Could there be two men the whorls of whose fingers were the same? Scotland Yard says impossible.
“I do not question that this is a very wonderful safe, Mr. Morrice,” the detective remarked quietly to the financier in a subsequent conversation, “but it is evidently not as invulnerable as you and the makers thought it.”
“Once know the secret of its mechanism, and the rest is easy,” retorted Morrice, a little nettled at this depreciatory reference to the wonderful invention, to the perfecting of which he had contributed not a little himself with his own ingenious suggestions.
He explained to Lane a few of its marvels. To begin with, it was the only safe of its kind that had ever been manufactured. The combinations of the times when it would open would run into millions. Supposing you worked on tens, for instance, that is ten, twenty, thirty, the days of the month, it would only open if both keys were applied to the same keyhole!
The detective listened politely, but he was not very interested in learning how the thing worked; his object was to find out if there was anybody besides young Croxton and his employer who could have become acquainted with the secret of its working.
“It seems to me that it is really a matter of exercising ordinary common-sense,” observed the angry banker. “Two men alone know the secret, myself and Richard Croxton, therefore either of us could open it after having obtained surreptitiously a duplicate of the key held by the other. Let us assume, for a moment that you, acting on Croxton’s behalf, say that I was the thief, that from some sinister motive I stole my own property. Well, you are perfectly entitled to that opinion, as an opinion.”
“I have not expressed it,” said the detective quietly.
“I know you haven’t,” snapped Morrice. He was in a very angry mood to-day, and inclined to let his temper run away with him. “But I also know that gentlemen of your profession cast your net wide when you start, in the hope of catching some very unlikely fish. Of course, I could have opened it and cast it upon Croxton, if I were so disposed. But where is my motive for robbing myself? I can understand certain circumstances which might induce a man to commit such an act, and cleverly provide a scapegoat. Men set fire to their own warehouses to get the insurance money. Why? Because they are on the verge of bankruptcy and that money will save them. A desperate man might steal his own money for similar reasons, to place it beyond the reach of his creditors, so that he should not go forth to the world a beggar. But these motives are absent in my own case. I am more than solvent; I don’t wish to speak in any boasting spirit, but I have more money than I know what to do with.”
Lane thought for such a practical man of the world, and possessing, as he did, such a clear logical brain, he was indulging in rather superfluous observations. Besides, he had referred to one aspect of the situation as it affected himself—the absence of financial embarrassment. If one chose to argue with him, one could cite from the annals of crime instances of more than one other motive that had impelled men to commit crimes which they artfully fixed upon innocent persons, whom for some subtle reason they wished to remove from their path, or on whom they desired revenge.
The next words, however, showed why the banker had volunteered such an elaborate defence of himself.