For the first time since the Fauntley affair Mannering was faced with the task of breaking into a house and cracking a crib. In a way it was his real debut; before he had known the strong-room and combination of the safe. Moreover, it was a long time ago, and his preparation had been absurdly inadequate. Now at least he had the rudiments of the craft at his finger-tips.
He had chosen his baptism carefully. If by any chance he was caught it would be in circumstances that would make it impossible - or at least unlikely - for Lee to call the police. But he did not propose to let Lee catch him. Unless . . .
Mannering was worried. He admitted it to himself as he let himself into his flat and foraged in the kitchenette for a light meal. There was something too easy about the affair. There was a catch in it somewhere, known only by Septimus Lee. What was it?
Mannering felt easier, five hours later, when he had finished his inspection of the windows and the doors on the ground floor of Septimus Lee’s house. Every window was shut and locked; every door was bolted. Obviously Lee was taking no chances, and Mannering was glad that his entry would not be too easy.
Using a pick-lock with a facility that would have earned the admiration of Charlie Dray, he made short work of the door of the kitchen quarters. A row of trees at the edge of the garden afforded him excellent cover, and the rumble of an occasional night tram on the main road was the only thing that broke the silence.
The lock was only the first task. The bolts remained, and they were likely to be much more difficult. Mannering took a small chisel from the assortment of tools in his pockets and chipped a fragment of wood from the door. After ten minutes he had bared the bolts sufficiently to get a purchase on them with a pair of thin-mawed pincers. He replaced the chisel and fingered the pincers. Something he could not explain warned him against using them. He felt that trouble would result; he sensed again the peculiar premonition that had worried him after he had traced Septimus Lee to and from the safe deposit. It was absurd, but it was there.
Mannering breathed hard, and replaced the pincers. He must take every precaution, for the slightest slip would mean failure. He took his small pocket-lamp and stabbed a pencil of light at the top bolt. It looked innocent enough, and he repeated the action with the bottom bolt.
Then his eyes narrowed, and he smiled, without humour.
“I wonder who’s the patron saint of cracksmen?” he muttered. “Wired up, all nicely set for an alarm.”
There was no doubt about it. A thin piece of wire ran along the bolt, the wire of an electric burglar-alarm. It was something for which he had not been prepared, and for a moment he was nonplussed.
“But I should have expected it,” he muttered. “Well, there’s a way of getting round that difficulty, but I can’t think of it. If the door’s opened, or if the bolts are drawn back, there’ll be the devil to pay. That is to say, if the bolts are drawn while the alarm wires are connected. But if they’re broken - ”
He smiled with more humour, and shrugged his shoulders. It would have been more satisfactory if he could have entered the house without spending time in cutting through the steel bolts, but the job had to be done. Fitting a thin, well-oiled blade to the handle of his outfit, he started work on the bolts. There was no sound beyond a low-pitched burr as the saw worked. Still the night trams rattled along the high road, and the trees afforded him complete shelter.
Ten minutes - fifteen - twenty minutes.
He was beginning to sweat, and his thumb and fingers were stiff with the constant movement, but the top bolt was through at last, and the wire parted with it. The bottom bolt was easier; all that needed cutting was the electric wire, which he could see as he looked downward. Less than five minutes sufficed. Then he used the pincers and drew the bolt back, slowly, carefully.
No sound came.
Mannering was breathing hard through clenched teeth. Once he stubbed his foot against the door, and the rumble that followed sounded like thunder. He waited, his heart beating fast, but there was no movement inside the house.
He used the pick-lock again. The lock clicked open, and he turned the handle. It squeaked a little, and he went rigid for a moment, only to curse his own nervousness. Then he pushed the door open . . .
His heart seemed to stop as he peered into the darkness of the room beyond!
Something glowed, green and fierce, through the darkness. There was no sound, but two points of fire were there, unwinking. His hands seemed to freeze on the handle of the door, and his body went taut. The smile that curved his lips was frozen too.
“A dog,” he muttered, “and a well-trained one. Remember - electric alarms and dogs. I don’t mind breaking the alarm, but - ”
He shrugged, and his heart beat more evenly. The dog still glared at him, without making a sound. Mannering dropped his hand into his pocket and drew out the gun he had used on Detective-Inspector Bristow a few weeks before. It was loaded with concentrated ether gas, reckoned to create unconsciousness quicker than anything else he could conveniently - and safely - use.
Mannering knew that he was taking a big chance. Unless he was within a foot of the dog the gas would be slow in its effect - and Mannering needed speed. But if he went too close the brute would probably jump at him
“It’s worth it,” he muttered. “Now - ”
With his gun-arm outstretched he went forward. The eyes did not flicker, but the rumbling in the throat of the brute warned him of the coming leap. The green eyes moved - Mannering touched the trigger.
There was the slight hiss of the escaping gas and a choking gasp from the dog as it came at him. Just for a moment he was afraid that he had failed, but the outstretched legs were stiff when they touched him; there was a dull thud as the brute dropped down.
Mannering was hot, then cold, as the perspiration on his head and neck cooled in the keen night air. He shivered several times, and had to clench his teeth to stop himself. But there was a gleam in his eyes, a wild, exultant beating in his heart. He was through!
Carefully and silently he closed the door behind him and dragged a curtain over the single window of the room. The distant lights of the high road were shut out. For a moment Mannering stood in the black darkness. Then the pencil of light from his torch stabbed out, and went eerily round the room until he found the electric-light switch, and flooded the room with light.
His first glance was for the dog. It was breathing softly and regularly, its great mouth gaping a little to show sharp, white teeth, its eyes closed. He wondered that it had kept so quiet; when he saw it was a Great Dane he knew why. But for the ether gas he would have stood little chance; the dog would have brought him down and kept him down with hardly a sound; they were quiet beasts, easy to train.
The slightest of grim smiles lit Mannering’s eyes. Mr Septimus Lee was certainly a man in a thousand; he had even trained his dog to tackle an intruder in silence. It seemed that he was prepared for night attacks on the house, and he was equally prepared to keep knowledge of them from the police, who might have been alarmed by the baying of the Dane. Lee wanted no inquiries, Mannering guessed, and his admiration for the Jew’s shrewdness increased.
The darkness of the rest of the house was appalling and Mannering dared not switch on the lights, for he had no idea whether the curtains were drawn, and there was no time to waste in trying each window. He kept the white beam of his torch trained towards the ground, where it would prevent him from stumbling on any unseen obstacle, while being invisible from outside.
It took him five minutes to locate Septimus Lee’s bedroom, a large, airy chamber on the second - and top - floor. The door was unlocked - the easiest job he had had so far.
For the first time Mannering used his mask, a dark blue cloth that covered his mouth, chin, and nose, and he pulled on thin rubber gloves to make sure that he left no fingerprints. A silent, shadowy figure, he crept into the room and reached the bed. The Jew was sleeping on his back, with one crooked arm over the coverlet, the other hand at the back of his neck.
Mannering used his gas-pistol quickly, regulating the gas this time; the only effect it appeared to have was to make Lee breathe more deeply, and the Jew’s body seemed to shrink back into the bed.
“Peautiful!” murmured Mannering, emphasising the ‘p.’ His heart was beating fast now, and his eyes were glistening; he was more than half-way to success.
Rapidly he ran through the man’s clothes, searching for keys. If he could find them it would save him a great deal of time - and time had never been so precious.
Nothing that might have opened the safe was there, however. He rubbed his chin disappointedly as he looked round the room, but his eyes glinted when he saw a small deed-box resting on a chair near the bed.
Using a pick-lock, he opened the lock of the box without any trouble, and found what he was expecting to find - a bunch of intricately cut keys. He smiled, jubilant again.
Now for the safe.
There was a peculiar feeling of depression in Mannering’s breast a few seconds later. He had told himself that he was thoroughly prepared for the sterner tasks of his newly chosen profession, but the affairs of that night proved how badly he had misjudged the difficulties. To get into a house was one thing. To get into it without the vaguest notion of where to find the safe was another. In future, he told himself, he must prepare the ground more thoroughly beforehand. For the time being - where was the safe?
A wall-safe, almost certainly, and in the bedroom. Lee was not a man to keep valuables in another part of the house at night.
Mannering tried every picture, to find the blank wall behind them. The feeling of depression grew heavier - until he looked intently at the bed, the last possible place. And then that curve at the corners of his lips came, and his eyes gleamed.
Septimus Lee’s bed was a double one, with a large head-panel of walnut, very close to the wall. Mannering went to it, bent over the unconscious figure of the Jew, and examined the centre of the panel. It was very intricately carved - too intricately carved for its purpose. Mannering ran his fingers - gloved fingers - over the smooth surface. Luck was with him. There came the slightest of clicks! And the centre of the panel began to slide -
And then the shock came!
The room, the house, was filled with noise, the strident clatter of a low-pitched electric alarm. The very air seemed to shiver with the sound. For a split second Mannering stood still, his muscles tensed, his lips compressed. Then, above the alarm, came the sudden banging of a door!
Mannering looked at the window of the bedroom and resisted the biggest temptation of his life. A few seconds, a climb down the walls of the house, would mean freedom, escape. But escape, he told himself, without the Rosa pearls...
The temptation, the thought, and the first ringing of the alarm took no longer than a few seconds. It seemed almost in one movement that Mannering stiffened and then leapt towards the unlocked door. The key was on the inside, thank God! Mannering turned it as footsteps echoed along the passage outside. Before the cracksman had reached the head of the bed again there was a thud on the door, and a low-pitched voice came through to the room.
“Mr Lee - you all right, Mr Lee?”
Mannering ignored it. He tried key after key in the lock of the safe, quickly but with steady fingers; the fifth one opened it. He was still faced with the combination beyond the first door, and as the thudding on the door grew louder he told himself that he would have to give up. Desperately now he twisted the knob, right, left, right again, hearing the numbers clicking, working with raging impatience, not knowing whether he was close to his goal or not. Suddenly there was a loud click, and with new hope he pulled at the door.
It opened!
But Mannering’s satisfaction was tinged with anxiety; even though success was near he was not out of the wood yet.
The man outside had stopped calling, but another, more ominous sound came. A second key was being poked through the keyhole. As Mannering turned round he saw the first key moving slowly, drooping towards the floor.
Another mistake! The realisation flashed through his mind as he crossed the room again. He should have put something heavy against the door when he had locked it; he should have been prepared for this development. Now it would be touch-and-go whether he succeeded or not.
He pressed his left side against the door and stretched out for a stiff-backed chair with his right arm. As the door thudded against him he pulled the chair into position, jabbing its top rail beneath the knob of the door. In the respite that followed he pulled a heavy armchair from a corner of the room and upturned it, leaving its weight to support the first chair.
“Three minutes, with luck,” he muttered, sotto voce. There was a queer relief in talking to himself, and he kept murmuring under his breath as he worked.
He reached the open safe again and searched for the contents. There were several bundles of papers, one or two small trinkets, and a leather case. The case was locked, but by now Mannering had finished with finesse. He took a screwdriver from his pocket and forced the hinges from the leather, snapping them off.
The lustre of pearls shone for a moment in the dim light of the room . . .
The excitement was almost too much for him, but he resisted the temptation to stare at his prize. The Rosa pearls were his, but the danger was still about him. He stuffed the case in his pocket, while his eyes were glistening and his lips parted. Quickly he moved towards the window. It was shut and locked, but he opened it without trouble, and looked below. To the garden it was a fair drop, but a drain-pipe and a sill at the window beneath promised foothold. Mannering climbed out quickly.
Even to the last his luck - and his caution - held.
As he went down, easily enough, he kept his ears wide open for the slightest sound. For a few moments there was silence; then something moved beneath him. He turned his head in time to see the burly figure of a man waiting in the shadow of the trees that had befriended him, Mannering, a short while before.