“Where do you think your cashier is, right now?”
Britt flapped his hands, helplessly confessing that he did not know.
In all the room there was a profound hush. The crowd had been straining aural nerves, trying to hear what was being said by the men in authority.
Nobody had been paying any attention to Prophet Elias, who had been crawling like a torpid caterpillar. For some moments he had been rigidly motionless in one spot. He was leaning against the front of the vault, his ear closely pressed to the crevice at the base of the door.
He straightened up on his knees and shouted in such stentorian tones that all in the room jerked their muscles in sudden fright. “Swine! Fools!”
They gaped at him.
“Whilst you're shouting amongst your trash a man is dying on the other side of the door!”
Vona leaped from her chair. She shrieked. She ran to the door and beat her fists against the steel, futilely and furiously.
“In there lies your money-changer, I tell you, Pharaoh, lord of Egypt,” the Prophet shouted. “I hear his groans!”
Britt and Starr rushed to the vault and both of them strove clumsily and ineffectually with the mechanism, giving up their attempts after a few moments.