I looked at a large antique grandfather’s clock which was standing nearby.  It now lacked scarcely a minute of twelve.

Slowly the hands of the clock came nearer together at noon.

We all gathered about the show case with its glittering hoard of wealth, forming a circle at a respectful distance.

Martin pointed nervously at the clock.

In deep-lunged tones the clock played the chords written, I believe, by Handel.  Then it began striking.

As it did so, Martin involuntarily counted off the strokes, while one of the plainclothesmen waved his shotgun in unison.

Martin finished counting.

Nothing had happened.

We all breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well, it is still there!” exclaimed Martin, pointing at the show-case, with a forced laugh.

Suddenly came a rending and crashing sound.  It seemed as if the very floor on which we stood was giving way.

The show-case, with all its priceless contents, went smashing down into the cellar below.

The flooring beneath the case had been cut through!

All crowded forward, gazing at the black yawning cavern.  A moment we hesitated, then gingerly craned our necks over the edge.

Down below, three men, covered with linen dusters and their faces hidden by masks, had knocked the props away from the ceiling of the cellar, which they had sawed almost through at their leisure, and the show case had landed eight or ten feet below, shivered into a thousand bits.

A volley of shots whizzed past us, and another.  While one crook was hastily stuffing the untold wealth of jewels into a burlap bag, the others had drawn revolvers and were firing up through the hole in the floor, desperately.

Martin, his detectives, and the rest of us fell back from the edge of the chasm hastily, to keep out of range of the hail of bullets.

“Look out!” cried someone behind us, before we could recover from our first surprise and return the fire.

One of the desperadoes had taken a bomb from under his duster, lighted it, and thrown it up through the hole in the floor.

It sailed up over our heads and landed near our little group on the floor, the fuse sputtering ominously.

Quickly we divided and backed away even further.

I heard an exclamation of fear from Elaine.

Kennedy had pushed his way past us and picked up the deadly infernal machine in his bare hands.

I watched him, fascinated.  As near as he dared, he approached the hole in the floor, still holding the thing off at arm’s length.  Would he never throw it?

He was coolly holding it, allowing the fuse to burn down closer to the explosion point.

It was now within less than an inch sure death.

Suddenly he raised it and hurled the deadly thing down through the hole.

We could hear the imprecations of the crooks as it struck the cellar floor, near them.  They had evidently been still cramming jewelry into the capacious maw of the bag.  One of them, discovering the bomb, must have advanced toward it, then retreated when he saw how imminent was the explosion.