Deadline at Dawn

“We had to chop a hole about the size of a fist part way through the bathroom wall, then hook up a wire with one that was already inside the wall, leading into the room beyond, and bring it through, to take the lamp-connection. Well, it was an old house, and the walls were good and thick, I never saw them so deep. One time, when I was chipping away there by myself — my boss wasn’t with me at the moment, he’d gone back to the shop to get something — I struck wood offside to me. I didn’t know what it was, but I shifted further over to avoid it. After that, it didn’t give me any more trouble.

“Then the next day — I think it was — somebody stepped into the next room from where I was working, it was a sort of library or second-floor study at the back; he was only there for a minute or two, and then he went out again.

“I heard a slight disturbance in the wall right next to me. The doorway between was open, and I leaned my head back and glanced out. There was a mirror opposite, and I could see him in that; he was standing on the other side of the same wall I was working at, just a little further over. He’d opened sort of a wooden panel — the whole wall in there was panelled about halfway up — and he was turning a little dial on a safe-lid built-in behind it. It wasn’t a very big one, oh about two by four, one of these baby-sized safes, like they have in rooms sometimes. He swung out the lid, and slid out a shallow drawer, and I saw him take out some money; then he shoved it back again.

“I didn’t even wait to watch any more. I went back to my work. I wasn’t interested. All I’d wanted to know was what the vibration was I could feel right next to me in the wall. Afterwards I remembered about hitting wood the day before, so I figured it must have been the back or the side of the wooden lining the safe was set into that I’d grazed. And I let it go at that, I didn’t think any more about it from then on. I don’t ask you to believe that; I don’t blame you if you don’t.”

All she said was, “I didn’t believe you when you said you were from the same town I was, at first, either. If that was true, why shouldn’t this be?”

“Then what I’m going to tell you next is even harder to believe. I don’t know myself how it happened; I only know it did, and I had nothing to do with it. They had a little table, downstairs by the door as you came in. Several times, without meaning anything, I’d left my kit standing open on need, after we’d once got the job lined up; I guess it was more absentmindedness than anything else, though. Then when we were all through and went back to the shop for the last time, I emptied it out and I found something in it that must have got mixed up with my tools and wiring and things by mistake. Either somebody had dropped it in by mistake, or I’d swept it up off the table with my own hand without noticing, when I was putting things back in the kit. There was a dopey-looking sort of a maid answered the door for us once or twice, she might have done it when she was dusting around the table, thinking it was part of my equipment. All I know is I didn’t do it purposely, I swear to you I only saw it for the first time when I got back to the shop. I don’t know yet how it got in there.”

“What was it?” she asked.

“It was the latchkey to the front door of the house, that I’d brought away with me by mistake in my tool-kit. Or at least one of the latchkeys to the front door.”

She just looked at him, long and hard.

He said again, “I don’t know how it got in there. I only know I didn’t do it, didn’t know about it till I saw it.” Then he let his hands fall limp at his sides. “That I don’t expect anyone to believe.”

“An hour ago I wouldn’t have,” she admitted. “Now I’m not so sure any more. Go ahead, finish it.”

“The rest don’t need much telling, you can guess it from here. I should have told my boss about it, turned it over to him. I would have, but he wasn’t there any more; he’d already gone home and left me to close up shop. Then the next best thing was, I should have gone right straight back there myself and returned it to them. But it was late and I was hungry and tired; I wanted to eat and take it easy, I’d been working all day. So I left it where it was overnight, and I meant to drop around the next day and turn it over to them without fail. I didn’t do that either. I was kept on the jump from eight in the morning until the last thing at night, and I didn’t have a chance. By the day after that, it had already slipped my mind. First thing you know, I’d forgotten about it completely.

“Then the job folded, like I told you, and I was left stranded. My money all went, and— Well, to make a long story short, yesterday I got out my kit and looked it over, to see maybe if I could borrow something on it at a hock shop. I’d already hocked about everything I owned that I could get anything on. I dumped it out, taking inventory, and there was the key. I saw it and I remembered where it had come from.