eather girdle beneath the unbuttoned vest.

Hardly a sound it made as it bit into the door. Half a minute
passed--there was the faint fall of a small piece of wood--into the
aperture crept the delicate, tapering fingers--came a slight rasping of
metal--then the door swung back, the dark shadow that had been Jimmie
Dale vanished and the door closed again.

A round, white beam of light glowed for an instant--and disappeared. A
miscellaneous, lumbering collection of junk and odds and ends
blocked the entry, leaving no more space than was sufficient for bare
passageway. Jimmie Dale moved cautiously--and once more the flashlight
in his hand showed the way for an instant--then darkness again.

The cluttered accumulation of secondhand stuff in the rear gave place to
a little more orderly arrangement as he advanced toward the front of the
store. Like a huge firefly, the flashlight twinkled, went out, twinkled
again, and went out. He passed a sort of crude, partitioned-off
apartment that did duty for the establishment's office, a sort of little
boxed-in place it was, about in the middle of the floor. Jimmie Dale's
light played on it for a moment, but he kept on toward the front door
without any pause.

Every movement was quick, sure, accurate, with not a wasted second. It
had been barely a minute since he had vaulted the back fence. It was
hardly a quarter of a minute more before the cumbersome lock of the
front door was unfastened, and the door itself pulled imperceptibly
ajar.

He went swiftly back to the office now--and found it even more of a
shaky, cheap affair than it had at first appeared; more like a box stall
with windows around the top than anything else, the windows doubtless to
permit the occupant to overlook the store from the vantage point of the
high stool that stood before a long, battered, wobbly desk. There was
a door to the place, too, but the door was open and the key was in
the lock. The ray of Jimmie Dale's flashlight swept once around the
interior--and rested on an antique, ponderous safe.

Under the mask Jimmie Dale's lips parted in a smile that seemed almost
apologetic, as he viewed the helpless iron monstrosity that was little
more than an insult to a trained cracksman. Then from the belt came the
thin metal case and a pair of tweezers. He opened the case, and with
the tweezers lifted out one of the gray-coloured, diamond-shaped seals.
Holding the seal with the tweezers, he moistened the gummed si