Horton had quickly swung about—he was, in fact, groping along the passage floor for a two-quart tin pail partly filled with tap water. The glare had blinded him, for the time being, and he was in reality feeling for a drink. But the Advance reporter had thought the movement meant that his presence was discovered. And the two men had come together.
Trotter told of the fight there, hand to hand, in the choking tunnel with its tangle of deadly currents. He recounted how the other man's strength had been greater than his own, how he felt his breath going, how he saw himself being forced closer and closer back on the glaring electrode. He confessed that he had been excited and foolish enough to lose the revolver. He mentioned his indignation when he saw that the other man was actually trying to use his teeth. He described how for the first time it came home to him that he would be killed there, that Tiernan could not possibly hear his cries, that his heart could not possibly continue to beat without fresh air.
Then he had grown desperate. He had apparently gone mad. He had started to use his own teeth. He had set his jaw on the yeggman's hand as it groped for his throat. He had caught the index finger of the other blackened hand and levered it savagely backward, backward until the bone broke and it hung limp on the tortured tendon. He had sent the relaxed head skidding against the tunnel wall, once, twice, three times, until the sweat-stained arms fell away and left him free.
He had sat there for many minutes, stupidly staring at the unconscious man. Then he had found the revolver at his feet, and, being too weak to get up he had still sat there, contentedly firing a volley of bullets against the steel vault wall until the bank officials were alarmed and an armed guard was sent scurrying about to investigate. And with the timely arrival of Tiernan and that armed guard came an end to the most audacious and staggering criminal coup of the century!
It was all very beautiful, the very finest of fine writing. Trotter poured his ardent and exultant young soul into it. And when his last page had been written and sent away, he sat back in the wide-armed, morocco-upholstered bank-room chair, white with weariness, the fires of creation burnt out to the last ember.
But one thing sustained and consoled him. He knew, as he whisked down to the Advance office in the Vice-President's French touring car, that his work was done. He also knew that it was well done.
It did not even startle him when Pyott himself held out a cold-fingered hand.
"Good business!" was his chief's sardonic commendation.
"Then I've made good?" asked the weary youth, without enthusiasm.
"You've made your TEN-STRIKE!" was the answer. "You're on the city staff at twenty dollars a week."