“You seem to have thought of most things. Do you know that if that vault is taken by either an electric-arc or an oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, I will be suspected?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“It is a fact! You see the police and the private agencies know a man by his work. How can we take that vault in a new way? How can I go through three layers of vanadium steel?”
“Has it ever been done?”
“Yes, by the introduction of graduated blasts of nitroglycerin.”
“Father would have opened the safe that way.”
“Your father was of the old school. The presence of a watchman, the poker-players in the basement, the natural suspicion which ‘The Black Cougar’ will have concerning his ill-gotten gains, calls for a new idea—one that will be effective and noiseless. Can you think of a way?”
“No. That’s why I came to see you.”
Fay crossed his legs and leaned away from the table. The girl’s face was still in the shadow cast by her parasol. Again the thought came to him that the whole proposition was a trick. Perhaps she was a tool in the employ of “The Black Cougar.” Perhaps the police had sent her to Short Hills in order to arrange a trap. He dismissed this thought, however. The police of Los Angeles would have been anxious to make a quick arrest. The price on his head amounted to five figures.
“I’ll chance you!” he said. “The only motive I see for your actions is the one you’ve explained. You want to rob a robber—cheat a cheater. Frank Robertson Pope, which is only one of ‘The Black Cougar’s’ names, has amassed too much money, in too rotten a way. I understand he has the longest and most complete sucker-list of any bucket-shop broker in this country.”