A wedge followed the jimmy. A faint creak
again--and now one a little louder--and Jimmie Dale, half turned,
listened intently--the narrow board was in his hand. There was
nothing--no sound--save that interrupted, stertorous breathing from
above, and the tinny jangle of the piano from the direction of "The
Yellow Lantern."
And now Jimmie Dale smiled again--that curious flicker on his lips that
mingled whimsicality and a deadly earnestness. The Tocsin had made no
mistake. Showing through the aperture, gleaming under the flashlight's
ray, was the nickel dial of a safe. He worked rapidly now. The first
panel out, the remainder came much more readily--and finally the entire
face of the safe was disclosed. Jimmie Dale stared at it--and pursed his
lips. It was an ugly safe, extremely ugly--from a cracksman's point of
view! Also, there seemed a hint of irony, a jeer almost, in the
impassive wall of steel that confronted him. It was one of his own
make--one that had helped, in the old days, to amass the millions that
his father had left to him--and it was one of the _best_!
In an abstracted, deliberate way, his eyes pondering the safe, the
blue-steel tools were replaced in the pockets of the leather girdle; and
then the long, slim, tapering fingers closed upon the dial's knob and
twirled it tentatively, and his head bent forward until his ear was
pressed hard against the face of the safe.
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