IV
Trotter kept guarded watch on "J. Heeney's" plumbing establishment. He watched it like a hungry cat watching a rat hole. And it was three hours later that he had the satisfaction of seeing the plumber ascend to the street and walk hurriedly westward. Trotter could see that he carried a kit of tools under his arm. But to follow him in open daylight was too great a risk. Instead of that, he went down the narrow steps, and through the dusty glass examined the doorlock.
Fifteen minutes later he went down another flight of basement steps, this time to the cellar of a Sixth Avenue locksmith.
"I've got a closet door locked shut on me," he explained. "And I want a key to get it open."
The locksmith looked him up and dow.n He seemed respectable enough, this mild-eyed youth with the locked closet.
But the locksmith knew the tricks of his trade.
"Then I'll take a bunch of `blanks' over with me and open her up for you."
"I'd rather get her open by myself."
"It will cost you a dollar," was the locksmith's ultimatum.
"It's worth a dollar," agreed Trotter. "But how'll we do it?"
"I'll dip a skeleton blank in hot wax and lampblack. Then you put the key in the lock and turn it as far as you can. That'll show the ward marks, where they bite the wax. Then bring me the key and I'll cut it. Maybe it'll take two cuttings. That'll be two dollars!"
Trotter paid a quarter deposit and took the key, made a circuitous way to the plumber's cellar, descended the steps, knocked, got no answer, and quietly inserted the key in the lock, turning it as far as it would go.
Instead of going back to the locksmith, he bought a ten-cent file, and with his own hand cut away the blank according to the ward marks. Once more he made his way to the door of the empty shop and fitted his key. It turned part way round in the lock, but did not throw back the bar. He recoated the key flange with the black wax by holding it to a lighted match and letting it cool again.
He at once saw where his cutting had been imperfect. A few strokes of his file remedied this. He once more fitted the key to the lock, and found that he was free to pass in and out of the door.
Yet he deferred forcing an entrance, at the moment, hungrily as he studied the inner partition door through the iron-grated glass. He knew what such a movement meant. He could not count on Heeney's continued absence. Above all, at this, the beginning of things, he wanted to avoid any untimely mis-step. So he made his way to the street, shuttling cautiously back and forth across the avenue, aimless of demeanor, diffident of step, yet ever and always on the lookout. From half a block away he saw Heeney return to his cellar. From an even remoter stand, two hours later, he perceived the plumber emerge, like a rabbit out of its warren. He also perceived that the rapidly disappearing man carried a large paper parcel under his arm.
As before, this parcel was carried for three blocks and then adroitly deposited on the top of an ash barrel.
Trotter, once Heeney had skulked about the next corner, quietly crossed the street and sauntered past the parcel-crowned barrel, with his open pocketknife in his hand. One sweep of the knife blade slit the paper wrapper, and without so much as stopping on his way Trotter was able to catch up a handful of the litter it held. This litter, as before, was made up of ground mortar and plaster and stone chips. But this time, amid the lime and dust, he could detect the glitter of minute particles of steel.
He tested the larger fragments of these with his knife point. They were very hard, harder even than his tempered blade steel, diamond-like in their durity. He concluded, as he sat on the edge of his bed that night, rubbing them between his fingers, that they could be nothing but particles of keenly-tempered chromium steel. And chromium steel, he knew, was not used in gas pipes. It was foolish to think of it as a subject for lathe work. It was equally absurd to accept it as an everyday element in any plumber's everyday work. Trotter was not ignorant of the fact that steel of this character was used almost exclusively in the construction of high grade safes and bank vaults.
He stood up, suddenly, and crossed the room to his little bookshelf. From this shelf he took down a much-thumbed "World Almanac," a paper-bound volume which for months past had been serving as his only guide to New York. He turned to the pages headed "Banks in Manhattan and Bronx." It took but a minute's search to secure the names of the president and cashier of the First National Trust Company. But when he further read that its capital was three million five hundred thousand, and that its total resources amounted to forty-seven million three hundred thousand dollars, his breath came in shorter gasps of excitement. He began to realize the colossal wealth which lay guarded behind the great porphyritic granite pillars. He also began to realize some new and as yet undefined responsibility. The mere thought of the magnitude of the movement in which he was being made a deliberate and yet disinterested factor brought him once more to his feet, pacing his little den of a room with thoughtful and preoccupied steps.