“Can you?” inquired Jimmie Dale gently.
“That thing!” Birdie Lee smiled mirthlessly. “Why it’s only a double combin—”
“Open it, then,” prompted Jimmie Dale.
Birdie Lee stooped impulsively to the dial of the safe; hesitated, then straightened up again, and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I guess I’ll take my medicine. I don’t know who you are. I might just as well have opened it for Slimmy as for you. It looks as though you were after the same thing he was.”
Jimmie Dale smiled.
“Stand a little away from the safe, Birdie—there,” he instructed. And, as the other obeyed wonderingly, Jimmie Dale knelt to the dial. “You see, I trust you not to move,” he said. The dial was whirling under the sensitive fingers, and, like Birdie before him, his ear was pressed against the face of the safe.
The moments went by. Birdie Lee was watching in an eager, fascinated, startled way. Came at last a sharp, metallic click, as Jimmie Dale flung the handle over—and the door swung wide. He shut it again instantly—and locked it.
“It’s your turn, Birdie,” he said calmly. “You see that, as far as I or my intentions are concerned, it doesn’t matter whether you open it or not.”
“Who are you?” There was awed admiration in Birdie’s voice. “You’re slicker than ever I was, even in the old days. For God’s sake, who are you?”