im! The man had gone the limit;
he was Connie Myers' accomplice--a murderer! But the man was not a
hardened, confirmed criminal like Connie Myers. Mike Hagan--a murderer!
It would have been unbelievable but for the evidence before his own
eyes now. The man had faults, brawled enough, and drank enough to have
brought him several times to the notice of the police--but this!

Jimmie Dale's eyes had never left the scene before him. Both men were
throwing their weight upon the bar, and the stone that they were trying
to dislodge--they were into the heart of the masonry now--seemed to
move a little. Connie Myers stood up, and, leaning forward, examined the
stone critically at top and bottom, prodding it with the bar. He turned
from his examination abruptly, and thrust the bar into Hagan's hands.

"Hold it!" he said tersely. "I'll strike for a turn."

Crouched, on his hands and knees, Hagan inserted the point of the bar
into the crevice. Connie Myers picked up the sledge.

"Lower! Bend lower!" he snapped--and swung the sledge.

It seemed to go black for a moment before Jimmie Dale's eyes, seemed to
paralyse all action of mind and body. There was a low cry that was more
a moan, the clang of the iron bar clattering on the floor, and Mike
Hagan had pitched forward on his face, an inert and huddled heap. A half
laugh, half snarl purled from Connie Myers' lips, as he snatched a stout
piece of cord from his pocket and swiftly knotted the unconscious man's
wrists together. Another instant, and, picking up the bar, prying with
it again, the loosened stone toppled with a crash into the grate.

It had come sudden as the crack of doom, that blow--too quick, too
unexpected for Jimmie Dale to have lifted a finger to prevent it. And
now that the first numbed shock of mingled horror and amazement was
past, he fought back the quick, fierce impulse to spring out on Connie
Myers. Whether the man was killed or only stunned, he could do no good
to Mike Hagan now, and there was Connie Myers--he was staring in a
fascinated way at Connie Myers. Behind the stone that the other had just
dislodged was a large hollow space that had been left in the masonry,
and from this now Connie Myers was eagerly collecting handfuls of
banknotes that were rolled up into the shape of little cylinders, each
one grotesquely tied with a string. The man was feverishly excited,
muttering to himself, running from the fireplace to where the table had
been pushed aside w