It is reasonable to assume that the first two thefts, of radio parts and food, were preparatory moves by Durran. The removal of the women was a part of the process of making the released prisoners contented.
Meanwhile Durran seems to have used all his intelligence in the examination of the Mole, and on the 19th he was probably busy. Certainly on the 20th he was prepared for action on a larger scale than before.
At nine thirty that night a thunderous, clanging uproar broke out in Newburgh. The outdoor alarm gong of the First National Bank went off with a tremendous noise. Simultaneously, the local police station received due warning of prowlers at work inside the bank. It was not a large bank, but even the little ones have more than one burglar-alarm system installed nowadays.
In less than five minutes from the sounding of the alarm, a patrol load of cops was on hand, prepared to do battle with bank robbers. The bank doors were closed and locked. They were opened from inside by a scared and bewildered watchman. He had heard the gongs, too. His own telltale registered a disturbance. But he could find no sign of anything wrong.
Then bank officials tore up in a motor car. A third alarm system had reported disturbance to the home of the cashier. They crowded into the bank, to be faced by puzzled cops and nearly deafened by the insistent, frantic clanging of the alarm gong outside.
Somebody managed to turn off the gong. It looked as if a freak accident had set off every protective device at once. The cops were rather sheepish, standing embattled in the bank with absolutely nothing to do. But there could be nothing wrong.
The vault was closed and locked and obviously untouched. There were no thieves to rout, it seemed, so the question became that of discovering and correcting the flaw in all the protective devices. The bank suddenly gleamed light everywhere. A master switch turned on every light in the place.
Then they saw the Mole. It was quite stationary. It was a huge, shimmering phantom, its bow end lost in the metal of the vault. Its tail, also, vanished into the side wall of the bank building. Standing still as it was, it could be examined with some detail, and presently it was observed that the four huge, vertical screws turned lazily, maintaining its position in spite of the gravity pull which tried to drag it down to the centre of the earth.
Men shot at it. The bullets went harmlessly through. They hacked at it with fire axes from a case on the wall. The blows spent themselves on seemingly empty air. The men drew back, regarding the earth-ship helplessly. Then a minor official of the bank, desperately daring, plunged first his hand and then his whole body into the phantom.
He could feel no resistance to his movements. The Mole remained as transparent and as unsubstantial as before. But, from within, he could see wraiths about him - machinery like gossamer, even men, like ghosts.
One of those ghosts saw him and pointed at him. Another ghost rocked back and forth, laughing, and the bank clerk was tormented by the suspicion that he heard a whispering thread of that Homeric laughter. Then one of the ghosts made an elaborate, mocking gesture of lifting a phantom cap in greeting.
A roar of rage brought the clerk out of the phantom. Somebody had thought to put his ear to the vault. And there was movement within. Through the steel walls came thumpings, crashings, bumps. There were men at work within the monstrous sealed safe - methodical hangings, deliberate, purposeful thuds and clanks.
'They're looting it!' panted the president of the bank, purple with rage. 'Looting it! And the time lock's on, and we can't get in!'
Something like a dozen armed policement and half a dozen bank officials stood helplessly by, hearing the sounds from within the vault. They went on for half an hour. Then the Mole backed comfortably out of the vault wall, a ghost in being, went through the side wall of the bank, and swam off into the utter unreachability of its peculiar state of existence.
When the time locks permitted the vault to be opened, the worst fears of the bank's officers were realized. The contents of the vault had been leisurely sorted over. Currency, negotiable bonds, the contents of the safe-deposit boxes - everything was gone. And the furnishings of the vault were wreckage.
They went to Jack Hill next morning and found him haggard from four days and nights of work to cope with the catastrophe whose ultimate possibilities he foresaw. He was in the machine shop of the American Electronic laboratories again.
Gail Kennedy was with him, trying to persuade him to stop and rest. The visitors were an impressive lot. Police officials, banking potentates, and representatives of liability insurance companies. They regarded Jack with profound hostility.
'Mr. Hill,' said an eminent banker, in a voice that quivered with indignation, 'I suppose you realize what you have done?'
'Thoroughly!'
'Now what are you going to do about it? Every bank in the country is at the mercy of this Durran, through the hellish contrivance you made. No man's property is safe.'
'Rather more important,' observed Jack, 'no man's life is safe, either, if Durran wants to kill him.'
'But how can this menace, this pirate, be handled?' Again the eminent banker spoke. As if of old habit, his voice took on an oratorical intonation. 'When the arsenals of our government furnish him with explosives, our prisons with men, and the devil with ideas -'
'Oh, it's bad,' said Jack, 'It's very bad. But I'm working now to stop it. I'd like to know if he's changed the Mole about any, though. What's he done?'
They told him about the Newburgh robbery - more than fifty thousand dollars in currency gone, the contents of the safe deposit boxes -
'That doesn't help me!' insisted Jack. 'The Mole is pretty big. As I built it, that robbery would have been impossible. It couldn't be materialized inside a bank vault. There'd be no room.'
So far they'd told him only the results of the robbery. Now they told him the details of their helplessness while it went on.
Jack nodded in satisfaction. 'I see! He's improved the ship. But for those screws you saw revolve, the Mole would drop straight through the earth to its centre, as a block of brass did here. And, of course, if a man stepped out of the Mole while it was dematerialized, he'd drop too, without some device to hold him up.'
There were protests that men had been heard at work inside the vault.
'I know,' agreed Jack. 'But they weren't phantoms! Durran has fitted up an extra force-field apparatus. He can materialize a part of the Mole without materializing the whole. He drove the ship so its bow stuck out into clear space inside the vault. Then he materialized that part, and that part only.
'There were a couple of men in it. They got out, gathered up their loot, and stored it in that part of the ship, and then Durran dematerialized that part again so that it was like the rest of the ship. And then he swam away.'
'But what can we do to stop this - this ghastly performance? demanded the banker agitatedly. 'He can rob any bank in the country! He can steal any treasure, any security, any record!'
'You can hide your treasures,' replied Jack meditatively. 'Until he starts kidnapping people and forcing them to tell where valuables are, he'll be stopped. And - well - the screws of the ship are coated with a thin film of thorium alloy. That is partly real in both states of existence. You can make bullets and bombs of radioactive substances. Anything that's radioactive will find the Mole substantial You can puncture it with radioactive bullets or shatter it with bomb fragments, if they happen to be radioactive, too.'
'You suggest,' said the banker in almost hysterical indignation, 'that we shoot Durran with radium bullets? Think of the cost!'
'It's more important to think of results, just now,' said Jack dryly. 'But thorium will do instead of radium, and that isn't too expensive to use in gas mantles. It'll be cheap enough.