‘Then there’s nothing,’ Simon stammered.

Mr. Galpin gazed at the young man.

‘Assuming I do the job, what’s the job worth?’ he asked.

‘It’s worth anything.’

‘Is it worth a hundred pounds?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cash?’

‘Yes, I promise it.  I will hand you my savings-bank book if you like.’

’I only ask because I have a sort of a notion about that clock.  It’s a pendulum clock, and you know how fast a clock ticks when you take the pendulum away, and the escapement can run free.  It does an hour in about three minutes.  Now, if I could get the pendulum out without alarming the clock ... it would be nine to-morrow morning in no time.  See?’

‘I see that,’ said the patrol.  ‘I see that.  But what I don’t see—­’

‘Never mind what you don’t see,’ Mr. Jack Galpin murmured.  ’Bring me my bag out of there.  I may tell you,’ he went on to Simon, ’that I thought of this scheme months ago, just as a pleasant sort of a fancy, but quite practical.  It’s a queer world, isn’t it?’

‘Here’s your bag,’ said the patrol.

’Now you two can just go into the waiting-room, and wait till I call you.  Understand?  And tell all these wild beasts round here to hold their tongues and sit tight.  I haven’t got to be disturbed in a job like this....  And it’s a hundred pounds if I do it, mister, no more and no less, eh?’

Within exactly twenty-five minutes Mr. Galpin entered the waiting-room.

‘See that?’ he said, holding up a pendulum.  ’That’s it.  You can come and look now.  But I don’t invite the public to see my own private melting process.  Not me!’

He had burnt two holes through the half-inch plate of Bessemer steel in which the clock was enclosed, and by means of two pairs of tweezers (which must certainly have been imitated from the armoury of a dentist) he had detached the pendulum without stopping the clock.  The hands of the clock could be plainly seen to move, and its ticking was furiously rapid.

Mr. Galpin made a calculation on his dazzling cuff.

‘In three-quarters of an hour the clock will have run out,’ he informed his audience, ’and you will be able to open any locks that you’ve got keys for.  I shall call to-morrow morning, young man, for the swag.  And don’t you forget that there’s only one Jack Galpin in the world.  My address is 205, the Waterloo Road.’

He left, with his bag.

Simon rushed to Vault 39 to encourage the captive by continual knocking.

Then the messenger-boy, who had been despatched to obtain food for the prisoners behind the various grilles, came back with the desired food, and with a copy of the Evening Herald.  The back page of the Herald bore Hugo’s immense advertisement.  The front page was also chiefly devoted to Hugo.  It displayed headings such as:  ’Shocking Scenes at a Sloane Street Sale,’ ‘Women Injured,’ ’Customers Complain of Wholesale Swindling,’ ‘Scandalous Mismanagement,’ ’The Hugo Safe Deposit Suddenly Closed,’ ‘Reported Disappearance of Mr. Hugo,’ ‘Is He a Lunatic?’