While Watkins held up the lid the thief tore off his claw-hammer coat and stuffed that down into the chest. In another instant he had forced his shoulders into the uniform coat, donned the cap and buckled on the belt.
“Now break for it, Watkins,” he gasped, fighting the buttons into the buttonholes. “Take it easy out the front door. I’ll go out on the balcony and call down to the men in the street that it’s all right. Start the engine in the car and keep it going till I can make my getaway. Now!”
Watkins vanished out the door at the psychological moment. Captain Stone and Kearney were coming down the stairs engaged in earnest conversation. So engrossed were they when they entered the room that they failed to notice the absence of Officer 666, whose uniform was strutting on the balcony while he himself lay anæsthetized in the chest.
“How could he have been hiding in those portières, Kearney?” Captain Stone was saying. “I looked through them before I left the room.”
“I don’t know how, Captain,” replied Kearney, “but he was and Gladwin knew it.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Positive.”
“I say, captain, do you know where Mr. Ryan is?” intervened the roving Barnes, who seemed to have bobbed up from nowhere in particular with Sadie in his train.
“He may be in the cellar and he may be on the roof,” snapped the captain. “Don’t bother me now!”