Meanwhile Carranaugh had put in an equally busy morning at the Totem National going over the records of the safe-deposit department, making numerous inquiries of the bank official directly in charge and generally, in the opinion of that official and of Daniels, making a pronounced and utterly useless nuisance of himself.
"Instead of going right out and catching the thieves and returning our money to us," as Daniels phrased it to his fellow employe, who agreed wholeheartedly, adding that "asking foolish and impertinent questions about respectable customers who rented safe-deposit boxes" was not the way he would have set about catching bank burglars if he had been a detective, which, he was devoutly thankful to say, he was not.
"Little better than burglars themselves," declared Daniels. "No wonder they talk about 'setting a thief to catch a thief.'"
And so on in undertones during the interims between Carranaugh's countless inquiries of who, why, when and whither about the men who held the keys to those boxes.
Finally Carranaugh discovered the specific something for which he had been looking as evidently as had Peiperson, made an entry consisting of three numbers in his note book, smiled contentedly in self-appreciation that would have been no whit lessened had he overheard the opinions that had so recently been expressed about detectives in general and one in particular, and betook himself to the appointed rendezvous with Peiperson.
About six o'clock that evening Carranaugh and Peiperson, dressed in old clothes and rubber hip-boots, rowed out into the Bay in a boat, in which fishing tackle was prominently displayed and other equipment as carefully concealed.
At nightfall they had not returned but the boat owner, knowing both intimately as fishermen and men, neither worried nor waited.
They would "get back when they returned" this safety-first-prophet declared and was satisfied to let it go at that.
Chapter VIII
It was high tide and dark when Tom and Jim rowed in from the Bay, heading for the lights of the West Seattle ferry slip.
They did not stop at any of the landing-floats but pulled slowly along the face of the wharves until they came to an opening between the piles near the foot of Yesler Way. Here they shipped the oars, eased the boat through the gap and so beneath the wharf and, pulling and pushing with their hands, continued eastward until they felt the bow bring up softly against the ooze a hundred yards or so in from the dockline of Railroad Avenue.
With large electric torches to light their way and using the oars for poling they slipped and slid still further through the liquid muck until they were stopped by comparatively solid ground. Here they tied the boat's painter to a stringpiece and with grimaces of disgust stepped overboard, sinking at once almost to the tops of their hip-boots into what seemed to be nothing more than a semi-solidified smell. Stifling their gorge they made their way inland, Carranaugh floundering like a stranded whale spouting unseemly language, Peiperson, long, lean and lank, not having a much better time of it.
What the one suffered on account of weight the other equaled by greater ease of penetration. But all things mundane must have an end, and eventually Peiperson exclaimed in an excited whisper:
"There it is! Dead ahead. Just where I said it would be!"
"It," in the flare of their flashlights, was a six-foot circle of even deeper darkness than the surrounding gloom.
In another minute they had entered the old wooden-stave sewer pipe that had been indicated by the parallel dashes marked "Abandoned" on that map in the city engineer's office. To their gratification and yet according to their hopeful expectations they found this ancient sewer-pipe not only in an excellent state of preservation, due to the thick cedar staves of which it had been constructed, but unchoked to a remarkable degree by the debris of years that normally would have been looked for.
"Chain!" called Carranaugh, a hundred feet in the rear, as the surveyor's steel hundred-foot tape tautened, giving the signal to indicate that another length of the "chain" had been measured. And, as he came up with Peiperson, who pointed to the tally mark. "That makes five hundred."
"Guess we can thank our friends for this easy going," remarked Tom, as he prepared to go on again.
"Unh-hunh. Must 'a' been a nice job of house-cleaning," puffed Jim, who very nearly filled even that six-foot passageway. "I'm glad the old sourdoughs who built this boulevard made it sizable enough for a. man to squeeze through, or I sure would have been up against it taking part in this expedition. We ought to be nearly there. Keep your eye peeled for signs of their work. Watch the ceiling."
"About four hundred feet more, if my estimate of the distance was correct. Look out for a big snag here."
"Chain" was called three more times and Peiperson had dragged out more than half the length of the tape again when Carranaugh heard a muffled shout from the darkness ahead, where he could just make out the flare of his friend's torch.
Dropping his end of the tape, Jim plunged ahead at as near a run as he could achieve in the, for him, cramped quarters, until he joined Peiperson, who was pointing dramatically with his hand holding the torch at something over his head and with the other at something else evidently lying in the darkness at his feet.
"Was I right?" panted Carranaugh as he came up.
"Right as the seventh son of a seventh son, you son of a gun of a prophet! Look!"
Carranaugh looked up.
Directly above their heads was an opening, similar to what miners call a "raise," roughly squared six feet by six, cut through the stave pipe and continuing upward as far as the light of their torches penetrated.
At one side was the lower end of a crude but strong ladder, rising into the darkness. At their feet, upon a mixture of mud, rotted planks and sawdust, broken concrete and general debris, lay several hand drills, short-handled sledges, picks, shovels, a hand pneumatic pump, what looked like a complicated variety of plumbers' blowpipe, a headpiece such as is used by electric welders, a V-shaped trough about five feet long and a foot deep made of some highly glazed material resembling porcelain, a broken electric torch, and odds and ends of tools — axes, saws, braces and bits, nails, a small iron pot for melting glue or lead, all the miscellany of a small workshop.
"Our friends the Samuel Smiths evidently knew what they wanted when they wanted it," commented Peiperson. "And you're a wiz for doping out their plan of campaign, Jim. My kindest regards."
Carranaugh only grunted in reply as he heaved himself up the ladder, gingerly testing each rung to see if it would bear a weight not usually required of such a makeshift.
"Well! I'll be eternally and everlastingly—" floated down to Peiperson from the regions above as he scrambled quickly upward.
He found Carranaugh standing on a small platform of heavy timbers, set solidly into the earth at either end. In the center of this there was raised another box-shaped structure about five feet square, and upon this were set four jacks such as are used by contractors for raising and upholding buildings. The upper ends of the jacks, thrust through a space that had been filled with the reinforced concrete that extended from the hole in all directions, were resting against or, rather, were rested upon by a steep plate. And if any identification of that plate had been necessary, it was supplied by a narrow streak on all four sides, outlined in dirty, steel-colored grease!
"So this is what holds up that vault plate," said Carranaugh, as he patted one of the jacks. "I wondered how they had managed that. Now let's see if my other guess was as good as this one."