Luke proved right. All our efforts were unavailing. That door had been built to keep folks out.
“If this is going to be a case for chisels,” said Rudd, “we’d better start on it at once, before those police come interfering.”
We were already centres of attraction to a rapidly increasing crowd. Our goings-on provided entertainment of a kind they didn’t care to miss. Long before we had put that job through the police did come. What is more, we were glad to see them.
Rudd fetched a pair of crowbars from an ironmonger’s shop close by. With his assistance, and acting under his instructions, we started to shift that door. We never got beyond the starting. We might as well have tried to shift the monument. He rigged up contrivances; tried dodges. There was the door just as tight as ever. And just as we were thinking of breaking the heads of some of the members of that interested crowd, up the police did come.
Mr. Paine explained to them what we were after. Then he and the young lady and Rudd went off with one of them to the station, while another stayed behind. In course of time they returned, together with an inspector, three more policemen, and two specimens of the British working man, who were wheeling something on a barrow. The interest of the crowd increased. The new arrivals were received with cheers.
Those workmen, in conjunction with Isaac Rudd, fitted up a machine upon the pavement. It was some kind of a drill I believe. Presently not one but half a dozen holes had been cut right through that door. Into these were inserted crowbars of a different construction to those we had been using. We all lent a hand. And the door was open.
The crowd pressed forward.
“Keep back!” cried the inspector.
And the police kept them back.
The inspector entered, with the young lady, Mr. Paine, Rudd and I. The rest were kept out, including the cursing gentleman and his two friends, which seemed hard on them after all they must have gone through. But it was little that they lost. At the beginning anyhow.