- The sleuths of Scotland Yard try to solve a series of burglaries.
- Someone has broken into the safe of a London company, and yet no force or explosive was used, and the keys do not appear to have been lost. A police superintendent is investigating, assisted by a new and very keen sergeant. The superintendent's wife is worried that he may be in personal danger, and the superintendent is not always mindful of the need to reassure his wife. Then a safe in another business is also robbed without the use of force, but the robber's getaway car runs down a bystander, who later dies. There seems to be nothing to link the crimes, but then the getaway car is found abandoned in a scrap yard. A discarded newspaper in the car may be a crucial lead in solving the crime, but there isn't much to go on.—Hazel Freeman
- In Central London in the middle of the night; we see the large premises of Stone and Company, Long Acre. Inside a man is stealthily proceeding towards one of the offices; we don't see his face, but he is carrying an attaché case and wearing gloves. He enters an office where there is a safe, and he produces a key and opens it. At Scotland Yard Information Room, a recorded announcement is received by telephone, stating that "burglars have entered". A radio message is passed to a police patrol car, and the officers go to the premises. The intruder hears them arrive and hastily removes money and closes the safe. The police don't see anything amiss from the outside, but then a man opens the main door and asks what the trouble is. He says he hasn't seen any disturbance and asks them in. They check the safe and everything seems to be all right. The man gives his name, Leslie Clark, and his address. The police are satisfied, but call in a technician to reset the alarm; they do this without contacting the management of the premises. He soon completes his work and they all leave. The next morning, we are in the home of Detective Superintendent Halliday; he has just had breakfast with his wife and young son. The boy is interested in his father's work. Halliday leaves and we see him arriving at Scotland Yard. He is reporting progress on various cases to his chief. The chief tells him that a new detective sergeant, named Ward, has been assigned to assist him. A call comes in about the robbery at Stone and Company; £8,000 was stolen. Halliday goes to his office and the new man Ward is sitting at Halliday's desk reading through papers concerning current cases. Halliday bristles at this a little. In fact Ward is exceptionally keen and exceptionally well briefed, which makes Halliday slightly resentful. Halliday and Ward arrive at the offices of Stone and Company, and meet Mr Stone, the proprietor. As they shake hands, Halliday stares intently for a few seconds into Stone's face, disconcerting him. Stone introduces a Mr Creasey who is with him; Creasey represents the Bristol and Birmingham Insurance Company. The safe is examined; it was locked after the money was taken, and there are no useful fingerprints. Stone says that there are two keys to the safe. Halliday asks Stone to arrange for his staff to present themselves for their fingerprints to be taken, although there are no prints on the safe. While Stone is out of the room, Creasey insists to Halliday that the safe was opened with a key, which Halliday considers already obvious, and there is further ill feeling in the room when Stone and Creasey both imply that the police were excessively slow to respond to the burglar alarm. Halliday tells them that the response was in one minute and thirty seconds, and the antagonism is increased. Stone is back in the room and mentions that there was more money in the safe than in the past, but that there was no night watchman; he was in hospital. After some time, the police are leaving and Halliday takes the opportunity to challenge Stone; he didn't report the absence of the night watchman. The police officer who responded at the time of the alarm is at the Criminal Records Office, but can't identify the man who was posing as the night watchman from existing photographs and descriptions. Halliday invites Ward to join him for a sandwich and a beer for lunch at a pub round the corner, but Ward politely declines; lunch once a week is about the only chance he has to see his girlfriend. That evening Ward talks to a regular informant; the man says it must have been an inside job because the safe had plenty of money in it; several underworld people had considered Stone's but there was never enough money in the safe to make the risk worthwhile. Ward reports back to Halliday and they agree that Stone himself could be an informant to whoever took the money, so as to claim the insurance money. Halliday agrees there is nothing more they can do that evening; he will go now and catch the 9:48 pm train home to Bromley. He gets home and his wife is unhappy that he is so late and didn't bother to phone to tell her; their son is excited because Halliday is taking him to Farnborough Air Display the next day, but Halliday now says that he can't do so, because of the Stone's case. The boy is very disappointed, and Halliday tells him an exciting, but imaginary, story about a new case. Halliday's wife and he have a mild argument about the dangers of his job. Halliday is prompted to think that the safe-breaker was someone unknown to the police, and although the time must now be about 11:00 pm, telephones Chief Superintendent Malcolm, and asks to meet him at the Criminal Records Office in about an hour's time. When they get there, Malcolm searches the records for cases outside London (where Halliday would remember the case) where the safe was opened by unknown means. They find little information of use, until they discover that all the safes in corresponding cases were made by the same company, Rock. Halliday visits the company's offices in Chester, and gets a list of all the men who have worked on safes at the company. The Managing Director marks some of them as retired, and crosses one through as he has died. In the police offices in Chester, no information on criminal activities by any of the men has come to light. Halliday and Ward return to London and speculate that their quarry might repeat the theft. In the middle of the night we are outside the Blackwall Shipping Company's premises. A man climbs on to the roof and descends through a skylight. He opens the safe with a key, and climbs the main gates back to the street. Meanwhile a young man has got up early to walk to work; he tells his wife he will be back by 12:30. As he walks, he sees the thief climbing out of the shipping yard, and getting in to a car that is waiting for him. It drives off and the young man tries to stop it, but it runs him down. In the daytime, the police go to the shipping company; £6,000 was taken. The safe was made by Rock. Halliday is told about the young man, who was knocked down at 4:30 am; he is regaining consciousness in hospital. Halliday and Ward go to the hospital, but the man is very weak. He manages to tell Halliday that he saw a man coming from the shipping office and get into the car, which ran him down. The man isn't able to explain much more. The man's wife comes and as Halliday is leaving, she asks him what is happening, and she goes to her husband. Back at Scotland Yard, Halliday agrees with his chief that the young man's death, if that happens, will be murder. A policeman comes in then and says that the man has in fact died. At the end of the day, Halliday takes Ward into a pub, and gets sandwiches, and a lemonade for the teetotal Ward. When Halliday gets home very late, his wife has made sandwiches for him, which he can't face. Next day at a scrap yard, two small boys try to get some money for a car fog lamp. A passing policeman asks them about it, and eventually one of them takes him to another scrap yard where a car has been dumped. The policeman reports it to higher authority, and a Ford Pilot car is found there with damage corresponding to the hit and run collision. There is blood and a fragment of cloth. In examining the car, they discover a woman's powder compact and an old newspaper. They check the registration number of the car, and it belongs to a different model altogether. Back at Scotland Yard they examine the vehicle excise licence disc for the car, and discover a different number, KLX774 has been erased. The car was hired, and reported stolen by a Mrs Elliott. Halliday looks at the screwed-up newspaper, a "Daily Mail", that was found in the car; a pencil mark on the front appears to read "Grange", presumed to be the newsagent's delivery instruction. Ward is sent to the newspaper offices; a manager there examines code markings printed on the newspaper, and can narrow the distribution area down to a relatively limited part of North Wales. Ward is sent to Manchester to find out the distribution; the Manchester newspaper company manager gives Ward a list of wholesalers, and in due course, retailers. Mrs Elliot has come in to see Halliday and she identifies the powder compact as hers. She is sympathetic about the murdered man and gives Halliday £5 for the widow. In North Wales a constable is at a newsagent's, and a woman there identifies a photograph of the inscription "Grange" on the newspaper as being written by her boss. But the word is "Garage", not Grange. The information is phoned through to Scotland Yard. Halliday tells Ward they will have to go to the place where the small garage is located. Mr Thomas is the owner. He identifies the paper as his, but when he is not direct in his answers, Halliday is rather acid with him. However they look in the day-book, but there was not work done on a Ford Pilot. He didn't do the crossword himself, but surmises that a customer did it; it was a Mr Brotherton, whom he took to the railway junction station. Brotherton had left for good. He caught the 9:50 am train. Halliday looks at the list of locksmiths, but there is no Brotherton. Halliday now surmises that the man supposedly dead, and crossed off the list, was "Brotherton". At the Rock Safe offices, Halliday gets more detail that leads to a man Gilson, who retired a couple of years previously. Halliday and Ward return to London on the night train. Halliday speculates that Gilson had lived quietly all his working life, but he made extra keys for all the safes. Their train pulls in to Birmingham station, and Ward goes to telephone his girlfriend, and Halliday suddenly thinks he could ring his wife. It is the middle of the night, but she is pleased to hear from him. There is news about their son's schooling, and Halliday nearly misses the train listening to it. Now in Shepperton, an estate agent is telling Halliday and Ward about the house in Shepperton where Gilson moved to. The man explains how Gilson died of drowning in Cornwall, but the body was never found. Mrs Gilson then left the house to live elsewhere. Halliday goes to the house and speaks to the former maid to Gilson. The woman thinks the Gilsons were mean, but Mrs Gilson had hinted that she expected to come into money. Halliday now goes to Somerset House, where records of deaths are kept, but there is no record of Gilson's death. The Assistant Commander at Scotland Yard is anxious for the case to be cleared up, and this reminds Halliday about Stone's insurance claim from Creasey. He goes to Stone, who says that Creasey had paid up the insurance claim without much investigation, and also that Creasey knew that the night watchman at Stone's was in hospital. Creasey is now under suspicion as the informant. Halliday is sure that Gilson will be attempting another safe robbery. It emerges that the Royal Festival Hall (a theatre complex in London) is likely to have large sums in the safe after certain gala performances in the near future. It is probable that Gilson would be interested in robbing their safe. Halliday speaks to the manager there, and he says that Creasey has already spoken to him, but that his company puts its business elsewhere. However Halliday persuades him to see Cressey again and imply that he might put the business to him. The manager soon rings back and says that he has given Creasey the business, and that he has told him the key nights. On the first night, Halliday and Ward hide in the room at the Festival Hall where the safe is located, but no-one attempts a robbery. Creasey is being tailed by the police, and eventually we see that he meets with a woman in a department store. The woman is followed to Crispin Court, where Mrs Elliot lives. Back at Scotland Yard Yard and Halliday discuss the matter: Mrs Elliot must be Mrs Gilson; she hired the car, and Gilson came up from North Wales by train and they met up. The compact left in the car by Mrs Elliot was a ruse to establish credibility "if anything went wrong". The maid who worked for Mrs Elliot is brought up to watch at Crispin Court, and when Mrs Gilson came out, the woman identifies her. So Mrs Elliot became Mrs Gilson. The next day is Halliday's son's birthday, but Halliday has to go to work and leave the son at a children's party. Halliday is at the Festival Hall for the last night of the gala performances. With Ward he is once again waiting in the room where the safe is located. At the end of a long evening, everyone is going home, but a sports car is driven into the forecourt of the theatre. The interior is deserted but a man is quietly making his way towards the office. Halliday and Ward get ready and conceal themselves, and the man stealthily goes to the safe and opens it with a key. Halliday turns the light on and the man says that he is an assistant manager. Halliday arrests him. The woman waiting in the car outside starts the engine and starts to drive away, and Halliday and Ward and the man come out. The man manages to pull away from them and runs off. The woman derives off in the car, but Halliday jumps on to the bonnet. The woman swerves to try to dislodge him but Halliday smashed the windscreen with a truncheon, and the car crashes; at the same time other police officers catch the man. Ward drives Halliday home and they rehearse a story to conceal from Mrs Halliday that Halliday was in personal danger.
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