On Secret Service. Taft William Nelson

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      "I understand that you are the only man who can open them," said the detective. "Suppose we look into this one," as he stopped, as if by accident, before Vault No. 6.

      Cochrane, without a word, bent forward and commenced to twirl the combination. A few spins to the right, a few to the left, back to the right, to the left once more – and he pulled at the heavy door expectantly. But it failed to budge.

      Again he bent over the combination, spinning it rapidly. Still the door refused to open.

      "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to help me with this, Superintendent," Cochrane said, finally. "It doesn't seem to work, somehow."

      But, under Bosbyshell's manipulation, the door swung back almost instantly.

      "Nothing wrong with the combination," commented Preston.

      Drummond smiled. "Has the combination been changed recently?" he asked.

      "Not for the past month," Bosbyshell replied. "We usually switch all of them six times a year, just as a general precaution – but this has been the same for the past few weeks. Ever since the fifteenth of last month, to be precise."

      Inside the vault Drummond found that, as Preston had stated, the door to the grille had been taken from its hinges, to facilitate the work of the men who had weighed the gold, and had not been replaced.

      "Where are the gold bars?" asked the detective. "The place looks like it had been well looted."

      "They were all taken out this morning, to be carefully weighed," was Preston's reply.

      "I'd like to see some of them stacked up there along the side of the grille, if it isn't too much trouble."

      "Surely," said Bosbyshell. "I'll have the men bring them in at once."

      As soon as the superintendent had left the room, Drummond requested that the door of the grille be placed in its usual position, and Cochrane set it up level with the floor, leaning against the supports at the side.

      "Is that the way it always stays?" inquired the Secret Service man.

      "No, sir, but it's pretty heavy to handle, and I thought you just wanted to get a general idea of things."

      "I'd like to see it in place, if you don't mind. Here, I'll help you with it – but we better slip our coats off, for it looks like a man's-sized job," and he removed his coat as he spoke.

      After Cochrane had followed his example, the two of them hung the heavy door from its hinges and stepped back to get the effect. But Drummond's eyes were fixed, not upon the entrance to the grille, but on the middle of Cochrane's back, and, when the opportunity offered an instant later, he shifted his gaze to the waist of the elder man's trousers. Something that he saw there caused the shadow of a smile to flit across his face.

      "Thanks," he said. "That will do nicely," and he made a quick gesture to Preston that he would like to have Cochrane leave the vault.

      "Very much obliged, Mr. Cochrane," said the director. "We won't bother you any more. You might ask those men to hurry in with the bars, if you will."

      And the weigher, pausing only to secure his coat, left the vault.

      "Why all the stage setting?" inquired Preston. "You don't suspect…"

      "I don't suspect a thing," Drummond smiled, searching for his own coat, "beyond the fact that the solution to the mystery is so simple as to be almost absurd. By the way, have you noticed those scratches on the bars of the grille, about four feet from the floor?"

      "No, I hadn't," admitted the director. "But what of them? These vaults aren't new, you know, and I dare say you'd find similar marks on the grille bars in any of the others."

      "I hope not," Drummond replied, grimly, "for that would almost certainly mean a shortage of gold in other sections of the Mint. Incidentally, has all the rest of the gold been weighed?"

      "Every ounce of it."

      "Nothing missing?"

      "Outside of the seven hundred pounds from this vault, not a particle."

      "Good – then I'll be willing to lay a small wager that you can't find the duplicates of these scratches anywhere else in the Mint." And Drummond smiled at the director's perplexity.

      When the men arrived with a truck loaded with gold bars, they stacked them – at the superintendent's direction – along the side of the grille nearest the vault entrance.

      "Is that the way they are usually arranged?" inquired Drummond.

      "Yes – the grille bars are of tempered steel and the openings between them are too small to permit anyone to put his hand through. Therefore, as we are somewhat pressed for space, we stack them up right along the outer wall of the grille and then work back. It saves time and labor in bringing them in."

      "Is this the way the door of the grille ordinarily hangs?"

      Bosbyshell inspected it a moment before he replied.

      "Yes," he said. "It appears to be all right. It was purposely made to swing clear of the floor and the ceiling so that it might not become jammed. The combination and the use of the seal prevents its being opened by anyone who has no business in the grille."

      "And the seal was intact when you came in yesterday afternoon?"

      "It was."

      "Thanks," said Drummond; "that was all I wanted to know," and he made his way upstairs with a smile which seemed to say that his vacation in the Maine woods had not been indefinitely postponed.

      Once back in the director's office, the government operative asked permission to use the telephone, and, calling the Philadelphia office of the Secret Service, requested that three agents be assigned to meet him down town as soon as possible.

      "Have you a record of the home address of the people employed in the Mint?" Drummond inquired of the director, as he hung up the receiver.

      "Surely," said Preston, producing a typewritten list from the drawer of his desk.

      "I'll borrow this for a while, if I may. I'll probably be back with it before three o'clock – and bring some news with me, too," and the operative was out of the room before Preston could frame a single question.

      As a matter of fact, the clock in the director's office pointed to two-thirty when Drummond returned, accompanied by the three men who had been assigned to assist him.

      "Have you discovered anything?" Preston demanded.

      "Let's have Cochrane up here first," Drummond smiled. "I can't be positive until I've talked to him. You might have the superintendent in, too. He'll be interested in developments, I think."

      Bosbyshell was the first to arrive, and, at Drummond's request, took up a position on the far side of the room. As soon as he had entered, two of the other Secret Service men ranged themselves on the other side of the doorway and, the moment Cochrane came in, closed the door behind him.

      "Cochrane," said Drummond, "what did you do with the seven hundred pounds of gold that you took from Vault No. Six during the past few weeks?"

      "What – what – " stammered the weigher.

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