is office floor.

The sleepy elevator-man had to be shaken awake, and when he had set the
car in motion he let it run past the designated floor. Blount swore
impatiently, and instead of waiting to be carried back, darted out and
ran to the stairway. When he reached the lower corridor and was hurrying
toward his suite in the corner of the building, there was a dull crash,
as of a muffled explosion, and two or three of the glass doors in the
street-fronting suite were shattered. Blount quickened his pace to a
run, let himself in by means of his latch-key, and, cautiously opening
his desk, groped in an inner drawer for the revolver which Gantry had
persuaded him to buy as a part of the office furnishings.

With the weapon in hand, he pushed through the unlatched door into
Collins's room. There was an acrid odor of dynamite fumes in the air,
and when he pressed on to the third room of the suite the gases were
stifling. His first act was to feel for the switch and cut in the
electric lights. The third room, which had doors of communication with
his own office and Collins's, was a wreck. Desks were broken open, and
the safe-door had been blown from its hinges.

Blount saw the figure of a small man with his cap pulled down over his
ears bending over the wrecked cash-box. At the upblazing of the ceiling
lights, the man sprang to his feet and fled, going out through the door
by which Blount had just entered, and snapping the light-switch as he
passed to leave the rooms in darkness.

Blount was cursing his own lack of presence of mind when he turned to
follow the escaping burglar. In the darkness he fell over a chair, and
by the time he had disentangled himself and had reached the corridor the
safe-blower was gone. Racing to the elevator, Blount rang the bell until
the sleepy car-tender set the machinery in motion and lifted himself to
the floor of happenings. Here the incident ended abruptly, so far as any
helpful discoveries were concerned. The elevator-man had carried no one
down, and he confessed shamefacedly that he had again been asleep, and
could not say whether or not anybody had descended the stair which
circled the elevator-shaft.

Blount went back to his office, turned in a police alarm, and waited
until a policeman came from the nearest station. Then he went to report
the safe-blowing in person to the night captain on duty in the basement
of the City Hall. A drowsy clerk took notes of the story, and the night
cap