“Yes, curse it!” Shinburn mumbled; “it seems I got one to fit, but this one will not,” and he contemptuously tossed a key on the floor at my feet. “We might get along well enough under these conditions if I could relock the vault door, but I can’t. The duplicate key will unlock it, but will not, try as I may, lock it again. As it is, the vault door can’t be left as we found it, and we’re in a pretty mess.”
“It unlocked it easily enough,” I commented, as I took the key from his hand, and, thrusting it home in the vault door lock, attempted to turn the bolt at lock again. In vain—I could not.
“I’m losing my cunning,” went on Shinburn as I was working; “here I’ve made three keys, and only one will do the trick for which I shaped it.”
I looked at my watch, for a new thought had come to me. I said, “Lock the money safe, Mark, and let’s get out of this, for the night clerk who sleeps in the bank will be here in ten minutes.”
“I’ll do it, but what about the d—d vault door? We can’t lock that, and to leave it open means the certain discovery that some one’s been tampering with the vault. We’ve come a long way from New York to make a failure.”
“We can’t leave it any way but unlocked,” I said; “and, as a matter of fact, knowing the habits of cashiers as I do, I’ll wager that nothing will be thought of the door being found unlocked. The cashier will think he has been careless, and you can be certain that he won’t squeal on himself. In the meantime, we’ll make the keys fit. Don’t forget the safe key you threw on the floor.”
Shinburn continued to sit on the floor like a child in a pout.
“Come, Mark, come!” I spoke harshly and almost aloud, impatient over his tardiness and seeming indifference to our danger. “We’re taking a long chance remaining here like this.”
“Blast the luck!” he growled again, “to think we’ve got to miss this fine opportunity of getting away with that swag.” Never in all my experience with Shinburn, this master crook, had I seen him so confoundedly obstinate and so much disturbed. He was an icicle, as a rule—nothing stirred him. Tonight he was disgusted clean through.
“There, that safe is locked,” he said at length, as, springing from the floor, he threw the money safe door to, and turned the key home. Two or three small fortunes were shut from our view. “And that one,” he added, “will be open the next time we come, if we do, or I’ve lost all my cunning.”