would ruin a perfectly good safe, for nothing."

"That's right."

They went into the rear room again, Corrigan last, closing the door behind
him. Braman went again to the glass, Corrigan standing silently behind
him.

Standing before the glass, the banker was seized with a repetition of the
sickening fear that had oppressed him at Corrigan's words upon his
entrance. It seemed to him that there was a sinister significance behind
Corrigan's present silence. A tension came between them, portentous of
evil. Braman shivered, but the silence held. The banker tried to think of
something to say--his thoughts were rioting in chaos, a dumb, paralyzing
terror had seized him, his lips stuck together, the facial muscles
refusing their office. He dropped his hands to his sides and stared into
the glass, noting the ghastly pallor that had come over his face--the
dull, whitish yellow of muddy marble. He could not turn, his legs were
quivering. He knew it was conscience--only that. And yet Corrigan's
ominous silence continued. And now he caught his breath with a shuddering
gasp, for he saw Corrigan's face reflected in the glass, looking over his
shoulder--a mirthless smirk on it, the eyes cold, and dancing with a
merciless and cunning purpose. While he watched, he saw Corrigan's lips
open:

"Where's the board telephone, Braman?"

The banker wheeled, then. He tried to scream--the sound died in a gasping
gurgle as Corrigan leaped and throttled him. Later, he fought to loosen
the grip of the iron fingers at his throat, twisting, squirming, threshing
about the room in his agony. The grip held, tightened. When the banker was
quite still Corrigan put out the light, went into the banking room, where
he scattered the papers and books in the safe all around the room. Then he
twisted the lock off the door, using an iron bar that he had noticed in a
corner when he had come in, and stepped out into the shadow of the
building.

CHAPTER XXIII

FIRST PRINCIPLES

Judge Lindman shivered, though a merciless, blighting sun beat down on the
great stone ledge that spread in front of the opening, smothering him with
heat waves that eddied in and out, and though the interior of the
low-ceilinged chamber pulsed with the fetid heat sucked in from the plains
generations before. The adobe walls, gray-black in the subdued light, were
dry as powder and crumbling in spots, the stone floor was exposed in many
places; there was a strange, sickening o