Текст книги "Gangway!"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

Соавторы: Donald E. Westlake
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

    Somewhere off Puget Sound the Sea Wolf made heavy going through a tart sea. A pilot boat from Seattle came alongside, and a yellow sheet of paper passed from its deck to the hand of a sailor on board the Sea Wolf.

    Crung, the first mate, stood on the quarterdeck and watched the sailor climb toward the captain's cabin, the door of which was closed as always. Timidly the sailor went along there and knocked, and from within a colossal Roar bellowed at him. It made Crung wince-even Crung, who weighed two hundred and thirty pounds and had beat up eight railroad men at once in a saloon brawl.

    He watched the sailor hesitantly enter the captain's cabin, shaking with fear. The Roar got louder and angrier. Very quickly the sailor, pale and quaking and no longer carrying the telegram, came windmilling out of the cabin again. He slammed the door and leaned his back against it weakly, mopping his brow.

    From within, the Roar continued for a moment or two before it dwindled to an interested grumble.

    Crung relaxed a bit. At least the telegram, whatever it contained, hadn't made Captain Percival Arafoot angry, and that was a blessing. Crung remembered the last time the captain had been angry and, remembering, he shuddered gently all over like a sail in an uncertain breeze.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

    Francis strolled casually around the waterfront district wearing the expression of someone who has lost something and is looking for it without much hope of finding it.

    He turned a corner past Mme. Herz's Emporium and strolled on. Around him heaved and surged the business life of a busy ocean port; activity pleasantly masculine, for the most part, if perhaps a bit too overripe taken as a generality. The added mixture of Oriental grace notes served as a delicate contrast to the grosser elements of the scene; a cargo of Chinese temple bells, for instance, setting off and in a way commenting on the lusty obscenities of Irish and Scandinavian stevedores loading a grand piano onto a packet intended for a brothel in Nome.

    But it wasn't for a study in whimsical mongrelization that Francis had come down to this roaring reeking part of town. He had serious business of his own to transact, if only he could find just the right circumstances.

    Hmmm. In an alley between a whore shop and an incense importer's rickety warehouse a little tramp was hunkered over a small fire built of scraps, cooking a fish in a battered piece of tin shaped to the general outlines of a frying pan. Glancing in at the serious hunched back of the man, Francis paused and considered. Would he do? He would do.

    Francis entered the alley, nodded amiably at the tramp and said, "Afternoon."

    "Yuh," said the tramp. His concentration remained on his fish, but a certain bunching of his shoulder muscles indicated his awareness of-and attitude about-Francis's presence.

    "My, that smells good," Francis said and smiled in a way that he hoped was disarming.

    Not looking up, and so not disarmed by the smile, the tramp said in a sandpaper voice, "Not enough for two, pal. Sorry."

    "No, no," Francis said, refusing the unmade offer with a fluttering of his fingers. "I wouldn't think of it. A man's dinner is a sacred thing."

    The tramp nodded. "I always figured it that way," he said, giving his fish a poke with a little bent twig.

    "It was as a fellow gourmet I was speaking," Francis told him.

    "Yeah?" Noncommittal, still not looking up.

    "The aroma," Francis said, "tells me you have the chef's touch."

    Now at last the tramp did look up, suspicion and growing wonder conflicted in his expression. He faced Francis's disarming smile and said, "Yeah?" This time, with more credulity in it.

    "You don't simply burn your food and shove it into your gullet," Francis assured him. "You prepare it." He spread his hands, as though smoothing sheets. "You respect it." His fingertips touched, in a semi-religious gesture. "You care for it." His hands closed slowly, gently around a ball of air.

    The tramp smiled upward in awe. "Yeah," he said. He was amazed at himself. "Yeah, I do."

    Francis sniffed, beamed in rapture, and closed his eyes, expressing ecstasy. He sniffed again, aware of the tramp's open-mouthed observance of his performance. He permitted a tiny purr to escape his closed mouth. He sniffed a third time-and paused. A tiny frown. One eye open. Doubt, hesitation. He appeared to question the lambent air.

    The tramp looked worried. He too sniffed, with a noise Francis could have done without. He said, "Something wrong?"

    Francis cocked his head to one side like a fox hearing the hunter's horn. He sniffed. "It's," he said, and paused to consider. His fingers dibbled in the air before his face. Sniff. "It's cooking too… slowly," he decided.

    The tramp was barely breathing. He stared at Francis like a child at a magician, a bird at a snake.

    Francis nodded, slow and deep. "Yes," he said. "Too slowly." He gave the tramp an open, honest, concerned look, as between equals. "Don't you sense it?"

    The tramp turned his head to blink at his fish. "Yeah?"

    "It's the breeze through the alley," Francis announced. "You know, if you were to push the fire a bit closer to the wall there…"

    "Ya think so?"

    "It will make all the difference," Francis told him. "Here, I'll help."

    Between them, using other scraps of wood, they pushed the tiny fire over closer to the incense warehouse wall. The part Francis moved came right up next to the wall, though the tramp couldn't see that from the other side.

    "There," Francis said, rising again and dusting off his knees. "Much better. You should start slicing your onion now."

    The tramp frowned. "My onion?"

    Francis expressed disbelief. "You're roasting fish without an onion?"

    Embarrassed, the tramp moved his hands around vaguely and wouldn't meet Francis's eye. "Well, I, uh…"

    "I'll give you mine."

    The tramp looked at him, astonished. "Aw, say, pal…"

    "No, I insist."

    Francis took an onion from his pocket and held it up between thumb and first finger, again like a magician. "I can always get another," he said, and smiled fondly at the onion, as though he and it had been through much together that neither would ever forget.

    "Pal," the tramp said, "you're a sport."

    "Think nothing of it." Francis cleared a bit of ground away from the fire, and placed the onion in it like a model of the Taj Mahal. "Now," he said, "you slice it here."

    "Right." The tramp pulled a folding knife from his pocket, opened it, rubbed it against his filthy pants, and hunkered over the onion. As he sawed carefully away, the pink tip of his tongue showed at the left corner of his mouth.

    "Slice it very thin," Francis told him, "and spread it over the fish when you turn it for the last time. When the onion edges begin to brown, the fish is done. Just pour your butter sauce over it, and…"

    "Yeah, yeah," the tramp said, sawing away. He tried to look like a man with a butter sauce. "That's right, yeah."

    Francis gave him a look. "No butter?"

    The tramp put down his knife and patted his pockets. "Today I kinda, you know, I was roughing it."

    "Well, you go ahead and slice your onion," Francis told him, "and I'll go get the butter."

    "Say, pal, you don't have to…"

    "Fine cooking is its own reward," Francis said. Smiling again, he left the tramp slicing away at his onion, back to the fire. Already the warehouse wall was getting a charred look to it.

    Francis walked back around the corner and past Mme. Herz's; a block later he found Officer McCorkle strolling along amid the heaving and the shouting, studying the world in silent suspicion. Francis hurried to catch up, calling, "Officer! Officer!"

    McCorkle turned around, and glowered. "You," he said, without pleasure.

    "Excuse me," Francis said, breathing a bit heavily. "I don't know the proper thing to do under the circumstances."

    "What circumstances, Calhoun?"

    "Is it necessary for me to find a fireman," Francis asked, "or can I report the fire to you?"

    "WHAT??"

    Francis turned and pointed. A block and a half away smoke was billowing from the mouth of the alley, and so was the tramp.

    McCorkle leaped into the air and landed running. He and the tramp passed one another on the fly, the one headed toward the alley and the other away from it. Francis grabbed the tramp's arm as he raced by, and pressed a silver dollar into his palm. "Eat in restaurants," he suggested. "It's safer."

    "You're a champ, pal," the tramp said, and raced on, clutching the dollar.

    Francis strolled alleyward. McCorkle came battling his way out to the street again from the smoky alley, waving his arms in front of his face, coughing and wheezing. He stared wildly around, blinking through his tears, and ran to the fire alarm box on the corner. As he began madly to crank the alarm, Francis took from his pocket the large pocketwatch Gabe had lent him and studied its slowly sweeping minute hand.

    Alarm bells, at a distance. Francis nodded, still studying the watch.

    The bells grew louder with incredible speed. Around the corner tore the great fire engine, preceded by its lunging white horses. It squealed to a halt at the alley mouth, firemen pitching off and dragging hoses.

    Francis clicked shut his pocketwatch, nodded, and ambled away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

    Vangie watched people walk by the window and listened to men's talk-Gabe and Ittzy and Francis and that horrid Roscoe.

    They were all crowded around a table at the window just inside the Golden Rule. Gabe was saying, "Roscoe. How about the crew?"

    Roscoe was still antsy in Francis's presence but he was capable of simple sentences. "All set," he said. "I got six guys to handle the ship. The rest of us can pitch in. I mean, we don't want to have to split with too many guys."

    "You split up your five thousand however you want."

    "Yeah."

    "Now tomorrow the New World's due to leave for Sacramento at seven in the morning. She won't be back till tomorrow night sometime. That gives us plenty of time. As soon as she's pulled out, I want you to move Captain Flagway's ship to the New World's pier."

    "No problem."

    Vangie sat shaking her head. It was never going to work.

    "Now," Gabe said. "Who knows about explosives?"

    They all looked at one another.

    "Nobody?" Gabe shook his head. "I'm in the middle of mining country," he said, "and I'm at a table with four people, and not one of them knows anything about explosives. You know what the odds are against that?"

    Nobody seemed to know that either.

    Vangie began to feel a little better.

    Then Gabe dashed it. "Well we can't bring in any more new guys at this stage. Ittzy, you're it."

    Vangie jerked her head around to stare at him. "What?"

    "Sure. Ittzy's our demolition man-we know he's safe. He'll handle the dynamite and he won't get hurt, right?"

    Roscoe said, "The what?"

    "Dynamite. Some guy invented it over in Sweden. It's a stick explosive. A lot safer to handle than nitroglycerine and a lot bigger bang than blasting powder." Gabe turned to Vangie. "We'll have to get Ittzy a book. You get a book for him, okay?"

    "A book?"

    "On dynamite."

    "A book on dynamite? You want it at the Mint at three o'clock in the morning?"

    "Right," Gabe said, grinning, and turned to Francis. "Now about the timing."

    "It's all set, old cock."

    "Think you ought to double-check it just once more?"

    "I suppose it couldn't hurt."

    "Well everything depends on that, you know."

    "Rest assured, old cock."

    Francis went, and Roscoe became much calmer. He said, "You want the ship moved tomorrow, you must be ready to go."

    "I am, if your brother's got time to be here by then."

    "He'll be here. I been in touch with him."

    Vangie brooded unhappily at both of them. She didn't want Gabe to be ready to go, and she especially didn't want anybody having anything to do with Roscoe's brother Percival Arafoot, about whom folks said there was moss growing down his north side.

    Gabe said, "The Mint's about to start stamping out coins in the next week or two. That means they're loaded with raw gold now… ingots. That's what we want. There must be upwards of a million in that vault right now."

    "A million," Roscoe said, and his face changed.

    Vangie closed her eyes. She felt more frightened than she'd ever been. During the preparations the reality of it had receded, but now it was staring her smack in the face. "Gabe, you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison."

    "Aagh."

    "You've seen the guards. The locks. Everything. You know it can't be done."

    "My plan's guaranteed."

    "But you saw how many guards they've got, you saw the guns, you saw…"

    "I saw the future," Gabe said, "and in it I am very rich."

    Sudden sirens started up: fire engine bells. They tore by the window.

    Ittzy said mildly, "Seems like a lot of fires lately."

    Vangie said dismally, "Then you're definitely going through with it."

    "Yeah. And I'll need some things."

    She sighed. "Another wagon?"

    "No, as a matter of fact. The Mint's got its own wagons, and they're built for the weight. We'll use one of theirs."

    "Then what do we need?"

    "I'm glad you said we."

    She shook her head.

    Gabe said, "We'll want the book for Ittzy."

    "Check."

    "And laughing gas."

    "Laughing gas," she said.

    "Like the dentists use. Two canisters. And half a dozen sticks of dynamite."

    "Dynamite," she said.

    "Half a dozen sticks. And a balloon."

    "A balloon?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

    The morning of the Great Mint Robbery the fog rolled in very thick and white across the Bay, covering the world as though with the ghost of a great snow. Voices were muffled on the streets, but footsteps sounded with unnatural clarity. Crimpers crimped policemen, prostitutes propositioned one another, and down on Division Street a pickpocket sprained two fingers when he tried to boost a wooden Indian.

    Captain Flagway leaned on the taffrail of the San Andreas, a pipe in his mouth and a fishing rod in his hands. The line extended down toward the water from the end of the rod, disappearing into the fog at just about the level of the captain's boots; he had to take it on faith that the other end was actually in the water, occupying itself with the business of getting him breakfast.

    It was all well and good to be involved in a major robbery scheme, where big numbers like 'one million dollars' were tossed around like apples, but in the meantime life went on. Reality was reality, and a man had to arrange for his own breakfast.

    Would the robbery ever actually take place? Would the captain ever see Baltimore again, his Daddy, and his Daddy's drugstore? Would the harbor master seize the San Andreas and thus rob Captain Flagway of the very roof over his head? He stood at the rail, musing on these questions, puffing from time to time on his pipe and occasionally jiggling a bit at the fishing rod, while the fog rolled like great imaginary pillows and his stomach growled gently about the lack of breakfast.

    He didn't know he'd been boarded until he heard the clump of boots right behind him. He turned, startled, and out of the fog stamped Roscoe Arafoot and half a dozen toughs who looked like fugitives from Yuma Penitentiary. "Oh!" Captain Flagway said-a tiny cry lost in the fog-and dropped his pole in the drink.

    Roscoe said, "We're supposed to move the ship now."

    "Oh," Captain Flagway said. He'd thought they were here to crimp him. "Yes," he said, and swallowed. "Well, I'll just…" He pointed in several directions, cleared his throat, twitched and smiled aimlessly, scampering out of their way.

    He felt a bit safer in his cabin, with the door more or less locked. That is, the door did have a lock, but a five-year-old child could have gotten through it by leaning on it. Once, off the coast of Peru, a high wind had blown that door open while it was locked. Still, it was the thought that counted, and it relieved the captain's mind somewhat to be able to throw that useless bolt.

    Next to the brave door was a porthole, with an all-too-clear view of the deck. The captain stood peeking out this porthole and watched obscure figures moving out there in the fog. At least none of them were moving in his direction.

    The fog began to lift as the sails were raised, and soon the full glory of the San Andreas could be seen in the thin translucent light of a pale morning sun. The ship's sails looked like patchwork quilts. She tended to heel over at a steep angle on even absolutely calm water, and the bow preferred to dig itself through the water rather than sail over it.

    The lifting of the fog didn't do much to lift the captain's spirits. It only meant he could see those ruffians more clearly, and nothing about them reassured him. They looked to be a breed of man which spent much of its time biting other people and being bitten in return. There was a frayed, toughened, gnawed, tooth-marked look about them, with here and there an eyepatch, or a dangling sleeve, or a suspiciously stiff leg.

    Slowly the San Andreas slipped away from her pier, with Captain Flagway watching through his cabin porthole. The crew might be truculent and frightening, but they appeared competent, moving about their duties in a sea-manlike fashion that Captain Flagway himself had never been able to duplicate.

    The ship sagged across the Bay toward the pier normally occupied by the New World, where the other day they had all gone into the water in the rented wagon. Roscoe's crew tied up broadside to the end of the pier and then ran a pair of wide planks out onto the pier from amidships.

    Captain Flagway remained where he was, watching. He'd been present for all the planning discussions, of course, and so knew exactly what was going on, and yet he found himself as fascinated as if all this activity were as mysterious and opaque as the fog had been. People at work. Captain Flagway could watch them forever.

    Roscoe went ashore. The crew remained aboard ship, strolling around the deck in a kind of angry, dangerous boredom, growling at one another from time to time like lions irritated by fleas.

    The captain stayed in his cabin. His stomach rumbled softly, not like a lion at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

    The balloon came sailing through the foggy air. There was utter silence up here, the streets and roofs seen patchily below through breaks in the fog like a dream incompletely remembered. In the basket swaying beneath the great bulb of the balloon sat Gabe, Vangie, Roscoe and Ittzy, each one silent, pensive, waiting, thinking his own thoughts. This was the highest from the ground that any of them had ever been, and none of them much liked it.

    Gabe sat on a coil of heavy rope, Roscoe hunkered between the canisters of laughing gas, Vangie stood braced against the side of the basket with her arms folded and her chin lifted in the heroic pose of a woman going down on the ship with her man, and Ittzy sat on a wooden box marked DYNAMITE and read slowly but soberly in a book titled THE HANDLING OF A. NOBEL'S DYNAMITE IN CONSTRUCTION, DEMOLITION AND MINING EMPLOYMENT, Or, The Art of Explosives in the Modern Age.

    Vangie spoke only once during the voyage through the air. "Gabe," she said, "I want you to remember what I'm saying, in the years to come. You aren't going to get away with this. I'll be baking a fresh cake for you every month in prison-fifty years, that's six hundred cakes."

    "Uh huh," Gabe said.

    Vangie frowned at him. Then a breeze touched the basket, making it hop, and distracted her into grabbing the suspension cords to keep her balance. By the time she looked back at Gabe, he had twisted around and was watching over the side of the basket toward the ground, looking for landmarks.

    It was hard to make things out in the fog. Still, through the occasional wispy holes it was possible to recognize the ornate elaborate decorations on the rooftops of the Nob Hill mansions. One more hilltop to cross, if Gabe's calculations were correct, and they would be over the Mint.

    He faced the inside of the basket again. Vangie continued to frown in his direction but had nothing more to say. Roscoe looked almost as uncomfortable in the air as he usually did around Francis. Ittzy continued to read his book, occasionally licking a fingertip and turning a page, then licking the fingertip again and turning the page back, to frown at what he'd already read. The book appeared to be heavy going for Ittzy, but Gabe's confidence in him was undimmed. Ittzy would be all right.

    Gabe licked his own finger, and held it up to test the moist foggy wind. It was still on course, easy and steady, leading them to the Mint. He smiled contentedly, ignored Vangie's disapproving looks, and when he next twisted around to look over the side of the basket there was the Mint, dead ahead.

    The fog was beginning to break up; they weren't getting here a minute too soon. In ever-largening misty holes in the fog layer Gabe could see the Mint yard down below, with the tour guide gathering his charges for another pass through the interior of the building. It was midmorning now, visiting hours; the main gates were open and people were wandering in, well-surveyed by the guards.

    The balloon-brightly colored, painted in astrological and other cabalistic signs, and bearing in great red letters the name PROFESSOR NEBULA (whoever he might be)-drifted over the courtyard and then over the main building of the Mint. At the right point, as he judged it, Gabe yanked the bag-release cord to open the valve and let enough gas out to lower the balloon to the roof.

    Nothing happened.

    Gabe frowned at the cord in his hand, frowned up at the balloon, frowned over the side at the roof of the Mint, drifting slowly by no more than ten feet below. He tugged again at the cord, and again nothing happened.

    Vangie said, "What's the matter?"

    "Nothing," Gabe muttered, and yanked at the cord some more. "Not a damn thing."

    Everybody was now looking at him in alarm. They were drifting along, at the wind's pace. Soon they'd drift past the Mint and right on out over the Bay… Finally in desperation, Gabe pulled the whisky flask from his hip pocket and shot a hole in the balloon.

    Something began to hiss.

    But they weren't descending.

    Gabe yanked the cord again, but it broke and he stood staring at the useless frayed end in his hand.

    They were almost past the Mint when Roscoe removed an enormous horse pistol from his sash and shot a bloody great hole in the balloon.

    Now it descended. In fact it descended very rapidly, till the basket thumped solidly onto the roof of the Mint. Gabe was half-crushed by warm bodies; he pushed them away, but the deflating bag of the balloon settled on down and draped itself in billowing folds over them all.

    Finally they came batting and pawing their way out from under. Vangie was muttering how she'd known it was never going to work. Ittzy was still reading the book on explosives.

    Roscoe emerged with vast pistols in both hands, ready to demolish any army that might appear.

    But none did. Evidently nobody had been alarmed by the gunshots. For one thing gunshots were not unheard of in San Francisco. For another it was not an instinctive reaction for people on the ground to look straight up in the air when they heard shots.

    When they were sure no one was coming to investigate their arrival on the roof, they all ducked back under the collapsed balloon again to drag out their equipment. Pulling the canisters and the rope and the dynamite, they emerged from the balloon once more and Vangie took the opportunity to whisper in Gabe's ear, "Gabe, this is an omen. Things are going to go wrong. We can still give it up, mix with the regular people in the tour, get out of here just as though it had never happened."

    He gave her a surprised look. "Everything's fine," he said. "What's the problem?"

    Roscoe asked, "What was that thing you were shooting?"

    "My flask," Gabe said. "It holds six shots." Vangie picked it up.

    Roscoe shook his head in admiration. "They make guns to look like almost anything, don't they?"

    "I guess so."

    To one side Ittzy continued to read his book.

    "Bring the rope," Gabe told Roscoe, and headed for the chimney of the ventilator shaft protruding from the center of the red tile roof. Gabe worked the lid off the chimney, looked around, and said, "Put the book down, Ittzy. Time to go to work."

    "This is real interesting," Ittzy said. He seemed pleased and somewhat surprised to find that a book could be interesting. Tucking it away, he came forward to stand patiently while Gabe tied the rope securely around his waist. Then he climbed up onto the chimney and prepared to be lowered down the shaft. His legs went in, his torso went in, and then he stopped.

    Gabe said, "What's the matter?"

    "I'm too big. I don't fit."

    "It's that book," Gabe said. "Give it to me."

    Ittzy struggled the book out of his shirt and handed it over, then squirmed around some more. "I'm still too big," he said.

    Roscoe said, "It's the gun."

    Ittzy had been given one of Roscoe's huge pistols, a weapon chosen more for its impressive appearance than for Ittzy's ability to use it. He said, "But I need the gun. I can't go down without it."

    "We'll lower it to you," Gabe said. "Come on, hand it over."

    Ittzy hunkered and squirmed upward out of the chimney, got the pistol out of his trouser pocket, handed it over to Roscoe, and tried again.

    "Nope."

    Gabe looked at him. "What do you mean, nope?"

    "I'm just too big," Ittzy said.

    "Maybe it's his belt buckle," Roscoe said.

    Ittzy told him, "Roscoe, you'll have me naked, first thing you know, but I still won't fit in this godalmighty ventilator shaft. I'm just too big."

    "Maybe we could sort of press down on you," Roscoe suggested.

    "Well, no," Ittzy said. "I don't think you could do that."

    "Drat," Gabe said.

    Ittzy said, "Can I get out of here now?"

    "Yeah, come on out," Gabe said, and stood glaring at the chimney.

    "There, now," Vangie said. "It's all over, we can forget it, we can go home."

    Gabe turned to look at her. His eyes squinted a bit as he studied her. "Hmm," he said.

    She leaned away, watching him suspiciously. "What do you mean, hmmmm?"

    "You're smaller than Ittzy," he said.

    "Gabe…"

    "You'd fit."

    "Now, wait a minute," she said. "It's bad enough I'm along here. I'm not going to…"

    "It's safe as houses," Gabe told her. "Roscoe and me, we'll just let you down slow and easy."

    "I don't want to be let down at all."

    "There's nothing to it," Gabe insisted. "And when you get to the bottom, you just do what Ittzy was going to do."

    "I'm not Ittzy!"

    "I know. You're smaller. Come on," he said confidentially, encouragingly. "You can do it."

    She was weakening. "I don't know," she said.

    Gabe handed her the pistol Ittzy had been carrying. "Just aim it," he said. "That's all you've got to do."

    "I can't." She held it in both hands, struggling. "It's too heavy to point."

    Gabe took the pistol away again, reached into his pockets, and handed her the whisky flask and the knuckle-duster. "These'll do, then."

    "This is crazy."

    He took her aside and peered into her eyes. "Vangie."

    "Yes?"

    "Do you love me?"

    "I…"

    "Do you trust me?"

    "Well…"

    "Okay, then everything's all right. You got nothing to worry about; we'll be right there as soon as you let us in."

    "I trust you," she said doubtfully, allowing him to tie the rope around her waist as he had done with Ittzy.

    Vangie couldn't climb on top of the chimney, so Gabe lifted her up and lowered her into the top of the shaft like a wine cork. "You're doing fine." he said.

    "I haven't gone anywhere yet," she said. Her voice trembled slightly and she had two round patches of white on her cheekbones.

    "You're going now," he told her, and Roscoe began paying out the rope.

    She saw Gabe smiling and waving by-by, and then there was nothing to see but the filthy dark brick wall of the ventilator shaft. She was lowered in fits and tugs, the rope around her chest under her arms and just above her breasts, causing her to hang hunched up like a vampire bat. "I'm giving up my looks for that man," she muttered in the shaft. "I'm losing my posture for him."

    Finally she reached bottom, and could take the confining rope off. She tugged on it to show she had safely arrived, and the rope was whisked back up again. A little blue light showed up there. She gazed upward wistfully, then looked around at where she was instead, which was standing on the grille-framework in the ceiling of the vault-room. She put her face close to the grating and looked into the room.

    There wasn't anybody inside. The barred door to the anteroom was locked. Beyond it, through the bars, she could see the backs and shoulders of the two guards who stood facing the other way.

    She looked up. Gabe was lowering the canisters on the rope. She caught them, untied the rope, placed them to one side, and waited while they hauled the rope up and lowered the box of dynamite. After it came down, she took out Ittzy's screwdriver and began to unscrew the grating. This is ridiculous. It'll never work. Not in a million years.

    They hauled up the rope and walked softly across the roof to the back corner. Roscoe tied the rope to a bolt in the corner and they dropped the length of rope down the back wall. Then they slid down to the paved yard one at a time; Ittzy first, then Roscoe, then Gabe. At the bottom Gabe looked at his red palms. "Next time," he muttered, "gloves."

    They walked around the building and at the loading platform separated. Gabe and Ittzy walked innocently to the corner of the building and engaged the attention of the guards; behind them, Roscoe shifted one of the empty Mint wagons into position at the end of the handcart rails on the loading platform. Nobody took any notice; he might have been a Mint employee. When Roscoe finished he joined Gabe and Ittzy at the corner and they walked around into the courtyard to join the guided tour.