"The people in your neighborhood say that they've seen queer bluish lights in the basement of your house on Woodland Avenue. So I suspect you've been melting that gold up and hiding it somewhere, ready for a quick getaway.
"Yes, Cochrane, we've got the goods on you and if you want to save half of a twenty-year sentence—which at your age means life—come across with the information. Where is the gold?"
"In the old sewer pipe," faltered the weigher, who appeared to have aged ten years while Drummond was speaking. "In the old sewer pipe that leads from my basement."
"Good!" exclaimed Drummond. "I think Mr. Preston will use his influence with the court to see that your sentence isn't any heavier than necessary. It's worth that much to guard the Mint against future losses of the same kind, isn't it, Mr. Director?"
"It surely is," replied Preston. "But how in the name of Heaven did you get the answer so quickly?"
Drummond delayed his answer until Cochrane, accompanied by the three Secret Service men, had left the room. Then—
"Nothing but common sense," he said. "You remember those scratches I called your attention to—the ones on the side of the grille bars? They were a clear indication of the way in which the gold had been taken from the grille—knocked down from the top of the pile with a piece of wire and pulled under the door of the grille. That eliminated Jamison and Strubel immediately. They needn't have gone to that trouble, even if it had been possible for them to get into the vault in the first place.
"But I had my suspicions of Cochrane when he was unable to open the vault door. That pointed to nervousness, and nervousness indicated a guilty conscience. I made the hanging of the grille door an excuse to get him to shed his coat—though I did want to see whether the door came all the way down to the floor—and I noted that his suspenders were very broad and his trousers abnormally wide around the waist. He didn't want to take any chances with that extra fourteen pounds of gold, you know. It would never do to drop it in the street.
"The rest is merely corroborative. I found that bluish lights had been observed in the basement of Cochrane's house, and one of my men located the tailor who had enlarged his trousers. That's really all there was to it."
With that Drummond started to the door, only to be stopped by Director Preston's inquiry as to where he was going.