Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/24

 aarface, inquiringly, as a physician's fingers tap a patient's chest. He tested the combination, but without success. He examined the armoured hinge-sockets. Then he stood off and studied the oblong of japanned metal.

He was an expert in such things; his life had made him such. He knew that with a little glazier's putty, an air-pump, and a few ounces of nitroglycerine he could in a quarter of an hour have that metal door blown away. Or with a strong enough current he could corrode away its lock bars by electrolysis, or with a forced acetylene flame cut away its lock-dial. But such procedure was not in keeping with either his ends or his aims. He knew that his attack could not be one of force.

He suddenly turned, crossed the studio, and stepped quietly out to the entrance door, making sure that it was locked. Then he returned to the studio, took off his coat, and went to the large worktable in the centre of the room.

There he took a huge sheet of draughting paper, twisting it about into the shape of a cone. He secured it in this shape with liquid glue from the smaller table, fashioning it with a flap lip at the larger end. This lip he in turn glued to the safe-front, over the tumbler, to the left of the combination dial, holding it there until the glue hardened. The pointed apex of the cone he carefully cut away with a pair of scissors, leaving it standing out from the safe-front like a huge speaking-trumpet.

When he knelt before the safe again, however, it was his ear and not his mouth which he pressed closely