He stopped, and looked at Dorrie as a farmer might look at the sunshine as it ripens his corn. 'You done it, dearie,' he said. 'You got us the nicest little set-up there ever was, all ready for us to step into.'
'What about my own home?' Dorrie objected.
'We'll shut it up, temporary. We'll come home to it in about three months, maybe.'
Dorrie did not like the idea of leaving London. Her face showed it. 'What if Flo don't want to go to Granchester?' she queried.'Flo is going to Granchester, and so are you.' So it was settled. This was a matter of business, and the chairman of the firm had made his decision.
7
The first Granchester XXC job was found shortly after nine o'clock one Saturday morning in early April. Chief Inspector Martineau had just settled down in his own office to read of the previous night's reported crimes in A Division when the internal-line telephone rang. It was the Information Room calling.
'At nine-o-five hours, sir,' the clerk said. 'A nine-nine-nine call from a John Hendry, partner in Hendry Brothers, the wholesale tobacconists in Tite Street. Somebody has been in during the night and opened the safe.'
'How?'
'Oxy-acetylene, he thinks, sir. An oxygen cylinder was left behind.'
Martineau at once became oppressed by the knowledge of much trouble in the near future. That mob! They had been getting their oxygen from Granchester all the time. Which indicated that at least one member was a Granchester man. Some Granchester bird of prey had come home to roost, bringing a little flock of his own species with him. Hearing of this, somebody at Scotland Yard would be laughing. 'Now,' they would be saying. 'Now will they make some inquiries about those cylinders?'
'Did they get away with much?' the chief inspector asked.
'Two thousand three hundred, Hendry says.'
Martineau nodded to himself. He said: 'All right. Attention by me.' Then he put down the telephone, rose, and reached for his hat.
There was a police patrol car already standing in Tite Street when Martineau's car arrived at the Hendry place. The front door of the premises was closed but not locked. There was a sign which read 'Walk in', and Martineau did so, followed by Sergeant Devery and Detective Constable Cassidy. Inside, it became evident that other members of Hendry's staff had arrived. Two young men wearing light brown overall coats were standing behind a counter. They looked excited and expectant, and by no means downcast. Obviously it was none of their money which had been stolen.
Martineau did not need to give his name and occupation. One of the men said: 'Mr. Hendry's upstairs, with two Z-car bobbies.'
'Has the building been searched?' the policeman wanted to know.
'Not as I know of. Not since I came in.'
'Better stay down here till I call you, Cassidy.'
Cassidy said: 'Yes, sir.' In this instance it seemed scarcely necessary for a man to stay on the ground floor, but routine was routine. There had been cases, many of them, where a belated thief had been found hiding on premises long after it appeared that he had gone.
Martineau and Devery went upstairs.
The upper portion of the premises had two rooms, a big one and a small one. The walls of the big room were lined with cartons of cigarettes, tobacco, and accessories of the trade. The smaller room was the office. The safe was in the office, and in the office also were two motor-patrol constables and a small, sharp-faced man of fifty or so. The three of them were looking at the safe and talking. Taken by surprise, the two policemen straightened themselves guiltily when they saw Martineau. It was not often that the head of the divisional C.I.D. was the first detective on the scene of a crime. Themselves the first officers to arrive, they had not actually done anything. They moved aside, in the hope that they would escape his notice entirely.
But they did not. The first policeman on the scene of a crime may be an important witness.
'What have you to tell me?' they were asked.
'Er, nothing, sir,' one man replied. 'We've only just got here.'
'You have no comment to make?'
'No, sir.'
'All right. One of you take the front door and the other take the back, until the place has been searched.'
The men departed. Martineau turned to the sharp-faced man. 'Mr. Hendry?'
The man nodded. 'That's me.'
'It is routine to search the whole premises in a case like this, on the off-chance of finding something. Have you any objection?'
Hendry's gaze shifted. He took a moment to think. 'No, of course not,' he said.
Martineau noticed the hesitation, but did not comment on it. He told Devery to take Cassidy and search the place from basement to roof. Then he turned his attention to the safe. One glance confirmed his fears. This job looked like the work of the XXC mob which had recently been operating so successfully in London.
In the first place, the selection of premises to be entered was typicaclass="underline" a firm too small to go to the expense of employing a watchman, but big enough to provide good pickings. The safe was right, too. It looked as if it had been a good safe, but a fairly old one. The cuts in the door-this one had taken five-looked like expert work. And an oxygen cylinder had been left behind.
Martineau went to the window, which was curtainless, with frosted glass in the lower panes. He stood on a chair and looked closely at the wall above the window. There was the row of tiny holes which he had expected to find; nine inches above the window, and continuing a foot or so on either side. That was another mark of the XXC mob.
Devery reappeared. He said: 'Excuse me,' and walked to a door in the corner of the office. He opened it to reveal a small washroom. 'I thought this would be it,' he said, and entered. Martineau followed, to find the sergeant standing at a small sash window which was nearly, but not quite, closed. He raised the window and looked out. Three feet below the window, a little to one side, was a flat-topped wall which protected the gable of a single-storey outhouse. On the window-sill were a few bright steel filings.
As Martineau joined him, Devery pointed. 'Somebody gave him a hand up there,' he said. 'He walked along the gutter, got on to this wall, and came to the window.'
Martineau looked at the filings, and at the window catch. It was of the screw type, its bolt less than a quarter of an inch thick. It had been sawn through, probably with a hacksaw blade.
He took a cellophane evidence envelope from his pocket and gave it to Devery. 'See how many of the filings you can collect,' he said. 'They may come in handy when we lay hands on the man who used the hacksaw.'
Devery took the envelope. 'Downstairs,' he said, 'the front door has a good mortise lock. The back door has a big old-fashioned lock, and bolts top and bottom. It's locked now, and the key is missing. There are traces of oil on the lock and the bolts, and the bolts are drawn back. According to the fellows downstairs, that door hasn't been opened for years. It was locked with the key in the lock, and both bolts on.'
Martineau nodded. 'He got in here, went downstairs to the back door, and oiled the lock and the bolts because they were more or less rusted up. When his mates arrived with the XXC he'd have the door ready to open, and he'd be able to bolt it after they entered. When they cleared off, he wouldn't be able to bolt it, but he could lock it and throw the key away somewhere. It's typical of this mob. When they're inside a place they're locked in, and there's no sign that they are in. And when they leave, too, they generally leave it so that the man on the beat can't tell there's been a break-in.'