“There’s a good one on us, Mr. Bagsbury. We can’t get into either of the big vaults. The time-locks are still going. They ought to have come open a quarter of an hour ago. Curtin says he set them just as usual, but I suppose he must have wound them a little too far. That would be easy enough to do. They’re likely to come open any minute now.” “Where is Curtin?” John asked. “He’s somewhere about. Oh, I guess he’s in the telephone box.” There was, after all, a fundamental error in Melville Sponley’s calculations which would probably have beaten him even if luck had turned things differently; if, for instance, Curtin had not chosen that particular moment for his telephoning. The Bear had never in the course of the fight, and particularly not in this last turn of it, reckoned upon the quickness of John’s intuitions. Most men would have taken the obvious explanation instead of the far more remote one, and until it was too late would have waited for the vaults to open themselves. John would have been too late had he been obliged to wait for the laborious processes of reason to guide him; but thanks to insight, or imagination, or genius, or whatever you may be pleased to call it, he moved swiftly. Before Peters had finished speaking, John understood the whole trick, and, what is more to the purpose, he had no doubt of his understanding. He looked about thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said to Peters:-- “Don’t interfere in what’s going to happen. I know exactly what I’m going to do.” With that he walked rapidly toward the open door of the telephone box. He had no intention of stealing up and taking Curtin unawares, but chance brought it about. The rubber matting deadened his footfalls, and as he drew nearer, a movement by one of the clerks attracted Curtin’s attention in the other direction. Even at that, had it not been for the intoxication induced by the whiskey and by the excitement of the moment, Curtin must have perceived John’s presence before the Banker had come within a single pace of him. But as it happened, John was not an arm’s length away when Curtin said, “They think it’ll come open in a minute.” It was not, as Sponley thought, discretion that stopped him then, but a big, lean forearm which came under his chin, bending his head back suddenly so that every muscle in his body turned limp as rags and the terrible grip of the inner crook of an elbow which throttled him. As his hands involuntarily flew to release his throat, John caught the receiver away from him and clapped it to his own ear. He heard Sponley say,-- “Locked it up till twelve, didn’t you?” Then he rang off, and tightening his grip on Curtin, backed out of the cabinet. Every man in the bank, save the one who remained deep in oblivion in the inner private office, came running to the spot, but they did not need John’s quick admonition not to interfere.