I asking too much?” Fletcher said.
“Maybe not,” Maury said. He pulled on the white gloves from the briefcase Sal had prepared for him, then turned back to the safe.
Even though it was digital and therefore presumably modernized in every respect, the safe still had the cumbersome look of an old-time object. In height, it came up to Maury’s waist. It wasn’t particularly wide, but it ran deep in length and appeared to have plenty of storage room inside. The lock apparatus sat separately on top of the storage section and seemed to be attached to the lower part by a series of internal wires. On the lock apparatus’s face, there were rows of numbers on the right side, three numbers across and four down, and on the left side, there was a large dial.
“What’d the safe look like when you came in here at whatever time this morning?” Maury said to Fletcher. “Closed up like this?
“No,” Fletcher said. “The safe door was open, and the safe itself was empty. I’m the one who locked it up again.”
“You locked it up so that I could try opening it myself?”
“I imagined the whole procedure for the reason you just analyzed a minute ago. Maybe you can identify the type of person who broke in.”
Maury examined the safe’s face some more. “The dial works clockwise?” He asked Fletcher.
“Don’t all safes work clockwise?”
“Fletcher, “I said. “Maury’s the expert you hired. Just answer the questions. Never mind the editorials.”
“Clockwise, yes,” Fletcher said.
Maury put his right hand on the dial and paused. He looked like he was psyching himself for action.
“The way you’re touching the dial,” Fletcher said to Maury, “I get the idea you intend to turn it counterclockwise. I already told you it goes clockwise.”
Maury spoke without turning around. “Crang, tell your friend the next time he opens his mouth, I’m out the door.”
“You heard the man, Fletcher,” I said.
“I’m just a little apprehensive….” Fletcher said, his voice trailing off.
Maury bent over and picked up Sal’s black briefcase. For an instant I thought he was about to ditch the job. But all he did was reach into the briefcase and take out a medium-sized rubber mallet.
He turned back to the safe, holding the mallet in his left hand. With his right hand, Maury gave the dial a quick, hard, counterclockwise twist. That was followed without pause by a smart whack on top of the safe with the rubber mallet. Then, just as smartly, Maury turned the dial in the correct direction, which was to say, clockwise. After that, he paused, more for dramatic effect, I thought, than anything else. He pulled gently on the dial, and very slowly, the door swung open.
For several moments neither Fletcher nor I spoke. Personally, I was struck a little dumb by how effortlessly Maury had finessed the safe.
“Very impressive, Mr. Samuels,” Fletcher said. “Please tell us how you did that.”
Maury turned around, not a touch of self-congratulation in his expression. “Inside here,” he said, indicating the apparatus on the top of the safe, “there’s a pin that locks a sliding bolt. When I gave the dial a counterclockwise turn, it freed up the pin to move. Then I smacked the mallet on top of the safe, and that moved the pin for no more than a split second. So when I turned the dial clockwise, the pin was down, the sliding bolt moved, and the dial turned the whole way around, which, as you guys can see, opened the safe.”
“Totally diabolical, Maury,” I said when he finished his explanation. “Who taught you the trick?”
“Freddie Biscuit showed me a couple months ago,” Maury said. “It was just him and me shooting the breeze about robbing in general, me the burglar, Biscuit the ace safecracker. He told me about the mallet gimmick on a certain kind of digital safe. All theoretical, you understand.”
I remembered Freddie Biscuit from the help he’d given me with a client a year earlier. He was very small, not more than five feet tall, sensible and conscientious, loved to drink Johnny Walker Black.
“Biscuit,” I said, “a very agreeable guy.”
“Best person on safes I ever saw,” Maury said.
“Does this mean we have our man?” Fletcher said. He sounded excited but cautious. “The one who robbed my safe? Could it be this Biscuit person?”
“Not a chance,” Maury said. “But if you want, I can ask Biscuit what he’s heard on the street. Biscuit’s a guy, he keeps himself up to speed on that kind of thing.”
“You think the job on my safe was done by a professional?”
“I’m leaning that way.”
“No matter who opened the safe,” I said, “the other factor we’ve got to consider is how the guy got into the store. I assume the doors were locked?”
“Dear lord, of course they were,” Fletcher said.
“How many keys to the store you got in circulation?”
“None in what you call circulation, Crang,” Fletcher said. “I personally have two keys. One on the key ring I carry at all times, the other in a drawer at home. The same goes for my assistant. Charlie has two keys. We’re meticulous about security.”
“How long has he been your assistant?”
“She has been with me the last four years. Charlie is short for Charlotte. Charlotte Watson. I’d trust her with my life.”
“Charlie. The woman I see sometimes when Annie and I drop by the store? She runs the computer side, if I’m not mistaken, always sitting at a keyboard?”
Fletcher nodded. “And she deals with the telephone clients.”
“What about the other people I sometimes see behind the counter?”
“Part-timers. They come and go.”
“Comings and goings I understand, but how do they get into the store?”
“They work either when Charlie’s on duty or I am. We let them in and lock up behind them when we close. And Crang, you can stop asking questions about keys. There are just four, and none of them has ever gone missing. So stop speculating about last night’s burglar getting into the store with a key.”
I looked at Maury. “Any more questions we need to ask?”
“Definitely one,” Maury said to me. “What we have to check is did the guy breaking in leave any signs of how he got past the locks on the front door or the back.”
Both of us looked at Fletcher.
“Nothing’s broken, if that’s what you mean. There’s no indication of somebody smashing their way in.”
“There’s more subtle stuff I got to take a good look at, mainly
