"There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of," he said. "Good gracious, man, have you no pluck at all? I declare when I look at you that I could kick you as one does a cowardly cur."
But Carrington was impervious to insult. His face was ghastly, and the strong glare of the electric lights showed the beads of moisture upon his forehead.
"It is all very well for you," he growled. "The greater the danger the better you seem to like it."
"There isn't any danger," Anstruther protested. "Didn't you tell me that the police had no special orders as far as the bank was concerned? And everybody knows you have two night watchmen. Besides--oh, I have no patience with you!"
Anstruther turned away from the other, and began to fumble with the lock of a small black bag which he carried in his hand. He signified to Carrington that the latter should lead the way to the vaults below. Carrington produced a bunch of keys from his pocket. Anstruther sneered openly.
"Oh, that's it," he said. "Going to make it all smooth for us, are you? Of all the fools I ever came across! Why not go outside and tell everybody what we are going to do? Those are all patent shove locks, which the most expert thief could never pick, and you are going to tell the police later on that they have been opened with an ordinary key. Don't forget that you have got to face the police later on, and endure a cross-examination that will test your nerve to the uttermost. We are going to blow those locks up, and these are dynamite cartridges to do it."
Carrington's face was almost comic in its dismay. His ghastly, sweat-bedabbled face fairly quivered. But he made no further protest; he bent before the sway of Anstruther's master mind.
"I don't wish to interfere with you," he stammered. "But the infernal noise which is likely to----"
Anstruther kicked his companion aside.
"We either do it or we don't do it," he said. "It doesn't matter a rap one way or the other to me. Now which is it to be?"