The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mystery of the Iron Box, by Samuel Epstein and Beryl Epstein

THE MYSTERY OF THE IRON BOX

KEN HOLT Mystery Stories

THE SECRET OF SKELETON ISLAND

THE RIDDLE OF THE STONE ELEPHANT

THE BLACK THUMB MYSTERY

THE CLUE OF THE MARKED CLAW

THE CLUE OF THE COILED COBRA

THE SECRET OF HANGMAN’S INN

THE MYSTERY OF THE IRON BOX

THE CLUE OF THE PHANTOM CAR

THE MYSTERY OF THE GALLOPING HORSE

THE MYSTERY OF THE GREEN FLAME

THE MYSTERY OF THE GRINNING TIGER

THE MYSTERY OF THE VANISHING MAGICIAN

THE MYSTERY OF THE SHATTERED GLASS

THE MYSTERY OF THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

THE MYSTERY OF GALLOWS CLIFF

Ken stifled a gasp. All over the table lay crisp counterfeit ten-dollar bills.

A KEN HOLT Mystery

THE MYSTERY OF

THE IRON BOX

By Bruce Campbell

GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY

BRUCE CAMPBELL

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

THE MYSTERY OF THE IRON BOX

CHAPTER I

A COLD DRAFT

The loud-speaker’s bellow died away and there was an answering stir in the big terminal building of the airport. People began to move toward the wide windows that overlooked the landing field. Soon there was a thick wall of humanity packed against the rail that protected the glass.

“Too jammed up here. Let’s go outside.” The young man who spoke was slender and slightly more than medium height. Over a neat gray flannel suit he wore a tan trench coat which hung well from broad shoulders. His black hair looked even blacker than usual in the brilliant glare of the well-lighted room.

His companion towered over him by almost half a foot. A trench coat, also tan, dropped from massive shoulders that hinted of tremendous power. He lifted his left hand to look at his wrist watch. “On time,” he said. Then, using his shoulders as a wedge, he gently forced a path to the doors. His flaming red hair stood out above the crowd like a beacon.

Outside, in the crisp December afternoon, the air was filled with the heavy throb of plane motors. Overhead, a silver ship was wheeling into the wind, landing gear down.

The loud-speaker came to life again. “Flight two-oh-six, from Paris,” it intoned, “now landing.”

Sandy Allen, the huge redhead, touched his friend’s arm. “Feels good to have him coming home for Christmas, huh?”

Ken Holt grinned briefly, his eyes steadily riveted on the plane now zooming toward them down the paved strip. “And how!”

“If I had any sense,” Sandy said, “I’d fade out on an occasion like this. It isn’t often that you and your father—”

“If you had any sense,” Ken interrupted, “you’d remember that if it weren’t for the oversized Allen clan I might not even—”

The deafening roar of engines cut off the rest of his sentence, but Sandy’s face had already begun to redden. He could take almost anything except gratitude, and he hated to be reminded of the circumstances in which he and Ken had first met. Ken’s father had been in desperate danger then, and the entire Allen family—Pop, Bert, Sandy, and Mom—had taken part in the frightening hours of action that followed their meeting.

Afterward, Ken Holt, motherless for years, had left his boarding school at the Allens’ insistence to make his home with them. Mom Allen treated him like another son, and Pop Allen had given Ken a part in the operation of the Allen-owned newspaper, the Brentwood Advance.

Ken and Sandy had shared many adventures since then; had encountered many exciting and dangerous puzzles which they had solved together. They worked as a team, both in unraveling mysteries and in reporting them afterward. Ken’s stories and Sandy’s photographs had been eagerly accepted not only by the Advance, but also by Global News, the gigantic news-gathering agency for which Ken’s father, Richard Holt, worked.

Ken glanced up at Sandy’s flushed face. “Relax, chum,” he said. “I won’t say another word about how much I owe—”

Sandy clamped his huge hand over Ken’s mouth. “I’ll say you won’t.” He grinned. “In return for your silence—something we rarely get from you,” he went on, “I’ll let you in on a secret.” He removed his hand and reached into his pocket.

“What secret?” Ken asked suspiciously.

“You remember that last little mess we got into—the one Pop called The Secret of Hangman’s Inn?”

“I’d just as soon not remember that,” Ken said.

“Have it your own way.” Sandy had pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “In that case you won’t want your half of this check from Global for the yarn and the pictures we sent them.”

Ken grabbed for the check and looked at it. “What do you know!” he murmured. “A hundred and fifty dollars! Granger must be getting soft in the head.”

“Granger,” Sandy said loftily, “is a top-flight news editor. He appreciates the remarkable quality of my pictures. He’d probably make it two hundred if he didn’t have to wade through that stuff you call writing.”

Ken handed the check back to Sandy. “Pictures,” he said, “are something anybody can take. But writing—real writing—” Suddenly he broke off. “There’s Dad!”

Richard Holt had just stepped out of the plane, first in the line of passengers descending the stairway. He was a slender figure in a rumpled topcoat, with a brief case clamped under one arm. The other arm raised in a swift salute as he spotted them.

“Hi!” he shouted.

“Dad!” Ken’s answering shout carried far across the field. His father spent most of his time in distant quarters of the globe, ferreting out the stories that had made him famous. His visits home, brief and infrequent, were always exciting. The Allens enjoyed them as much as Ken himself did, and this year they were all particularly pleased at the thought of having Richard Holt at hand over the holidays.

“We’ll meet you outside the customs office,” Ken called, as his father drew nearer.

Richard Holt nodded, smiling.

“Come on!” Ken said to Sandy, and they turned back through the crowd. “It won’t take him long to clear customs. They know him by now.”

Twenty minutes later Richard Holt came through the barrier to where they were waiting for him. He dropped two bags and his brief case and threw an arm around each of the boys. Then he stood back a pace to look them over.

“Are you two as good as you look?” he demanded, grinning widely.

“We’re even better,” Sandy assured him, scooping up both the bags. “You look O.K. too.”

“You look great, Dad,” Ken said.

“I am. And glad to be home too.”

“This is our first Christmas together in three years.” Ken groped for the brief case, but his eyes never left his father’s face.

“We’ll make it a good one, son.”

Sandy began to lead the way to the parking lot. “If food will help,” he said, “I think you can count on Mom. Wait until you see the turkey she’s got!”

“With cranberry sauce?” Richard Holt asked.

Sandy nodded. “Also with dressing, sweet potatoes, plum pudding—”

“Stop!” Ken’s father commanded. “Let us waste no more time talking. On to Brentwood! That is,” he corrected himself, as he came to a halt beside the boys’ red convertible, “on to Brentwood after a quick stop at my apartment. I want to get rid of some of this luggage and change my clothes. I’ll sit in the back seat with the bags, if you don’t mind,” he went on, “so I can be sorting out the things I want to take with me. It’ll save time.”

Sandy started the motor and the car slid smoothly into the line of traffic heading for New York City. Forty-five minutes later he pulled to a stop before the building in which Ken’s father maintained his seldom-used apartment.

“Give me five minutes,” Richard Holt said.

“Shall I carry your bags up, Dad?” Ken asked.

“I’ve got them.” The correspondent swung one in each hand. “They’re considerably lighter than they were.” He nodded toward a heap of packages on the back seat. “Don’t go snooping in those things while I’m gone.”

“Word of honor,” Ken said, grinning.

Richard Holt was back at the car again in six minutes flat. “O.K., men,” he said, sliding into the front seat beside Ken. “Head for Brentwood—and don’t spare the horsepower.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Sandy let the car move forward. A moment later he was heading southward toward the Holland Tunnel and New Jersey across the Hudson River.

“Now,” Mr. Holt said, settling himself comfortably, “you can begin to tell me what Mom’s preparing for tonight. After all, the Christmas turkey is still two days away. She doesn’t expect me to fast until then, I hope.”

“Not quite,” Sandy assured him. “For tonight she’s got—”

Several hours later Richard Holt shoved his chair back from the Allen dinner table and sighed luxuriously. “Sandy didn’t exaggerate a bit,” he assured Mom Allen. “My only worry now is recovering my appetite in time for the turkey.”

Mom’s eyes twinkled at him. “One good way of working off a meal is to wash the dishes, Richard.”

“Now, Mom,” Pop protested. “Dick’s a guest.”

“I always think of him as a member of the family,” Mom said.

“Thank you, Mom,” Richard Holt said. “It’s an honor—even if it does make me eligible for dishwashing.”

Mom stood up. “Then that’s settled. I’ll just leave everything in your capable masculine hands, while I run down the street to visit with my sister for a while.”

Bert grinned. “That’s where Mom’s hoarding her presents,” he explained to Richard Holt. “She doesn’t trust us.”

“I have my reasons,” Mom assured him as she departed.

Sandy washed, Ken dried, and Bert stacked the dishes in their places in the cupboard. Pop and Ken’s father stood on the side lines to give what Pop called their “invaluable advice.” Within half an hour the job was done.

As Ken flipped his dish towel over the rack, he said, “Do you want some paper and ribbon and stuff for wrapping up those packages you brought, Dad? We’ve got plenty.”

“Fine,” his father said. “I was just thinking they didn’t look very festive in the old newspapers I’ve got wadded around them.”

Pop took his pipe out of his mouth. “You know, Dick, we Allens follow the custom of opening presents on Christmas Eve. Hope this isn’t opposed to your own tradition.”

“It suits me fine.” Mr. Holt smiled. “Means we can sleep later on Christmas morning—and work up more strength for the turkey.”

Ken brought out the cardboard box of wrappings he had found in a closet. “Want me to bring the packages down from your room, Dad?” he asked, with a great show of innocence.

“Not on your life,” his father told him. “You can just wait until tomorrow night to see what’s in them.” He started for the stairs himself.

“I’ll give you a hand,” Bert offered, when Richard Holt had returned with the packages.

“Don’t let him,” Sandy advised. “It’s a trick. He just wants to poke around.”

The foreign correspondent grinned. “I need help, all right. I’m no good at this.” He picked up the largest of the various bundles. “But this one is yours, Bert, so don’t touch it.”

“I’ll wrap that one,” Pop offered.

“Thanks.” Mr. Holt hefted two parcels of almost equal size, and finally handed one to Sandy. “That’s Pop’s—and don’t drop it.” He handed the other to Bert. “That’s Sandy’s—and that had better not be dropped either.”

Ken eyed the two packages still on the table. “Which is Mom’s? I’ll do hers.”

“Let that wait for last,” his father said. “I want a conference on it. In the meantime—” He took up the smaller of the two remaining parcels and set to work on it himself.

When they were all finished, Richard Holt began to tear the heavy newspaper wrapping from the final parcel. “Take a look at this, will you?” he asked. “If you don’t think Mom will like it, I’ll get her something else tomorrow. I don’t feel very satisfied with it myself.”

The last sheet of paper fell away to disclose a small iron box, about eight inches long, four inches wide, and four inches deep. The surface was heavily ornamented with scrollwork, and its considerable weight was evident from the way Ken’s father held it.

“I thought,” he said half-apologetically, “that she could line it with velvet or something and use it for a jewel box. But I don’t know much about such things. Maybe you can suggest something else she’d rather have.”

“She’ll love it,” Pop said decisively. “She loves old things—antiques. And this sure looks old.”

“I think it’s old enough,” Richard Holt said. “Several hundred years, I’d guess. It was probably made originally to be used as a sort of home safe-deposit box.” His finger pressed one of the curlicues on the front of the box and the lid sprang open.

“Hey!” Sandy exclaimed admiringly. “A secret catch!”

“May I try it?” Bert asked. “Beautiful workmanship,” he muttered, as his fingers explored the front. Finally he found the proper curlicue and again the lid flew open.

Sandy tried it next, and then Pop and then Ken.

“No doubt about it,” Sandy said finally. “Mom’ll be crazy about it. She likes secrets as much as she likes antiques.”

Ken, about to hand the box back to his father, saw that Richard Holt’s hands were occupied with lighting a cigarette. So he put the box, instead, on the platform of Mrs. Allen’s kitchen scale, near at hand on the shelf. The indicator of the scale swung sharply over.

“Look,” Sandy said. “Four and a half pounds even. It weighs a lot for such a little thing.”

“They didn’t skimp on materials in those days,” Pop said. “Where’d you get hold of it, Dick?”

“One of the porters in the Global office in Rome asked me if I wanted to buy it,” the foreign correspondent answered. “I knew he’d been selling some of his family heirlooms—he has a hard time getting along—and I wanted to help him out. I persuaded myself at the time that it would do for Mom’s present, but later I had some qualms about it. I thought maybe I should have shopped around, instead of just taking something that fell into my hands. But if you think it’s all right—”

He cleared a space on the kitchen table, spread out a sheet of wrapping paper, and reached for the box. As he picked it up, it slipped from his fingers, struck the edge of the cupboard a glancing blow, and crashed to the floor. The lid sprang open.

Sandy and Ken both dived for it as Richard Holt muttered, “That was stupid of me.”

“It can’t be hurt,” Pop said. “It’s made too solidly.”

Mr. Holt pressed the lid into place, but when he took his hand away it opened again. He tried a second time. Once more the lid refused to stay closed.

Five heads bent over to study the tiny mechanism.

Bert touched the little spring catch. “That’s what’s wrong,” he said. “The little lever is bent out of shape.”

“Maybe I can fix it,” Sandy offered.

“Better not try,” Pop cautioned. “An expensive antique like that—”

“It wasn’t expensive, I assure you,” Richard Holt said. “It—”

“Never mind,” Pop said. “It’s an antique and I don’t think anybody but Sam Morris ought to touch it. He’s the best jeweler in town. He can fix anything.”

Sandy offered to telephone Morris to see if he could take care of the job that evening. When he returned from the hall he reported that the jeweler was just then closing his shop, but that he had promised to repair the box the next day despite the rush of orders that always claimed his attention on Christmas Eve.

“So let’s just get it out of sight before Mom comes home,” Pop said. “Then you boys can take it down to him first thing in the morning.”

“How’s this?” Bert asked, dumping an assortment of Christmas seals out of a shoe box. “You can put it in here.”

When the little box was inside, he snapped a rubber band around the cardboard container and scrawled on the cover “Mom—Don’t peek!”

“And we’ll leave it right here,” Bert said, placing it in full sight on the sideboard.

“What’s the idea?” Richard Holt wanted to know.

Pop grinned. “Just teasing her.”

“She’ll try to wheedle a hint out of us—without ever asking a direct question,” Bert said.

“But she won’t look inside,” Sandy added.

“Sounds like some form of torture to me,” Ken’s father said.

“It is,” Sandy admitted, grinning. “But it’s an old Allen custom—only usually we’re on the receiving end.”

But Mom, when she returned a little later, refused to give them the satisfaction of a single question. She did walk past the sideboard several times, but they could never catch her looking directly at the box. And once, when she had to move it aside to make room for her morning’s setting of rolls, she seemed not even to notice that the shoe box was a stranger in her kitchen.

Richard Holt grinned at the Allens, and they grinned sheepishly back at him. “If there’s any teasing going on around here,” he said quietly, “I don’t think we’re doing it.”

“Did I hear you say you wanted a cheese sandwich?” Mom said. Her eyes were twinkling.

“Eh—why, yes, I believe I could manage one—even after all that dinner,” Richard Holt admitted.

Some time later, as Sandy crawled into bed and snapped of the light at his elbow, he murmured his usual last request to Ken. “Don’t forget to open the window.”

Ken slid the frame up several inches and shivered as the cold air struck him. “It’s snowing,” he said.

There was no answer. Sandy was already asleep.

But Ken was still wide awake ten minutes later. He turned over and tried counting sheep, but the ruse didn’t work.

“Serves me right,” he muttered, “for eating that cheese sandwich.” He turned over once more.

When another ten minutes had gone by he slid out from under the covers.

“A good dull book—that’s what I need,” Ken decided. “And Pop’s got plenty of them in his library downstairs.”

In his robe and slippers he cautiously opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the silent hallway. As he moved toward the stairway he slid one hand along the wall to feel for the hall-light switch.

Suddenly he stopped. A cold draft was swirling around his feet. He was just deciding that he hadn’t pulled the bedroom door tight shut when something else caught his attention. Below him, in the darkness, a faint click sounded.

And almost immediately the draft around his feet died away.

Ken’s hand moved swiftly then. His fingers found the switch and the hall light snapped on. Ken took the two descending steps to the turn in a single quiet leap. But before he could start down the rest of the flight he heard another click from downstairs, and felt another surge of cold air around his feet. A third mysterious click sounded just as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

Ken snapped on all three switches on the wall of the lower hallway. The hallway itself, the living room, and the sun porch all became brightly illuminated.

But the light revealed nothing to his searching eyes. The rooms looked just as they had looked some time before, when the Allens and Holts had gone upstairs to bed. He went through the dining room, into the kitchen, and into the pantry, turning on all the lights as he went. But nowhere was there any sign of disturbance, or of an intruder who might have been responsible for those clicking sounds.

Ken shook his head. “Was I dreaming? I certainly thought I heard something down here. And it sounded like the front door opening and closing.”

Finally he turned off all the lights, picked up his book, and started back toward the stairs. But at the foot of them he stopped. That cold draft around his feet couldn’t have been a dream.

Ken moved swiftly to the front door. It was securely locked. He started for the kitchen door and then turned back.

He snapped on the front entrance light and pulled the curtain away from the glass panel in the door in order to peer out.

His breath caught sharply. Footprints stood out clearly on the snow-covered porch. And through the veil of falling snow, for as far as the light penetrated, he could see further footprints—on the porch steps and on the flagstone walk that crossed the lawn to the sidewalk.

CHAPTER II

A FIRE

There was a double line of the footprints—one set coming toward the door, one set going away from it. Ken stared at them for a long moment.

Suddenly he realized that he was clearly visible, through the glass, to anyone who might be outside the house. Quickly he dropped the curtain into place and with a swift gesture he fastened the safety chain above the lock on the door.

Then he ran to the back door and fastened the safety chain there.

The events of the past few moments were perfectly clear in his mind. He sat on the edge of the kitchen table and ran over them again, trying to explain them to himself as he went along.

He had stepped out of his bedroom and had almost immediately felt the draft of cold air. Probably the front door was just then being opened. The faint click he had heard an instant later had probably been the door being cased shut again—because after the click he had no longer felt the draft.

The intruder—and there must have been one, Ken concluded—had actually been inside the house. Because there had been two other clicks, and another draft of cold air, which must have occurred as the intruder opened the closed door again in order to escape into the darkness.

Ken was out of the kitchen in a flash, and on his knees before the front door. His fingers explored the surface of the polished floor. A few feet inside the threshold there were two patches of dampness.

Ken moved backward carefully, surveying every inch of the smooth surface. He found no further wet spots. It seemed clear that the intruder had taken one step into the hall and then retreated again, apparently frightened off by Ken’s own footsteps in the upper hall.

Ken made one more round of the house, and again assured himself that nothing had been taken or disturbed. His impulse to wake Sandy, and tell him about the whole business, died slowly away. There seemed no point in arousing Sandy, or anybody else, in the middle of the night.

Ken warmed a glass of milk for himself in the kitchen and drank it thoughtfully. Then he went back upstairs, with a book under his arm. But he didn’t turn on his small reading light. He lay on his back, staring up into the darkness and puzzling over the mysterious intruder, until he finally fell into a troubled sleep.

When he woke up, the clock said only seven-thirty, but he got out of bed immediately. The snow had stopped. The world outside was blanketed with white. It was dazzling to Ken’s eyes, even at that early hour of a winter morning.

Sandy opened one sleepy eye as Ken stripped off his pajamas and began to dress. “Where do you think you’re going at this time of night?”

“Downstairs,” Ken said. “And it’s morning. You’d better get up too. I’ve got something to tell you.”

Sandy closed his eye again. “Can’t you tell me here?”

“We’d wake everybody else up.” Ken tied his last shoelace. “Come on. It’s important.”

The seriousness in his voice brought Sandy to a sitting position. “O.K. Get some coffee going. I’ll be down before it’s ready.”

Ten minutes later, while the coffee percolator bubbled away unnoticed, Ken completed his story.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “what do you think? Were we almost burglarized—or weren’t we?”

Sandy set his empty orange-juice glass on the table. He was grinning widely. “I think,” he said, “you were asleep last night half a minute after I was. The whole thing was a dream. You should give up cheese sandwiches.”

Ken pointed to the rear door. “I didn’t dream the chain into place there. Or on the front door, either.”

Sandy shrugged. “Maybe you walked in your sleep.” But he got to his feet. “All right. Let’s go see these alleged footsteps on the front porch.”

They walked through the hall together. Sandy unfastened the chain, unlocked the door, and threw it wide open. The white sweep of snow over the porch was unmarked.

“I could have told you they wouldn’t show any more,” Ken pointed out. “It was still snowing then. Naturally they got covered up.”

Sandy was still smiling as he bent down to examine the outer face of the lock. When he straightened again he looked sober.

“Take a look,” he said quietly. “Those little scratches on the face plate were never made by keys. I’d say somebody’s been using a picklock in the dark.”

“I’d say it’s a good thing I did eat cheese sandwiches,” Ken said a moment later, as they closed the door. “If I hadn’t come downstairs the house might have been cleaned out. Do you think we ought to notify the police?” he asked, when they were back in the kitchen and Sandy was pouring out two cups of coffee.

“Let’s let Pop decide,” Sandy suggested. “And let’s not worry Mom about it as long as nothing was taken and no harm seems to have been done.”

“Right,” Ken agreed. “We can talk to Pop at the office.”

They ate some toast, drank their coffee, and then went outside to clear the walks and the driveway. By the time they had finished shoveling the snow it was almost nine o’clock and they were ready for some of the bacon and eggs Mom was preparing for Pop and Bert and Richard Holt and herself.

The phone rang while they were all at the table.

Bert went to answer it. “Global News wants Richard Holt,” he called from the hall.

Holt shoved his chair back with an impatient gesture. “I called the office from the apartment yesterday, just to let them know I was back,” he said. “I see now that was a mistake. If they’ve thought up an assignment that will cut me out of a turkey dinner—” He disappeared into the hall.

When he came back he was smiling. “Nothing serious,” he reported quickly, answering the question in Ken’s eyes. “I’m still on vacation. Global just wanted to let me know I didn’t close the apartment door carefully when I dashed in and out yesterday.”

“Global told you that?” Pop looked blank.

The correspondent grinned over a fresh cup of coffee. “I know it sounds confusing. Seems the apartment-house janitor found my door ajar when he was cleaning the hall this morning. He didn’t know I was back in the country, so he called Global News to ask what to do about it. Granger sent a man down to look the place over—very kind of him, of course, as he was careful to remind me. But nothing was disturbed—clothes, portable radio, typewriter, all safe and sound. No signs of illegal entry, so apparently the fault was mine.”

He grinned again. “Granger wouldn’t even have called me about it, except that it gave him a chance to explain that Global always has the best interests of their employees at heart.”

The others grinned back at him, all but Ken and Sandy who looked soberly at each other over the table. The same thought was in both their minds. An attempted burglary in Brentwood and a mysteriously unlocked door in Holt’s New York apartment, both on the same night, seemed a remarkable coincidence. Sandy opened his mouth to speak.

But Ken, shaking his head slightly, got to his feet. “Are we all vacationing today?” he asked. “Or are we going down to the office?”

“I hope you’re not all planning to vacation under my feet,” Mom said frankly. “I’ve got a lot to do today.”

“We can take a hint,” Pop replied with dignity. “Come on, Holt. There’s not much work on tap for today, but we can yarn at the office as comfortably as we can here. You two,” he added to Sandy and Ken, “have to take you-know-what to you-know-where.”

“I hope you’re referring to that disreputable-looking shoe box on the sideboard,” Mom said. “I’d like to have somebody take it somewhere out of my way.”

“Know what’s in it, Mom?” Bert asked.

“No. And I haven’t the slightest curiosity,” Mom told her older son.

“Not much, you haven’t!” Bert said. “I’ll bet you spent half an hour this morning trying to see through the cardboard.”

“I have other things to do with my time, especially on a busy day like this,” Mom assured him. “For example, there are the dishes to be done. But of course if you’re all going to be here, you might—”

Pop was on his feet. “We’re on our way, ma’am. On our way. Come on, Holt, you drive down with Bert and me.”

Ken and Sandy took the shoe box with them when they left a few minutes later, but they didn’t go directly to Sam Morris’s shop. They went to the office first.

“We think you ought to know about something that happened last night, Pop,” Sandy said abruptly, when he and Ken joined the others in the Brentwood Advance office. “Ken came downstairs in the middle of the night and—”

“No!” Bert leaped to his feet with an expression of mock horror. “You mean he found Mom peeping in the box?”

Sandy didn’t even laugh. “Tell them, Ken.”

Ken made his report as brief as possible. “You can see the scratches on the lock yourselves,” he concluded, “when we go back to the house.” He turned to his father. “And if somebody also broke into your apartment last night, Dad, it certainly looks—”

Bert’s laugh interrupted him. “It’s not enough for you two to imagine one burglar. Oh, no—you can do better than that.”

“Nobody tried to burglarize my apartment, Ken,” Holt said. “I just didn’t lock it properly myself.”

“How do you know?” Ken asked. “Can you be sure, Dad?”

“Doesn’t it seem strange,” Sandy put in, “that the minute you land in the country somebody breaks into the house where you’re staying, and at the same time your own apartment is mysteriously—”

Bert was still laughing. “You’re just not used to the way these two carry on,” he told Ken’s father. “Every time they see a doughnut they begin to worry about who stole the middle out of it. Anything for a mystery—that’s their philosophy.”

“Now wait a minute,” Pop said mildly. “It does sound as if there might be a sneak thief around Brentwood. We don’t have them often, but I suppose Christmas is a likely time, with everybody’s house full of presents. I’ll call Andy Kane and tell him to alert the force. That satisfy you?” He looked at Ken and Sandy. “But I will not,” he added, “call the New York police chief with a similar suggestion. So you two just take your dark suspicions out of here, and get over to Sam Morris’s while he’s still got time to fix that catch.”

Ken and Sandy looked at each other. Ken smiled first.

“All right,” he said. “I guess that does make sense. Come on, Sandy. But save your best stories until we get back, Dad.”

As soon as they arrived at the jeweler’s shop they were glad they had waited no longer. The place was crowded with customers, all wearing the harried expression of those who have delayed their Christmas shopping until the last possible moment. Sam Morris and his two clerks looked equally harried as they tried to wait on several people at a time.

Ken and Sandy chose the least crowded area along the glass-topped display counter that bisected the store lengthwise, running back toward Morris’s partitioned-off workroom at the rear. After they had waited for a few minutes, Sam, hurrying past with a heavy mahogany mantel clock, noticed their presence.

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can, boys,” he murmured. He put the clock down in front of a woman several feet away, told her to take her time examining it, and came back to where Ken and Sandy stood.

“This is the box, Sam,” Sandy explained, lifting it out of its carton. “The catch broke when it fell. See?”

Sam studied the injury, murmuring, “Nice workmanship. Nice. Yes—ought to be able to fix that all right.”

A hand holding a wrist watch thrust itself between the two boys, and a voice behind them said politely, “Excuse me. Could you put a new crystal in this watch while I wait?”

Down the counter the woman studying the mahogany clock called out, “Mr. Morris, I think I like the one you showed me first. May I see that again?”

“I’ll be right back,” Sam muttered, and hurried away.

“I certainly picked a fine day to break the crystal of my watch,” the man behind the boys said, and they turned to smile sympathetically into his pleasant middle-aged face. “If it weren’t such a good timepiece, I’d let it go for a while, but I hate to have it get dirty.”

When Sam hurried back, looking more harried than ever, he shook his head at the customer behind the boys. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m mighty busy today, and it takes quite awhile to cement a crystal into place.” He took the small iron box from Sandy’s hands.

The owner of the watch spoke up quickly. “Don’t bother with cement,” he said. “If you could just snap a crystal into place, I could get it cemented after Christmas, in New York. I’m just passing through Brentwood and—”

Sam shrugged. “All right. I could do that. Come back in about half an hour.” He took the watch. “You too,” he added to the boys. “I’ll try to have this ready by then. Won’t take me long—if I just have a chance to get at it.” He moved rapidly toward the partition at the rear.

“He’s certainly an accommodating gentleman,” the owner of the watch said, as all three of them began to edge their way through the crowd together.

“He certainly is,” Ken agreed. “If I owned a store I wouldn’t open the doors on Christmas Eve.”

“See you in half an hour,” the man said with a friendly wave as they separated on the sidewalk to go in opposite directions.

Back at the office they found Richard Holt in the middle of one of the lively tales he always brought back from his trips. “And they found that the phones in the police chief’s own office were being tapped,” he was saying. “So—” He broke off as the boys entered. “What luck?” he asked.

“It’ll be O.K.,” Ken told him. “Sam said we could pick it up in half an hour.”

“Good,” his father said.

“Good,” Pop echoed, almost absent-mindedly. “Go on, Dick. Did they ever find out who was doing the wire tapping?”

Richard Holt grinned. “It was the old woman who cleaned the office. They certainly never would have suspected her—she looked too old and harmless. But she got jittery finally, and disappeared. And they were curious enough to investigate. Now, I understand, you can’t get a job cleaning the municipal offices there unless you’re recommended by the prime minister himself.”

“Wow!” Bert said. “What a yarn! Did they track down the rest of the gang then too?”

“What’s this all about?” Ken wanted to know. “Start from the beginning.”

“It’s not a very lively story, except for the old lady,” Mr. Holt assured the boys. “Just an ordinary tale of slick counterfeiters, though they did have an expert engraver capable of turning out beautifully engraved ten-dollar bills. United States bills, that is, which are always popular in Europe, and therefore easy to pass. Of course the banks could spot them, and they did eventually—a few at a time. But as long as the gang had its wire-tapping service in operation, it could keep informed as to police suspicions—and shift its plates and its printing apparatus to a new location if the police began to make inquiries in the neighborhood where they were.”

“Did they track down the gang?” Bert persisted.

“Unfortunately not,” Richard Holt admitted. “And you can imagine how the police chief felt, under the circumstances. He’s pretty sure they’ve cleared out of his territory, but of course that’s not enough to satisfy him. And of course the U.S. Treasury isn’t very happy about it either. Last I heard, it was sending some T-men over to lend a hand, because the counterfeits were American bills.”

Bert nodded. “Those T-men work fast. We received a circular here about six months ago, about some bad twenties that were turning up in this vicinity. But before we could print the story, the counterfeiters were nabbed. Of course,” he added, “most counterfeit bills here are made by the photoengraving process, and that’s pretty crude compared to a good engraving.”

Pop grinned. “People complain these days about the low standards of craftsmanship, but in some ways it’s a help. There aren’t many engravers in this country who can turn out a good set of plates, and what few there are, are working for the Bureau of Engraving in Washington or for some legitimate private business.”

“Of course there was one case, years ago,” Holt said. “I was just a cub reporter at the time, but I happened to be involved. I remember....”

He was off on another yarn. Almost an hour went by before Sandy happened to glance at the clock.

“Hey!” He jumped up. “Sam Morris said half an hour.”

The wail of a siren and the sudden clanging of the fire-engine’s bell seemed to put an exclamation mark at the end of his sentence.

“Vacation or no vacation, a fire is news,” Pop said. He reached for the phone, dialed rapidly, and spoke a few brisk questions into the mouthpiece. Then he slammed the receiver down.

“Get going, Ken,” he said. “You too, Sandy. This might be good for a picture. The fire’s at Sam Morris’s jewelry shop!”

CHAPTER III

A SCRAP OF FILM

The area in front of Morris’s store was one of vast confusion. A hook-and-ladder truck blocked it off from the east and a chemical truck from the west. Traffic had piled up behind both of them, in a solid mass. And the sidewalks were jammed with people. It looked as if everyone in Brentwood had converged on the spot.

The voice of Andy Kane, chief of Brentwood’s five-man police force, rose over the hubbub. “All right, keep moving there!” he shouted. “There’s nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving!”

Ken and Sandy squeezed through to him. Chief Kane glared when he saw them. “There’s nothing for you here either,” he said. “That’s the fire—the whole thing!” He pointed a scornful finger at a metal wastebasket standing in the middle of the street, still smoking faintly but now safely covered with the white foam from chemical extinguishers.

“So that’s all it is!” Sandy’s glance took in the busy policemen, urging the crowd along, the two great fire engines with their coils of hose, the firemen in heavy black waterproofs, and the jammed traffic.

“This is something the fire chief will want to remember,” he said with a grin. “See you later,” he added to Ken, and disappeared into the crowd with his camera.

A few minutes later Ken spotted him on the roof of Morris’s two-story building, aiming his lens at the crowd below and at the small foam-shrouded wastebasket at its center. When Sandy rejoined Ken again he was still grinning.

“I’ll print this up for the chief’s New Year’s card,” Sandy said. Then he straightened his face quickly as Chief Dick James emerged from the jewelry store.

“Everything under control, Chief?” Ken asked.

James nodded shortly. “Total damage one wastebasket and a black smudge on about five square feet of wall. Quick thinking on Sam Morris’s part, of course,” he added, “or it might have been a real fire. The minute he saw flames coming out of the basket he picked it up and carried it into the street.”

“How’d it start?” Ken asked. “Cigarette?”

James shrugged. “Probably. Or a still-burning match. People are so danged careless. Wonder it doesn’t happen oftener, the way they toss stuff around.”

Sandy, bending over the wastebasket, sniffed curiously. “Smell this thing, Chief,” he said. “Maybe it’s my imagination.”

“What are you imagining?” But James bent over the basket and took a deep breath. Then he looked up with the same puzzlement that Sandy showed.

“All right, masterminds,” Ken said. “What gives?”

“Film,” Sandy said. “Or at least that’s what it smells like. But why would there be film in Sam’s basket?”

“That’s a good question,” James said. “Let’s go ask Sam if he’s got the answer.” But before they went inside the shop he called one of his men over and instructed him to take the wastebasket to the firehouse and examine it carefully.

There were fewer customers inside the store than there had been earlier, but otherwise it looked very much as it had earlier that morning. Sam Morris, wearing a smoky streak down one cheek, came forward to speak to them.

“Sorry about all the excitement, Chief,” he said. “Your box is repaired,” he added to the boys.

“Gosh!” Ken said. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

“Would there have been any film in that wastebasket, Sam?” James asked.

“Film?” The jeweler looked blank. “What kind of film?”

“We don’t know,” James said. “We’re not even sure if that’s what it was, but that’s what it smells like.”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know what was in the basket. It stands over there, beneath that desk.” He pointed to a writing shelf built against one wall, for the use of customers who wanted to fill out cards to enclose with gifts. “It’s usually almost empty, except for a couple of cards that have been blotted or spoiled, or maybe an empty cigarette package. I don’t know why anybody would have thrown film in it.”

“Film is inflammable stuff,” James pointed out. “Maybe somebody wanted to start a fire in here.”

“A pyromaniac?” Sam looked unbelieving.

James shook his head. “I was thinking of a crook—a man smart enough to start a fire, so that he could make off with a handful of rings, or watches, during the excitement. Have you checked your stock, Sam?”

Morris shook his head. “It didn’t occur to me. I had the basket out in the street in a couple of seconds, and then I came right back in. My clerks were here all the time.” He smiled wearily. “There wasn’t half as much excitement in the store as there was out in the street after the trucks arrived.”

“Where were you when the blaze started up?” James asked.

“Behind the partition—in the workroom.” Morris gestured toward the rear wall broken by a single door and a windowlike gap above a ledge. “I’d just finished putting in a watch crystal for the man who was here when you boys were in earlier,” he added to Sandy and Ken. “He’d been waiting for a few minutes and I was just handing him his watch through the window there when one of the customers yelled ‘Fire!’ I saw the smoke right away, and I ran out of the workroom through that door and carried the basket to the street.”

“You don’t know what merchandise was out on top of the counter at the time?”