Ken looked unconvinced. “I still don’t think it was very smart of you to become suspicious just because you smelled film in that basket. After all, if a man plans to rob a jewelry store, and his success depends on a good rousing fire, you’d think he’d look into the subject a little first. That he’d make sure he had the right materials on hand.”
“Well, I thought maybe this wasn’t carefully planned,” Sandy said argumentatively. “Couldn’t it have been done on impulse—on the spur of the moment? In that case you might easily duck into a drugstore and buy a roll of film. It’s easy to carry around. It’s not noticeable. It’s—”
“Wait a minute!” Ken broke in suddenly. “Maybe it all fits together!”
“Maybe all what fits together?”
“It’s the iron box—Mom’s present! That’s what’s doing it.” Ken folded his arms over his typewriter and rested his chin on them, staring at the gaily wrapped package that now stood on Pop’s desk. “Yes, that’s it. I’m sure of it.” His voice was tense.
“Are you out of your mind?” Sandy demanded. “What are you talking about? What’s the little iron box—?”
“Listen,” Ken said. “It’s all perfectly obvious. That box is important to somebody. The somebody, whoever he is, knew Dad was bringing it home with him. He—the somebody, I mean—went to Dad’s apartment last night looking for it. It wasn’t there. He knows something about Dad—at least enough to realize that he was coming to Brentwood. So later last night he tried to break into the house here, but I scared him off. He must have hung around, saw that we were taking the box to Sam Morris’s this morning, and made another attempt there.”
“And there he is foiled again!” There was laughter behind Sandy’s mock-dramatic voice.
“Right,” Ken said. “Because, as you explained to me yourself, he made a bad choice of material for his fire. He wants to create a diversion. He has some vague idea that film is inflammable, and dashes into the nearest drugstore to get some. He slips into the crowd at Sam’s, drops it into the wastebasket, along with a lit match, and then—”
Sandy, openly grinning now, picked it up. “And then sees his whole villainous dream go up in a tiny cloud of smoke.”