s easily. And it's cheap too. This raid may cost a couple of
dollars, as far as the blowpipe is concerned--quite a difference from
the thousands of dollars' loss that would follow an attempt to blow
the door in."

The last remark was directed quietly at the doubting detective. He had
nothing to say. We stood in awe-struck amazement as the torch slowly,
inexorably, traced a thin line along the edge of the door.

Minute after minute sped by, as the line burned by the blowpipe cut
straight from top to bottom. It seemed hours to me. Was Kennedy going
to slit the whole door and let it fall in with a crash?

No, I could see that even in his cursory examination of the door
he had gained a pretty good knowledge of the location of the bolts
imbedded in the steel. One after another he was cutting clear through
and severing them, as if with a super-human knife.

What was going on on the other side of the door, I wondered. I could
scarcely imagine the consternation of the gamblers caught in their own
trap.

With a quick motion Kennedy turned off the acetylene and oxygen. The
last bolt had been severed. A gentle push of the hand, and he swung
the once impregnable door on its delicately poised hinges as easily as
if he had merely said, "Open Sesame." The robbers' cave yawned before
us.

We made a rush up the stairs. Kennedy was first, O'Connor next, and
myself scarcely a step behind, with the rest of O'Connor's men at our
heels.

I think we were all prepared for some sort of gun-play, for the crooks
were desperate characters, and I myself was surprised to encounter
nothing but physical force, which was quickly overcome.

In the now disordered richness of the rooms, waving his "John Doe"
warrant in one hand and his pistol in the other, O'Connor shouted:
"You're all under arrest, gentlemen. If you resist further it will go
hard with you."

Crowded now in one end of the room in speechless amazement was the
late gay party of gamblers, including Senator Danfield himself. They
had reckoned on toying with any chance but this. The pale white face
of DeLong among them was like a spectre, as he stood staring blankly
about and still insanely twisting the roulette wheel before him.

Kennedy advanced toward the table with an ax which he had seized from
one of our men. A well-directed blow shattered the mechanism of the
delicate wheel.

"DeLong," he said, "I'm not going to talk to you like your old
professor at the university, nor l