Could he rely on her?
Impatiently, he turned on the light and groped for a cigarette.
This was something he must think about.
CHAPTER THREE
1
A few minutes before half past five the following evening, Calvin came out of his office and walked over to where Alice was sitting on her stool at the counter, checking her till.
‘Nearly through?’ he asked, his staring blue eyes examining her.
She smiled nervously at him.
‘I’m all through now, Mr. Calvin.’
‘Suppose we go down to the vault and you explain what it’s all about?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to look dumb when the money does arrive.’
‘Yes, of course.’
She unlocked a drawer under the counter and took out a key.
‘You have your key?’ she asked, getting off the stool.
‘I have it.’
He followed her down the steps and into the vault. It felt chilly down there. He looked around. Stacked from floor to ceiling on three sides of the room were black steel deed-boxes: each with a name painted on it in bold white lettering. The boxes contained the private papers, the wills, the house deeds of many of the bank’s customers. Facing him was the steel door of the safe.
‘This is a pretty old-fashioned set-up, isn’t it?’ he said, waving to the deed boxes. ‘We should have proper safes for each individual customer.’
‘There are no valuables in the boxes,’ Alice said. ‘It’s all paper. People like to keep their papers with us in case they have a fire at their homes.’
Calvin again looked at the deed-boxes. There must be, he thought, over two hundred of them. The sight of them gave him a vague idea which he filed away in his mind to think about later.
‘Tell me about the electronic eye device,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’
She pointed to a steel grill that looked like a ventilator set high up near the ceiling and facing the safe door.
‘It’s behind that grill’
Calvin moved back and looked thoughtfully at the small grill. It was set in a steel frame and cemented in. He could see it would take a lot of shifting and while anyone struggled to shift it the alarms would be sounded.
‘What’s to stop anyone cutting the electric leads?’ he asked. ‘This set-up seems pretty unsafe to me.’
‘The leads are cemented into the walls and floor,’ Alice told him. ‘There is a separate generator. It is in the safe.’ She unlocked one of the complicated locks. ‘Will you unlock the other please?’
He unlocked the other lock and then opened the safe door. The safe was the size of a large closet. On the floor stood a small but powerful generating plant.
‘The leads run under the floor and up the wall to the electronic eye,’ Alice explained. ‘The eye is so sensitive that if anyone tried to get at the leads to cut them the alarm would go off.’
‘Why isn’t the alarm sounding now?’ Calvin asked.
He saw her hesitate, then she said, ‘I’m sure it is all right to tell you, Mr. Calvin. After all, you are in charge here now. I was told not to tell anyone. It is so arranged that when we turn the lights off in the bank, the electronic eye comes into operation. So long as someone is in the bank with the lights on, the alarms can’t go off.’
Calvin ran his fingers through his sand-coloured hair.
‘Is that such a hot idea?’
‘The insurance people accepted it,’ she said. ‘You see, if the lights are on in the bank, they can be seen across the road by the Sheriff or by Mr. Travers. There is always someone there who can see any light on in the bank.’
‘What happens in the summer when you don’t have the lights on?’
