With eyes accustomed to the dimness, they got the layout of the top floor — though Harriet moved with a certainty indicating that she’d had the layout firmly in mind.
There was a general office, taking up most of the floor, and private offices along two walls, partitioned off with paneling and frosted glass.
“Would all those desks have the envelopes in them?” Nellie whispered, pointing to dozens of stenographic desks and chairs in rows in the big office.
“Probably,” Harriet whispered back.
Nellie went to the first desk in the first row and opened the drawers. It seemed that Harriet had guessed wrong. There were envelopes — but none of that type. The second desk had none, either. Nor the third—
Nellie was moving cautiously, senses tuned to the slightest breath of sound. And this was fortunate, for it allowed her to hear the barest perceptible scrape of a shoe.
The sound came from one of the walls along the private offices. Instantly she sank behind a desk, drawing Harriet down with her.
The last door along the line of private cubicles opened. A dark figure, looking more like a slinking shadow than a human being, slunk out of the office. And Nellie felt the hot blood buzzing in her ears.
There was no way of telling whether or not Harriet recognized the slinking figure. But Nellie recognized it — from the way it moved and from its general size and shape. Recognized it, and reached for the tiny gun in her purse.
It was the man who had been at the house of Ismail!
The figure came slowly toward where the two girls were crouching. Under its arm could be seen a large package. Then the two could make out what the package was.
Envelopes, tied tightly with string, but not wrapped.
“He c-cleared out the desks before we looked—” Harriet whispered.
‘Shut up!” breathed Nellie, fingers biting Harriet’s arm.
It was apparent enough without a whisper from the girl. This man was here after the envelopes, too. He had cleaned all the desks in the general office, and probably the private offices, too, since he had just emerged from the last in the line. They were all in that package under his arm.
And now he was coming directly toward them! Did he know they were there?
It was with difficulty that Nellie repressed a sigh of relief that would have been profound enough for the shadowy figure to hear. It had turned, and was going toward a blank wall at the rear.
“What’s there?” breathed Nellie, when she judged the figure was far enough away not to overhear.
“The vault the office things are kept in,” Harriet whispered softly. “I guess he’s going to get the envelopes in there, too.”
Nellie pressed her arm to remind her against unnecessary words. But she was thinking triumphant thoughts.
Vault! Oh, boy! Steel walls; steel door — better than any prison cell!
She stole after the figure. Harriet hesitated, then crept after her, scared to death of the wraithlike figure, but even more frightened to stay alone. The two saw the man working at the vault door. It was so dark, and the figure was so perfectly blended with the darkness, that they wouldn’t have seen it if they hadn’t known just where to look.
Nellie was wondering how he expected to open the vault. How would he know the combination?
Then she heard a slight creak as the door swung open, and she figured she had the answer. And at the same time, an almost certain answer for the blackmailing case.
This must be Beall himself. No one else could get the door open so easily and quickly. It was a regular safe door. An outsider would have to blow or drill it.
Beall himself, suddenly worried about the envelope; Beall, who had sent Smathers to that house of Death with an envelope containing only blank papers—
This thought ran against a wall of uncertainty. Why would Beall, in blackmailing Farquar, feel that he had to get rid of Farquar’s veteran clerk?
While she was thinking so furiously, Nellie was still moving toward the vault where the office supplies were kept. She could see the white blur of the package of envelopes the shadow-figure had set down outside the vault. She could see the door, half open.
The plan was as simple as it was certain. All she had to do was bang that door shut on the man inside. That solid steel door.
Then they had the murderer of Smathers and the key to the whole affair they were working on. And Nellie, singlehanded, would have wound it all up.
They reached the wall near the door. Nellie crept along that. She could hear the man inside the vault, rustling through papers. There were probably many boxes of the envelopes. But, methodically, he meant to collect them all.
She got to the door. Harriet was right behind her. Nellie could feel her trembling, and she felt like trembling a little herself.
Everything seemed to be going well. In a second they’d have their villain trapped. Nothing could possibly happen to upset the plan. Yet she felt cold chills running up and down her back. The vast, black expanse of the general office seemed like a great tomb in its desertion and eerie silence.
Nellie’s hand went to the door to slam it—
It was as if she had thrust it into a bear trap that suddenly clamped shut on her wrist!
Crushing fingers gripped her. A powerful arm jerked her forward. She half fell the length of the little steel room and smashed against steel filing cabinets. She had half turned when she was smashed back again by Harriet’s hurtling body. There was an almost animal snarl of triumph from the door.
The shadow-figure! The killer! He had known they were there, after all; had known and baited a trap by letting them think they had him bottled in that same trap.
Nellie’s little gun spat once, twice. But the bullets only flattened on steel as the vault door swung ponderously on them. It clanged shut. And then there was the silence of death in their ears!
CHAPTER XI
Brother and Sister
Nellie’s tiny flashlight rayed out. She flipped an electric switch and a single unshaded globe bathed the vault in yellow light. They could hear no sound from outside, but Nellie knew the shadowy figure was well on his way to escape, with all the incriminating envelopes in his possession.
The vault was crowded. There were filing cases in which the more valuable of the firm’s correspondence was kept; there were boxes of paper and carbon paper; there were quart bottles of ink — all the paraphernalia needed to run a big office.
Terribly crowded. There was hardly room for the two girls, even though Harriet wasn’t taking up much room at the moment. She was flattened back against the filing cases with her eyes as big as saucers and her face white with fear.
She tried to talk big.
“All we have to d-do is wait till morning and someone will open the vault. They open it at eight thirty, as soon as the office is filled.”
But Nellie shook her head.
“No use kidding ourselves,” she said. “They’ll open it in the morning, all right. But they won’t find us. They’ll just find a couple of bodies! We’ll suffocate in here in an hour or less.”
For Nellie knew something about the cubic feet of air necessary to sustain life in a human for a given length of time. And there were precious few cubic feet in here.
“We’ve got to get out right away,” she said.
“How?”
“You would ask that,” said Nellie. “I don’t know how. I only know we have to.” She stared tensely around the vault. “Say, they use a lot of sulphuric acid in making paper, don’t they?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Harriet. “Why?”
“Sulphuric eats through metal. If we could pour some around the combination knob of—”
“There’s no acid in here,” said Harriet. “They keep only office stuff in here. The acid would be down in the plant.”