The following night the vault went bang. The small charge shifted a couple of racks in the far right corner a little and sooted up the room something wonderful. Which was exactly what was required. By morning every owner of a deposit box had come running to the scene of the incident to feel over their secrets. Still there? I was in no hurry and arrived at the bank last.
Some portion of the frightened public was already rattling boxes in the vault. The rest, two or three dozen of them, paced nervously about the square in front of the bank. The vault was not made of rubber, so to avoid a crush the citizenry were being let in in small parties. The commotion was of middling grade; no panic was in evidence.
Having politely taken my place in line, I acquired a newspaper and sat down on the farthest bench in the shade. About two hours later, as the very last and very calmest client, I did at last get into the vault and had a careful look around.
I knew Anya’s past well. What interested me were the four rows of racks at the back of the room, the very ones where my own box was located among the rest. Those racks were, from every point of view, the most attractive for storing valuables. The reason for their attractiveness? The answer is simple: the narrowness of the room. No outsider could see what was being put into a box or taken out of one. The owner’s back shielded the secrets from other eyes in any case. Even the attendant – the thick-headed Miguel – could not have peeked, for all his wanting to. I had made use of that fact the day before, when I slipped the packet of explosive into the narrow gap between the racks in the right-hand corner.
Everything had been thought out to the smallest detail. My particular pride was the composition of the explosive mixture. No destruction whatsoever occurred, but a great deal of soot appeared on the vertical surfaces.
So then, what have we got?
I ran my eye over the front panels of the boxes. They had been wiped down, of course, but the soot in the recesses of the keyholes remained in its pristine state. It could only be got rid of completely at night, when the staff would have time for a thorough cleaning with special detergents. For now, the moment had to be seized.
Opening my box, I took out of it a sheet of paper and a pen. The sheet had of course been ruled in advance into four times fifteen little squares, corresponding to the boxes in the four racks. All that remained was to mark with a cross the squares of those boxes whose keyholes still had an untouched coating of soot. Boxes with key marks were, naturally, skipped.
I walked out of the bank five minutes later. In my pocket – a sheet of paper with thirty-four crosses on it.
The next day, with a big sports bag over my shoulder, I visited the vault again. I did not hurry my business but struck up an unhurried conversation with Miguel. The two of us condemned those vile clients who store explosive materials in a bank, then gossiped about this and that, about the weather, about women, brought up baseball, praised the size of my bag (by common consent, good enough for a mid-sized Arctic expedition). When the topics for simple manly conversation ran dry, I pressed the latest issue of «Penthouse» on Miguel. «The girl of the month was vacationing here last week, I saw her with my own eyes,» I informed him. The simpleton believed it, snatched the magazine and buried himself in a study of its contents. I took the master key off the desk and, burning with impatience, headed for my dear beloved racks to check my suppositions.
I checked them.
Everything turned out to be right. Of the three and a half dozen boxes marked the day before, I could boldly subtract two thirds. Twenty-five boxes, empty ones, had been opened during the night and the sooted edges of their panels wiped down. That left nine boxes bearing a light, barely noticeable coat of soot on the edge. Those were the ones!
Wiping the soot off the edge of a closed box completely was impossible. Neither a vacuum cleaner nor a rag could help. Only a key – the one the client had!
I glanced back.
Miguel was turning pages and paying attention to nothing at all. I took Anechka’s key out of my pocket and inserted it in the left-hand, client’s lock of the first box on my list. No luck. The lock had no wish to open.
I glanced back again. Miguel was gazing spellbound at a photograph on the magazine’s centerfold. Good! Next box. No luck. Third. Same thing. Fourth. Got it! I put the master key into the second lock, opened the box and transferred its contents into my bag in three sweeps.