AN UNEXPECTED SURPRISE! As Walter Sills rattled cross-town towards his bank, he found no reason to change his wish. Even the comforting and homely jiggling of his ancient and battered automobile failed to cheer him. From a life characterized by peaceful monotony, he had entered a period of bedlam, and he was not at all satisfied with the change. “Riches, like poverty, has its own peculiar problems,” he remarked sententiously to himself as he braked the car before the two-story, marble edifice that was the bank. He stepped out carefully, stretched his cramped legs, and headed for the revolving door. He didn’t get there right away, though. Two husky specimens of the human race stepped up, one at each side, and Sills felt a very hard object pressing with painful intensity against his ribs. He opened his mouth involuntarily, and was rewarded by an icy voice in his ears, “Quiet, Baldy, or you’ll get what you deserve for the damn trick you pulled on me last night.” Sills shivered and subsided. He recognized Mike the Slug’s voice very easily. “Where’s the details?” asked Mike, “and make it quick.” “Inside jacket pocket,” croaked Sills tremulously. Mike’s companion passed his hand dexterously into the indicated pocket and flicked out three or four folded sheets of foolscap. “Dat it, Mike?” A hasty appraisal and a nod, “Yeh, we got it. All right. Baldy, on your way!” A sudden shove and the two gangsters jumped into their car and drove away rapidly, while the chemist sprawled on the sidewalk. Kindly hands raised him up. “It’s all right,” he managed to gasp. “I just tripped, that’s all. I’m not hurt.” He found himself alone again, passed into the bank, and dropped into the nearest bench, in near-collapse. There was no doubt about it; the new life was not for him. But he should have been prepared for it. Taylor had foreseen a possibility of this sort of thing happening. He, himself, had thought a car had been trailing him. Yet, in his surprise and fright, he had almost ruined everything. He shrugged his thin shoulders and, taking off his hat, abstracted a few folded sheets of paper from the sweatband. It was the work of five minutes to deposit them in a vault, and see the immensely strong steel door swing shut. He felt relieved. “I wonder what they’ll do,” he muttered to himself on the way home, “when they try to follow the instructions on the paper they _did_ get.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “If they do, there’s going to be one heck of an explosion.” Sills arrived home to find three policemen pacing leisurely up and down the sidewalk in front of the house. “Police guard,” explained Taylor shortly, “so that we have no more trouble like last night.” The chemist related the events at the bank and Taylor nodded grimly. “Well, it’s checkmate for them now. Staples will be here in two hours and until then, the police will take care of things. Afterwards,” he shrugged, “it will be Staples’ affair.”