"Is there anything else you wish me to ask, Mr. Rand?"
"Inquire if there has ever been any trouble with any D class vaults. That will be all."
The safe man repeated the question into the 'phone; received the answer, hung up the receiver, turned around and said:
"None but an attempt to blow one open in the Produce Exchange in Springfield. It failed. He says the man who controlled the secret measurements on that set of vaults was the patentee of the time-lock and he is dead. The measurements are sealed and filed. The patents went to his brother-in-law, who worked with him, who sold them outright to the company for a song."
"What was his name?" asked Rand, with disappointment in his voice and manner.
"They have no record and do not remember. He was just a drunken thick-headed Swede."
When Rand was paying the telephone toll the clerk figured on the rate to Cincinnati, so I knew they had been talking to the Mahler offices at the factory. I told Rand just what had happened in Steele's office, and he smiled slightly and said:
"Well, well, the lost bonds or others have been used as collateral for a week past, eh, and Farrington Smith was on the wrong side of the market? I do not think Rhodes will 'do any time' if he is clever. I have learned that he was a favorite employee of Smith's. Let us go over to the Municipal."
At the bank, the man from Mahler's spoke a moment to the cashier and received his permission to show the vault to "two prospective customers," and a boy was sent to tell Rhodes that the visitors had been accorded the courtesy.
As we passed the president's inner office door, I saw Smith at his desk and noticed how pale and careworn he appeared. I saw that Rand observed it also.