ridor to stare at
the curious dial of the time-lock.

'Why not blow up the clock of the time-lock?' ventured the patrol.

'Look here!' said Mr. Galpin, '_you_ ought to know better than that,
even if this other gent doesn't. Any violence to the clock automatically
jams all the connecting levers. Stop the clock, and it's all up. Nothing
but unbuilding the whole place would free the locks after that. And it
would be a mighty smart firm that could unbuild this place inside a
fortnight. No!' he said again. 'No gammon with the clock--unless we
could make it go quicker.'

'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 wa