Vona took her stand close to the door, trembling with passionate eagerness.  Constantly she appealed to Britt to hurry.  When he finally swung open the door she leaped into the vault.  He dragged her back, handling her roughly, harshly telling her that it was no place for a girl.

“I don’t think it is, either,” agreed Starr.  “We seem to have considerable love mixed in with this situation, young woman, but this is not the time for it.”

He crowded past her, at the back of Britt.

The man ahead stopped and fumbled at what seemed to be a wall of concrete; he pushed open a narrow door which fitted so closely that it had seemed to be a part of the wall.

Mr. Starr grunted.

There was a passage at the right of the inner safe.  The light from the lamp outside shed dim radiance.  Britt descended a short flight of cement steps, and Starr, following groping with his feet, realized that the way led under the floor of the corridor.  He was obliged to crouch almost double in order to avoid the ceiling.

There was another flight of stairs leading up to the floor level.

The two men, mounting the stairs, heard groans.

Vona, undeterred by her treatment, had followed closely on Starr’s heels.  She urged them to hurry, calling hysterically.

Again the man ahead fumbled at what seemed to be solid wall.  Again he was able to open a door of concrete.

But Britt, when he was through the narrow door in the lead, was blocked and stopped.  He lighted a match.  One leaf of the double doors of the inner safe of the bank vault was flung back across the narrow passage.  He dropped the stub of the match and pushed.  The door moved only a few inches; it was opposed by something on the other side.  The president lighted another match and held it while he peered over the door; there was a space between the top of the door and the ceiling.  “It’s Vaniman,” he reported, huskily.  “He’s lying against this door.  I can’t push it any further.  He’s wedged against the front of the vault.”

Then Starr lighted a match.  He noted that the space above the door was too narrow for his bulk or Britt’s.

“Go tell the guard to send in a chap that’s slim and spry,” the examiner commanded the girl.  “We’ve got to boost somebody in over that door.”

“I’ll go.  I must go.  I’m bound and determined to go!” she insisted, pulling at him, trying to crowd past him.

But it was necessary for Starr and Britt to follow her to the wider space below the corridor in order to allow her to pass them.  They demurred, still, but she hurried back up the stairs.  Britt knelt and gave her his shoulders to serve as a mounting block.  She swung herself over the door, and by the light of the match that Starr held she was able to avoid stepping on the prostrate figure when she lowered herself to the floor.

The men outside in the passage detected the odor of chloroform.