st of a second
squarely opposite the little basement door-way in the Treasury Building,
where the old watchman stood smoking his pipe on the evening that Storri
was told of the gold inside. The old watchman, being on day duty now,
was standing in that same door-way, smoking the self-same pipe, and had
his ignorant eye listlessly fixed upon the laborer, busy with his
measurements. As the laborer paused abreast of the door, he glanced down
at the tape.

"The even seventy feet from the center of that manhole," he murmured, as
though he thus registered the figures in his mind.

And the old watchman, and the pedestrians hurrying along the pavement,
thought the laborer busy with his measurements from the manhole to the
little Treasury door had been at work for the public.

That night, had it not been for the moonless dark of it, you might have
seen the same laborer who had been so concerned with tape-measures and
distances near the Treasury Building, a long shallow basket stoutly
woven of willow on his arm, making secretly for the mouth of the drain
that once witnessed the investigations of Storri. The basket concealed a
short pickax of the sort that miners use, a little spade such as
children play with on the seashore, but very strong, and a pinch-bar, or
"jimmy," about two feet long. Besides these suspicious implements, there
were food, a flask of whisky, another of coffee, and a bicycle lamp, to
make up the basket's furniture.

The laborer entered the drain's mouth, and when beyond chance of
observation from without, he paused as aforetime had Storri to light his
lamp. As the match illuminated his face, you would have identified the
features of London Bill, celebrated safe-blower, box-worker, and
'peter-man, presently about to begin his first night's work on that
thirty-million-dollar job over which he and Storri had shaken hands.
Having lighted his lamp, London Bill journeyed on his way until the same
bend in the great drain that had hidden Storri shut him out from view.

London Bill splashingly proceeded to the second turn in the drain; from
that point he counted the manholes until he stood beneath the one from
which you saw him measuring with the tape. As nearly as he might, London
Bill, going northward in the drain, slowly paced off seventy feet from
the manhole; then he halted and drove two large spikes between the
bricks that formed the walls, using the pinch-bar to do the driving. On
these nails he hung his bas