swift had been the two transactions.
He hurried on toward Clark Street, passing the Klondike Building without even a sidewise glance. His eyes were fixed ahead of him in intent thought.
But no further from the Klondike Building in that direction than was the Hardware Store from it in the other, was a tiny watch-repair shop, no more than about 7 feet wide. It carried prominently in its narrow window a sign reading, “Second-hand and Uncalled-for Watches Cheap.” And so many of which did it apparently have that they filled the whole upper part of the window.
The young man stopped short.
Swiftly he cast his eyes over the battery of watches which hung, many of them, backs outward. Then he went in. The proprietor, an old man with a white head and an engraving tool in his hand, turned to the tiny wooden rail cutting off his work bench.
“How much,” said the young man, gazing troubledly at a big telechron clock at the end of the silver-like store, “is that old silver watch there, with ‘I. V.’ engraved on it?”
“We-ell—now in a manner of speaking—”
“Quick!” said the young man. “Name your lowest price, or else!”
“We-ell—well, it’s $4. And it keeps—”
“Can you, in the next few minutes, while I’m on an errand, engrave a half-circle loop on that ‘I,’ changing it into a ‘P’—and an additional angle on the ‘V,’ making it a ‘W’?”
“Why, yes—sure. It might look a little—”
“Do it, please,” said the young man. “The ‘I’ into a ‘P’—and the ‘V’ into a ‘W.’ And here’s $2 on account. And if it isn’t done in 15 minutes when I come back, I’ll have to pass it—”
“It’ll be done!” said the old man. “And—and I’ll rub acid across the fresh cuts to make the engraving look uniform.”
And almost before Mr. Piffington Wainwright, the owner of the initials in question, was out of the door, the old man was locking the watch in a felt-lined vise; was, in fact, before Mr. Wainwright was ten feet distant, cutting, with sure hand, a neat curling sliver of silver from the watch case.
At the corner, Mr. Wainwright waited for a taxicab to come along. Reflecting deeply, as he waited, on the newsstory he had read.
“Wild defense, all right—J. D.’s claiming amnesia! And ‘hypnotic amnesia’—of all things! Just a stall, of course, for time; for with that defense he hasn’t a cha—hm?—say, I might be able to sew my own entrance into this affair up a bit tighter if Dr. Mironovski really is out of town. But—”
But standing not on suppositions,