"Surely you must have suspected that long ago, when the disappearances first began?" Phil suggested.
"I've just returned from Europe," said Miss Bloomsbury. "I was tremendously puzzled when I got my first newspapers in New York and read about the safes. Gradually I gathered all the news on the subject, and it seemed most reasonable to suspect this gangster engineer."
"Great minds and same channels," Phil smiled. "But your father. Why didn't he speak up when the safes began to pop?"
"Ha! ha!" she laughed a tinkly little laugh. "My father doesn't know what safes are for, nor who is President, nor that there has been a war. Mother and I take care of him, and he works on tensors. He has probably never heard about the safes."
"What were you going to do around here?" Phil asked, marveling at the courage of the girl who had come to look the situation over personally.
"I hadn't formed any definite plans. I just wanted to look about first."
"Well," said Phil, "as you will soon see by the papers, another safe has puffed out. It occurred to me that we might find out something by spying about here immediately after one of the disappearances. That's why I'm here. If you'll tell me where you live, or wait for me at some safe place, I'll come and report to you as soon as I find out anything."
"Oho! So that's the kind of a girl you think I am!" She laughed sunnily again. "No, Mr. Reporter. Either we reconnoiter together, or each on our own."
"Oh, together, by all means," said Phil so earnestly that she laughed again. "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 than her photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent, too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like a tonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesy in her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost too much for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid his heart at her feet. It gave him a thrill that went to his head, to have her by his side, slipping along through the darkness toward Tony's building.
This building was a one-story brick affair with a vast amount of window space. From the sidewalk they could see faint lights glowing within, but could make out no further details. They therefore selected the darkest side of the building, and made their way hurriedly across the lawn. Here, they found, they could see the crowding apparatus within the one long room fairly well. They looked into one window after another, making a circuit around the building, until Phil suddenly clutched the girl's arm.
"Look!" he whispered. "Straight ahead and a little to the left!"
At the place he indicated stood a tall safe. Across the top of its door were painted in gold letters, the words: "The Epicure."
"That's the safe that went to-night," whispered Phil. "That's all we need to know. Now, quick to a telephone!"
"Oh," said a gentle, ironic voice behind them, "not so quick!"
They whirled around and found themselves looking into two automatic pistols, and behind them in the light of the street lamps, the sardonic smile of Tony Costello.
"Charmed at your kind interest in my playthings, I'm sure," he purred. "Only it leaves me in an embarrassing position. I'm not exactly sure what to do about it. Kindly step inside while I think."
Phil made a move sidewise along the wall.
"Stop!" barked Costello sharply. "Of course," his voice was quiet again, "that might be the simplest way out. I think I am within my legal rights if I shoot people who are trying to break into my property. Yet, that would be messy – not neat. Better step in. The window swings outward."
At the point of his pistols they clambered through the window, and he came in after them. He kept on talking, as though to himself, but loud enough for them to hear.
"Yes, we want some way out that is neater than that. Hm! Violence distresses me. Never liked Ed's rough methods. Yet, this is embarrassing."
He turned to them.
"What did you really want here? I see that you are the Examiner's reporter, and that you are the lady of the photograph. What did you come here for? Ah, yes, the safe. Well, go over and look at it."
As they hesitated, he stamped his foot and shrilled crankily:
"I mean it! Go, look at the safe! Is there anything else you want to know?"
"Yes," said Phil coolly, his self-control returning, "where are the other safes?"
"Oh. Anything to oblige. Last requests are a sort of point of honor, aren't they. Ought to grant them. Stand close to that safe!"
He backed away, his guns levelled at them. He laid down the right one, keeping the left one aimed, and moved some knobs on a dial and threw over a big switch. A muffled rumbling and whirring began somewhere; and then, slowly, a block of tables and apparatus ten feet square rose upward toward the ceiling. A section of the floor on which they stood came up, supported by columns, and now formed the roof of a room that had risen out of the floor. In it were four safes.
"Poor old Ed!" sighed Tony. "There was a time when he had a lot of good stuff put away down there. I've got six rooms like that. Well, the good old times are over."
He threw out the switch and the whole mass sank slowly and silently downward till the floor was level and there was no further sign of it. Then he backed away to another table, across the room from them, keeping his gun levelled.
"Too bad," he said. "I don't like to do these things. But – " he sighed deeply, "self-preservation. Now I'm going to flip you out, yes, out, into a strange region. I've never been there. I don't know if there is food or drink there. I hope so, for you'll never get back here."
Phil stiffened. He determined to leap and risk a shot. But he was too late. Tony's hand came down on a switch. There was a sudden, nauseating jar. The laboratory vanished.
There was only the safe, Ione Bloomsbury and himself, and a small circle of concrete floor extending to a dim little horizon a dozen feet away. Beyond that, nothing. Not blue, as the sky is. Not black, as dark, empty spaces are. It suggested black, because there was no impression of light or color on the eyes; but it wasn't black. It was nothingness.