I think our appearance struck them with more terror than if we had been masked highwaymen. Mooney was so evidently the stage type of Western desperado; and I must have been, myself, a sinister figure—a strange figure, with the big leather suit case in one hand and an automatic pistol in the other. Mooney ordered the two men at the end of the car to lie down on their faces; this they did with ludicrous haste; one of them nearly fell in his effort to obey the order quickly. They went even further than Mooney directed; they lay flat with their arms around their faces as though to convince the outlaw that they would make no efforts to see what was going on. Mooney ordered the big man to open the safe. The man was evidently in terror, but he was a sensible person. He pointed out that he could not open it; that it had a time lock on it. He went ahead of Mooney to the safe, squatted down in the car and put his big finger on the lock. “You can see,” he said, “I can’t open it.” The man’s face was distended with anxiety. What he said was the truth, but he was not certain that the highwayman, standing a few feet behind him covering him with a weapon, would believe what he said. He knew the stories of such holdups: how express messengers had been ordered to open safes and when they refused, or where unable to do so, they had been promptly shot. I think the man expected to be shot, as he squatted there beside the safe, his big body loose, his face covered with sweat. Mooney saw instantly that the man was telling the truth. I do not know that he was, in fact, paying any attention to what the man said. He knew at a glance that the safe was fitted with a time lock. He advanced toward the man, and the express messenger’s face seemed to puff out as though it were becoming suddenly swollen; I think he was now convinced that the highwayman was about to kill him. But instead, Mooney ordered him to lie down. He turned over on the floor precisely like one who collapses from fatigue. Mooney took the leather suit case from my hand. “Shoot any man that moves,” he said hoarsely. Then he went to work at the safe. The big messenger was so close to the safe door that Mooney had literally to push his body out of the way with his foot. Mooney got some tools out of the dress-suit case, drilled the combination, and put in a charge of nitroglycerine. He did it quickly, with incredible skill. Then he ordered the express messenger to move up to the end of the car. “Go ahead,” he said, “or you will be shot full of scrap iron.” The big man got up on his hands and knees and without turning his head crawled to the end of the car and lay down.