A taxi soon conveyed the detective to the financier’s house. He found Morrice in his room in a great state of anger and excitement. “Another robbery, Mr. Lane, this time a small one. A bundle of Treasury notes and a quantity of Swiss bank-notes have been abstracted, to the value of two hundred and eighty pounds. This time I am determined to get to the bottom of it. If you are agreeable, you shall act for me as well as for the other parties. You have no objection to that, I suppose?” Lane bowed. “None at all, sir. Whoever employs me does so with the same object—to bring home the guilt to the right person.” There were finger-marks on the safe as before. These were duly photographed. They were identical with the previous ones, those of the expert safe-breaker known as “Tubby” Thomas. _And “Tubby” Thomas, as they knew beyond the possibility of doubt, was safely locked up in Dartmoor._ CHAPTER XI A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS Could there be two men the whorls of whose fingers were the same? Scotland Yard says impossible. “I do not question that this is a very wonderful safe, Mr. Morrice,” the detective remarked quietly to the financier in a subsequent conversation, “but it is evidently not as invulnerable as you and the makers thought it.” “Once know the secret of its mechanism, and the rest is easy,” retorted Morrice, a little nettled at this depreciatory reference to the wonderful invention, to the perfecting of which he had contributed not a little himself with his own ingenious suggestions. He explained to Lane a few of its marvels. To begin with, it was the only safe of its kind that had ever been manufactured. The combinations of the times when it would open would run into millions. Supposing you worked on tens, for instance, that is ten, twenty, thirty, the days of the month, it would only open if both keys were applied to the same keyhole! The detective listened politely, but he was not very interested in learning how the thing worked; his object was to find out if there was anybody besides young Croxton and his employer who could have become acquainted with the secret of its working. “It seems to me that it is really a matter of exercising ordinary common-sense,” observed the angry banker. “Two men alone know the secret, myself and Richard Croxton, therefore either of us could open it after having obtained surreptitiously a duplicate of the key held by the other. Let us assume, for a moment that you, acting on Croxton’s behalf, say that I was the thief, that from some sinister motive I stole my own property. Well, you are perfectly entitled to that opinion, as an opinion.” “I have not expressed it,” said the detective quietly.