Within the next half-hour Simon, who had the rare virtue of being honest with himself, was freely admitting, in the privacy of his own mind, that the crisis had got beyond his power to grapple with it, and he had begun to fear complications more dreadful than he dared to put into words. For the patrol had failed to find Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown, head guardian of the Safe Deposit, had disappeared. Nor was this all. A renter had come to take his belongings from a safe in the third side-passage on the left, and the sub-guardian imprisoned in that passage could not open the grille between it and the main corridor. He had his key, but the key would not turn in the glittering lock. The renter, too impatient to wait, had departed very angrily at this excess of safety. Then it was gradually discovered that every sub-guardian in every side-passage was similarly imprisoned. Not a key in the entire place would turn. The patrol rushed to the main door. The three keys had clearly been turned while the door was opened, and the shot bolts prevented the door from closing. This explained why the door was ajar, but it did not explain the absence of the doorkeeper, who had apparently followed in the footsteps of his chief, Mr. Brown. 'The time-lock! Someone must have set it!' cried the patrol to Shawn, and the two hastened to the other end of the main corridor, where the dial of the machine glistened under an electric lamp. And all the sub-guardians stirred and grumbled in their beautiful bright cages like wrathful lions. No such scene had ever been known in that Safe Deposit or any other safe deposit before. The patrol was right. The dial of the time-lock showed that it had been set against every lock, great and small, in the Safe Deposit, until nine a.m. the next day. 'It's all up!' the patrol said solemnly. 'Do you mean to say nothing can be done to open that vault till nine to-morrow?' Simon demanded in despair. 'Nothing. The blooming Czar couldn't manage it with all his Cossacks! No, nor Bobs either! This is a Safe Deposit, this is, and if Mr. Hugo is in that vault, it's Mr. Hugo as knows it's a Safe Deposit by now.' A brief silence ensued, and then Simon said: 'We must telephone to the police. There's a telephone in the waiting-room, isn't there?' The patrol admitted that there was, but his manner hinted a low opinion of the utility of the police. He stood mute while Simon Shawn told the telephone receiver what had occurred in the bowels of the earth beneath Hugo's. 'Wait a minute,' said the telephone, and then, after a pause: 'Are you there? I'm Inspector Winter.' 'That's him as has charge of all the strong-room cases,' the patrol interjected to Simon. 'I've got Mr. Jack Galpin here, as it happens,' said the telephone. 'Mr. Jack Galpin?' Simon questioned. 'He's just done eighteen months for an attempt in Lombard Street,' the patrol explained. 'I've heard of him.' 'I'll come down with him immediately in a cab,' said the telephone.