“What can we do?” asked Senora de Moche, seeming to mock us, as though the safe itself were an inhuman thing that blocked our path.

“Do?” repeated Kennedy decisively, “I’ll show you what we can do.  If Lockwood will drive me down to the railroad station in his car, I’ll show you something that looks like action.  Will you do it?”

The request was more like a command.  Lockwood said nothing, but moved toward the porte-cochere, where he had left his car parked just aside from the broad driveway.

“Walter, you will stay here,” ordered Kennedy.  “Let no one leave.  If any one comes, don’t let him get away.  We shan’t be gone long.”

I sat awkwardly enough, scarcely speaking a word, as Kennedy dashed down to the railroad station.  Neither Alfonso nor his mother betrayed either by word or action a hint of what was passing in their minds.  Somehow, though I did not understand it, I felt that Lockwood might square himself.  But I could not help feeling that these two might very possibly be at the bottom of almost anything.

It was with some relief that I heard the car approaching again.  I had no idea what Kennedy was after, whether it was dynamite or whether he contemplated a trip to New York.  I was surprised to see him, with Lockwood, hurrying up the steps to the porch, each with a huge tank studded with bolts like a boiler.

“There,” ordered Craig, “set the oxygen there,” as he placed his own tank on the opposite side.  “That watchman thought I was bluffing when I said I’d get an order from the company, if I had to wake up the president of the road.  It was too good a chance to miss.  One doesn’t find such a complete outfit ready to hand every day.”

Out of the tanks stout tubes led, with stop-cocks and gauges at the top.  From a case under his arm Kennedy produced a curious arrangement like a huge hook, with a curved neck and a sharp beak.  Really it consisted of two metal tubes which ran into a sort of cylinder, or mixing chamber, above the nozzle, while parallel to them ran a third separate tube with a second nozzle of its own.

Quickly he joined the ends of the tubes from the tanks to the metal hook, the oxygen tank being joined to two of the tubes of the hook, and the second tank being joined to the other.  With a match he touched the nozzle gingerly.  Instantly a hissing, spitting noise followed, and an intense, blinding needle of flame.

“Now we’ll see what an oxyacetylene blow-pipe will do to you, old stick-in-the-mud,” cried Kennedy, as he advanced toward the safe, addressing it as though it had been a thing of life that stood in his way.  “I think this will make short work of you.”

Almost as he said it, the steel beneath the blow-pipe became incandescent.  For some time he laboured to get a starting-point for the flame of the high-pressure torch.

It was a brilliant sight.  The terrific heat from the first nozzle caused the metal to glow under the torch as if in an open-hearth furnace.  From the second nozzle issued a stream of oxygen, under which the hot metal of the door was completely consumed.