Were there any others near them? the major wondered.  No sign, no sound of them existed.  Off to northward, where the dim glow ghosted up against the sky, an occasional noise drifted to the night.  A distant laugh diffused itself through the dark.  A dog yapped; perhaps the same that they had heard barking, a few minutes before.  Then came the faint, sharp tapping of a hammer smiting metal.

“They’re knocking out the holding-pins,” thought the major.  “In a few minutes it’ll be too late, if we don’t strike now!” He felt a great temptation to urge haste, on the Master.  But, aware of the futility of any suggestion, the risk of being demoted for any other faux pas, he bridled his impatience and held still.

Realizing that they were now lying at the exact distance of 440 yards from the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal—­if you can call “stealing” the forced sale the Master now planned consummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands every ultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once the coup should be put through—­realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of a profound excitement.

His pulses quickened; the tension of his Celtic nerves keyed itself up like a banjo-string about to snap.  Steeled in the grim usages of war though he was, and more than once having felt the heart-breaking stress of the zero hour, this final moment of waiting, of suspense before the attack that was so profoundly to affect his life and the lives of all these other hardy men, pulled heavily at his nerves.  He desperately wanted a smoke, again, but that was out of the question.  It seemed to him, there in the dark and stillness, one of the fateful moments of time, pregnant with possibilities unlimited.

The Master, Alden, Rrisa, mere vague blurs among the ferns, remained motionless.  If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or sign of it.  Where might the others of the Legion be?  No indication of them could be made out.  No other living thing seemed in the woods encircling the stockade.  Was each man really there and ready for the predetermined role he was to play?

It seemed incredible, fantastic, to suppose that all these adventurers, each separate and alone, each having no contact, with any other, should all have taken their assigned posts.  That each, with luminous watch on wrist, was even now timing himself, to the second, before striking the single note calculated to produce, in harmony with all the rest, the finished composition.  Such an assumption partook more of the stuff of an Arabian Nights tale than of stern reality in this Twentieth Century and on the outskirts of the world’s greatest city.

The Master, crouching, whispered: 

“Two minutes more!  Keep your eyes on your watches, now.  Get your lethal guns ready!  In 120 seconds, you will hear the first capsule burst.  Ten seconds after that, Alden, fire yours.  Ten later, yours, Bohannan.  Ten later, yours, Rrisa.  Listen hard!  Hold steady!”