But if you look at the shelf below the window you will see a junction box with cable going to the window. That means the wire is electrified. If you were to touch it with cutters you would find it very painful. Deadly even. I do not like electric shocks, Mr. Craig.'
'Nor me,' said Craig. His voice expressed polite agreement, no more.
'It would be necessary to cut off the electricity supplies from outside the shop,' said Istvan. 'That is a long and tedious business. We would have to dig up pavement—and even then we might encounter some surprises. Let us try the door.' He walked to the door, and stared at it from perhaps a foot away from the frame. He then swore softly in Hungarian.
'Talk English,' said Boris.
'I beg your pardon,' Istvan said humbly. 'This is a door of considerably ingenuity.' Boris moved forward to it, and Istvan grabbed his arm, then gabbled as Boris looked down at the restraining hand: 'You mustn't go inside the doorframe. See where it is guarded.' His finger, carefully out of range, pointed to pairs of holes set in the sides of the doorframe, and at the top and bottom.
'Photoelectric cells,' he said. 'Each pair makes a circuit. Break the circuit and you set off an alarm. Perhaps you do more.' He smiled. 'This is very thorough. Sometimes with photoelectric cells it is possible to jump over them, or slide beneath them. Here there is no chance. The biggest gap is only ten centimeters square.'
He brought his box carefully close to the door, stood on it, and peered at one of the cells, then another, then a third.
'How delightful,' he said. 'The wire is run into the woodwork. I have only a tiny piece to cut at.' He got down to look at the cells that led into the door lintel. 'And from beneath, no wire shows at all.' He sighed. 'It will take a long time, I'm afraid.'
'We've got all day,' Boris said.
Craig and Boris squatted, privileged pupils, and watched the master at work. With a long, thin chisel he cut into the wood near the wires to the photoelectric cells, and exposed them. One by one the rubber-sheathed pairs of copper strands came into view. Craig noticed that to each pair of wires that activated a cell another pair of wires was attached, running up vertically to a point above the door. Istvan saw them, too, and smiled.
'I was right,' he said. From the tool kit he took a pair of pliers, and cut, first the vertical wires, then the horizontal ones. Then he attacked the lintel in the same way, exposing, cutting.
'It is as well to be certain,' he said, and stood up. 'We may now stand in the doorway,' he said. 'So useful if it should rain.' He bent then to look at the lock, then more closely at the door itself. 'Really, whoever did this was very thorough,' he said. 'Who did he fear? What did he have to protect?'
'He thought the United Arab Republic was after his penny blacks,' said Craig. 'There isn't an Arab in miles and he sold all his penny blacks to build this fort. He was mad.'
'No doubt,' said Istvan. 'But so ingenious. Look at the lock.'
Craig looked. It was a flat piece of dull, thick steel, with a tiny hole set in it.
'These are very difficult,' said Istvan. 'Make one false turn and the whole lock jams. And the key one tries must be exactly right.'
'Why not cut round it?' said Craig. 'Cut the lock out?'
'Excellent, excellent,' Istvan said. 'It is a way, of course, but a very difficult way. Look. I will show you.'
He took the thin chisel again, and a mallet, and tapped into the wooden panels of the door. They gave easily for a quarter of an inch, then metal squeaked on metal.
'You see?' Istvan said. 'The door is a sheet of steel. This wood is decoration only. To drill would take time.'
'Couldn't you blow it in?' Boris asked.
'It would take a lot of explosive, and make a lot of noise,' said Istvan. 'The only way would be to attack the hinges, and they as you see are inside the door. I can't get at them. Besides—there is another risk. Best, I think, to try with the lock.'
He took a piece of fine wire from his tool bag, and probed the keyhole, listening intently as he worked. After a while, he inserted a pair of calipers in the hole, measured carefully, and put a slight bend in the wire. This went on for an hour, while Craig sat, watched, and wished it were time for a cigarette. Beside him Boris did much the same as Istvan probed, bending the wire, straightening it, bending it again. At last he was satisfied, and took a thin piece of steel from his kit. At one end of it was the hollow circle of an old-fashioned key. Next he produced a hacksaw, fine files, emery paper, and began to make a key from the wire template. When it was finished, he polished the steel key with emery paper, and oiled it.
'Forgive my vanity,' he said. 'But there are not three other men in the world who can do what I have just done.'
'If it works,' said Boris.
'It works, believe me,' Istvan said. 'Would you like to try?' He handed him the key. 'One turn to the right, three to the left, two more to the right.'
Boris inserted the key, and tried to turn it. Nothing happened.
'Forgive me,' said Istvan. 'It is new and stiff. Try this.'
He handed Boris a short cylinder of bar steel. Boris pushed it across the rink of the key, and turned, his massive body stiff with strain. Slowly, reluctantly it grated to the right, then, with each twist, more easily to the left—once, twice, thrice. When he moved it the two final turns to the right there was no resistance at all.
Istvan pushed open the door, and had to use considerable strength to do it, then stepped inside. Boris and Craig followed, and he closed it again, looking up as he did so. Then he smiled, and his smile was quite beautiful. Craig thought that he would have a big future conning women in Vegas or Formentor. Then he too looked up.
'You see?' Istvan said. 'How ingenious your stamp collector was.'
Above the door was a massive steel shutter, rolled up, ready to slam down.
'If I had just cut the wires of the photoelectric cells this would have come down at once,' said Istvan. 'It was wired to them, too. Remember?'
Craig remembered the wires leading vertically to a place above the door. Istvan was good, all right, but there were still the time locks to face.
They looked round. The shelves empty now, dust settling, gentle as a requiem benediction on the kind of handy place round the corner the supermarkets had made obsolete. Istvan examined shelves and cupboards.
In one corner, by the stairs, stood a safe, massively squat. A heavy steel grille barred their approach to it.
THE MONEY THAT MONEY CAN'T BUY 209 'Difficult,' said Boris.
'Not really,' he said. 'But that is not the one we want. Let us try the cellar.'
Craig deliberately headed for the stairs, but Istvan forestalled him.
'I'll go first please,' he said. 'There may be more surprises.'
He found another photoelectric cell at the head of the stairs, and yet another at the foot. As he worked on them, Craig and Boris sat and waited. They had no need of conversation, and Craig was grateful for it. While he sat he could think about what Simmons had done to that poor man he had once been, and feel sorry for him. Not that it wasn't the man's own fault in a way, he conceded. It was stupid to rely on women as much as that. And who needed them anyway? The only man who really mattered was the one who knew how to fight. And there he had nothing to worry about. Sir Matthew Chinn had said it, and it was true. . .
Istvan called to them, and they went down. The timelock safe was immediately visible. It had been taken into the cellar a section at a time, and reconstructed. Now the cellar was almost filled by it. Istvan patted its slate-gray side and grinned.
'This was the one they considered burglar-proof,' he said. 'It is a very remarkable construction. High-tension steel all over—back, sides, door, top and bottom. There is no question of attacking it from its weakest side. It has no weakest side. Nor is it possible to blow it. Look at that door, gentlemen—hinged from inside.' Istvan, carried away by enthusiasm for a masterpiece, talked like a television art expert confronted by a Caravaggio. 'To insert a charge into that door would mean drilling for days, and even then the charge would have to be so great I doubt if we could survive the blast. And if we did, the door would merely drop a little and be jammed in grooves set in the base. If we used an even bigger charge to blow it free, we would of course destroy not only the safe but its contents; 99.9 per cent of all burglars would simply ignore a safe of this type. It is too much trouble.'
'Safes like this have been robbed,' said Boris.
