said, "though I'm ready tobelieve that you don't know her. Too high up for you. Well, it lookssuspicious and we'll take the picture."
"Boy!" gasped Phil. "What a girl she must be in person! Even thepicture would stand out among a thousand. May I have the picture,Sergeant?"
"You can come and get a copy of it to-morrow. We'll have it copied andsee if we can trace the subject of it. That might tell us something."
* * * * *
The following morning Phil was at Police Headquarters to pick upfurther information, and to get a copy of the girl's photograph. Likethe police, he could not keep his mind off the idea that there wassome association between the crooked engineer and the disappearance ofthe safes. It seemed to fit too well. The scientific nature of thephenomena, Tony Costello's well known reputation for scientificbrilliance, and his recent affluence; what else could it mean? In someway, Tony was getting at these safes. But how? And how prove it? Mostexhaustive searches failed to reveal any traces of the safes anywhere.If any fragment of one of them had appeared in New York or SanFrancisco, the news would have come at once, such was the sensationall over the country that the series of disappearances had caused.Tony's calm insolence during the raid, his attitude of waitingpatiently till the police should have had their fun and have it overwith so that he might be left at peace again, showed that he must beguilty, for anyone else would have protested and felt deeply injuredand insulted. He seemed to be enjoying their discomfiture, andabsolutely confident of his own safety.
"There's got to be some way of getting him," Phil mused; and he musedalmost absent-mindedly, for he was gazing at the photograph of thegirl. For many minutes he looked at it, and then put it silently intohis pocket.
Five o'clock in the evening of that same day came the news of anothersafe disappearance. Phil got his tip over the phone, and in fifteenminutes was at the scene. It was too much like the others to go intodetail about; a six-foot portable safe had suddenly disappeared rightin front of the eyes of the office staff of The Epicure, a hugerestaurant and cafeteria that fed five thousand people three times aday. In its place stood a ragged, rusty old Ford coupe body. He wentaway from there, shaking his head.
Then suddenly in the midst of his dinner, he jumped up, and ran. Anidea had leaped into his head.
"Right after one of these things pops is the time to take a peek atTony," he said to himself, and immediately he was on the way.
* * * * *
But how to get his peep was not so easy a problem. When he alightedfrom his cab a block away from Tony's building, he was hesitant aboutapproaching it. Tony knew him, and might see him first. Phil circledthe brick building, keeping under cover or far enough away; all aroundit was a belt of thirty feet of lawn between the building and thesidewalk. Ought he have called the police and given them his idea? Orshould he wait till darkness and see what he could do alone?
Then suddenly he saw her. Across the street, standing in the shelterof a delivery truck in front of an apartment, she was observing Tony'sbuilding intently. The aristocratic chin, the brightness of the eyes,the waves of her hair, and the general sunny expression! It could notbe anyone else. Post haste he ran across the street.
"Pardon me!" he cried excitedly, lifting his hat and then digginghastily into his inner pocket. "I'm sure you must be the--"
"Well, the nerve!" the young woman said icily, and pointing her chinat the opposite horizon she walked haughtily away.
By that time Phil had dug out his picture and was running after her.
"Please," he said, "just a moment!" And he held the picture out infront of her face.
"Now, where in the world--?" She looked at him in puzzled andindignant inquiry, and then burst out laughing.
"It _is_ you, isn't it?" Phil asked. "What are you laughing at?"
"Oh, you looked so abject. I'm sure your intentions must be good. Nowtell me where you got my picture."
"Let us walk this way," suggested Phil, leading away from Tony'sbuilding.
* * * * *
And, as they walked, he told her the story. When he got through shestood and looked at him a long time in silence.
"You look square to me," she said. "You're working on my side already.Will you help me."
"I'll do anything--anything--" Phil said, and couldn't think of anyother way of expressing his willingness, for the wonderful eyes boreradiantly upon him.
"First I must tell you my story," she began. "But before I can do so,you must promise me that it is to remain an absolute secret. You're anewspaper man--"
Phil gave his promise readily.
"My father is Professor Bloomsbury at the University of Chicago. Hehas been experimenting in mathematical physics, and I have beenassisting him. He has succeeded in proving experimentally the conceptof tensors. A tensor is a mathematical expression for the fact thatspace is smooth and flat, in three dimensions, only at an infinitedistance from matter; in the neighborhood of a particle of matter,there is a pucker or a wrinkle in space. My father has found that bysuddenly removing a portion of matter from out of space, the puckerflattens out. If the matter is heavy enough and its removal suddenenough, there is a violent disturbance of space. By planning all thesteps carefully my father has succeeded in swinging a section ofspace on a pivot through an angle of 180 degrees, and causing twoportions of space to change places through hyperspace, or as you mightexpress it popularly, through the fourth dimension."
* * * * *
Phil held his hands to his head.
"It is not difficult," she went on smiling. "Loan me your pocket knifeand a piece of paper from your notebook. If I cut out a rectangularpiece of paper from this sheet and mount it on a pivot or shaft at AB, I can rotate it through 180 degrees, just like a child'steeter-totter, so that X will be where Y originally was. That is intwo dimensions. Now, simply add one dimension all the way round andyou will have what daddy is doing with space. He does it by shovingfifty or a hundred pounds of lead right out of space; the suddenflattening out of the tensors causes a section of space to floparound, and two portions of space change places. The first time hetried it, his desk disappeared, and we've never seen it again. We'vethought it was somewhere out in hyperspace; but this terrible story ofyours about disappearing safes, and the fact that you have thispicture, means that someone has got the desk."
"Surely you must have suspected that long ago, when the disappearancesfirst began?" Phil suggested.
"I've just returned from Europe," said Miss Bloomsbury. "I wastremendously puzzled when I got my first newspapers in New York andread about the safes. Gradually I gathered all the news on thesubject, and it seemed most reasonable to suspect this gangsterengineer."
"Great minds and same channels," Phil smiled. "But your father. Whydidn't he speak up when the safes began to pop?"
"Ha! ha!" she laughed a tinkly little laugh. "My father doesn't knowwhat safes are for, nor who is President, nor that there has been awar. Mother and I take care of him, and he works on tensors. He hasprobably never heard about the safes."
* * * * *
"What were you going to do around here?" Phil asked, marveling at thecourage of the girl who had come to look the situation overpersonally.
"I hadn't formed any definite plans. I just wanted to look aboutfirst."
"Well," said Phil, "as you will soon see by the papers, another safehas puffed out. It occurred to me that we might find out something byspying about here immediately after one of the disappearances. That'swhy I'm here. If you'll tell me where you live, or wait for me at somesafe place, I'll come and report to you as soon as I find outanything."
"Oho! So that's the kind of a girl you think I am!" She laughedsunnily again. "No, Mr. Reporter. Either we reconnoiter together, oreach on our own."
"Oh, together, by all means," said Phil so earnestly that she laughedagain. "And since we'd better wait for darkness, let's have something
to eat somewhere. I didn't finish my dinner."
Phil found Ione Bloomsbury in person to be even more wonderful thanher photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent,too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like atonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesyin her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost toomuch for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid hisheart at her feet. It gave him a thrill that went to his head, to haveher by his side, slipping along through the darkness toward Tony'sbuilding.
This building was a one-story brick affair