The Vault

The window slid up easily–too easily–and Mike waited a long time, listening, before he made a move. The whole huge pile of the factory was still. There were no lights anywhere, except that dim one by the gate through the stockade. Lying quite still in the darkness, Mike waited. There was no sound, no ringing of alarm bells, no bustle of activity anywhere. The manufacturing plant of the Whitney Jewelry & Watch Company remained as it had been before, a vast, still pile of brick, with empty-eyed windows staring blankly at the night.

And yet.... That window had opened very easily. Mike meditated, his little eyes gleaming in the darkness. Then he saw a tiny flicker of light in the distance. The window he had opened was at the end of a long corridor, and he saw the watchman walking unhurriedly away from him. The watchman’s legs threw monstrous shadows from the lantern he carried, Mike could not see his face, but he could see the uniform and note the absolute leisure and confidence with which the man was moving. He paused, as Mike watched, and inserted his key in a watchman’s clock. He turned it, registering his presence and vigilance on a strip of paper within the mechanism. Then, casually, he went on his way. In a few moments he turned a corner and was lost to sight.

Mike grinned to himself in the obscurity. With monkey-like agility he scrambled through the open window, making no sound. Once within the walls of the factory he waited another long minute for a noise. Distant and hollow, he heard the watchman’s footfalls, unhurried, methodical, as he made his round.

Then, softly, Mike lowered the window. He wore rubber-soled shoes. His eyes were those of a cat, and his ears were attuned to the slightest warning of danger, but he heard no faintest sound–not even his own footfalls–save the distant, regular steps of the watchman. The watchman wore creaky shoes.

Like some night-flying moth the intruder slipped through the corridors of the untenanted factory. All about him there were smells. Oil–that would be the delicate lathes where precious metals were worked. Once he smelled fresh paint. And there was that curious odor of freshly-mopped floors. The scrub-women had come after the closing of the factory and done their work. Then he smelled faded flowers. Someone had brought them and put them in a glass of water, and they had been left.