Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/48

"ting" of the electric alarm, followed by a heavy thud in the vault beneath, warned us that the burglars had made good their good their entrance. With a meaning glance at me, Macpherson lighted a night-light, which stood carefully screened in one corner, and then extinguished the lamp, leaving the room in a dim twilight, just sufficient to enable us to move about. He then removed the cover from one of the bull's-eyes in the floor, from which a view could be obtained of the portion of the vault where we anticipated that the entrance would be effected.

"A broad ray of light came up through the bull's-eye."

A broad ray of light came up through the bull's-eye. Going on our knees we could see that an oblong slab, like the slab, like the panel of a door, had been forced from the wall, and lay in fragments on the floor beneath. In the vault stood Antoine with his back towards us, while through the black opening left by the missing masonry some other person, whom we conjectured to be the Count, was handing crowbars, wedges, and other burglarious-looking implements. When all were handed in, the person on the other side began to creep through the opening, but to our astonishment it was not the plump figure of the Count that appeared, but that of a much younger and slighter man, with fair, close-cropped hair. We looked at each other in perplexity. Suddenly the truth flashed upon me. "Madame, without her wig!" I whispered.

Again a head appeared at the opening, and, aided by his friends, the Count through, though with difficulty, for his broad shoulders all but stuck in the narrow opening. The burglars now proceeded, by some method which was not quite clear to me, to fix sconces, holding lighted candles, to various parts of the wall. They made a rapid examination of the two safes, and then, without further loss of time, the Count and Antoine set to work on the door of the larger, while the third larger, while the third man began like operations on the smaller.

So soon as they were fairly at work, Macpherson crossed the room to the barrel containing the diluted sulphuric acid, and turned on the tap, after which he returned to his post of observation by my side. "Keep your eye on that fellow working at the bottom of the smaller safe. He is nearer the floor. The gas will reach him before it touches either of the other two." I watched, scarcely venturing to breathe, such was the intensity of my excitement. Some ten or twelve minutes passed, and I began to fear Macpherson's plan was a failure, when the man he had indicated dropped the tool he was using; and after swaying from side to side for a moment, fell forward on his face insensible. His fall did not for the moment attract the attention of his comrades, busy as they were in their own share of the work. Presently, however, as the atmosphere became more and more vitiated, the candle lowest in