seemed to burn the throats of the unfortunate toilers in street and
office. The portly Manager, who suffered cruelly owing to his size, came
down perspiring and gasping with the heat. He carried a light-coloured
umbrella to protect his head.

"He'll want something more than that, though!" Jones laughed quietly to
himself when he saw him enter.

The pistol was safely in his hip pocket, every one of its six chambers
loaded.

The Manager saw the smile on his face, and gave him a long steady look
as he sat down to his desk in the corner. A few minutes later he touched
the bell for the head cashier--a single ring--and then asked Jones to
fetch some papers from another safe in the room upstairs.

A deep inner trembling seized the secretary as he noticed these
precautions, for he saw that the hostile forces were at work against
him, and yet he felt he could delay no longer and must act that very
morning, interference or no interference. However, he went obediently up
in the lift to the next floor, and while fumbling with the combination
of the safe, known only to himself, the cashier, and the Manager, he
again heard Thorpe's horrid whisper just behind him:

"You must do it to-day! You must do it to-day!"

He came down again with the papers, and found the Manager alone. The
room was like a furnace, and a wave of dead heated air met him in the
face as he went in. The moment he passed the doorway he realised that he
had been the subject of conversation between the head cashier and his