Surrounded

straightmen who had been set up for the punch line.
        Then the jugger blinked and cleared his throat and said, "You've come up with something, haven't you?" He was still pale and shaky, but now he was smiling.
        "You found a way out?" Meyers asked.
        "A way out," Tucker said, not without some theatricality. "But not exactly a way out."
        Meyers and Bates glanced at each other.
        "Yes," Tucker said, "that's the best way to describe it- just like a line from Alice in Wonderland. It's a way out, to be sure-but not exactly a way out."
        "What is this?" Meyers asked. "Riddle time?" He half believed that Tucker was on to something, but he also half believed that Tucker was out of his mind.
        "Best of all," Tucker said, "we can go ahead and knock over the bank and the jewelry store."
        "We can?" Edgar asked.
        In the darker hall the red lights from the police cars that were parked outside shone brighter than they had when all three of the fluorescent strips had been turned on, and they gave everything an eerie, bloody hue…
        "We can take the money and the stones," Tucker said.
        "You're serious," Meyers said, moving up close to Tucker and staring into his eyes.
        "Sure."
        Meyers grinned hesitantly, then more surely, then as broadly as he could. "You sonofabitch, you really mean it!" Meyers laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.
        Bates laughed, too, but more nervously. "Tell us about it, for God's sake."
        Tucker told them.
        

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        The door of the Countryside Savings and Loan Company's main vault measured eight-feet-four by six-feet-two and was, -in Edgar Bates's professional judgment, at least nine but no more than twelve inches thick. It was constructed of from twenty-eight to fifty-four layers of highly shock- and heat-resistant steel alloy, set as flush with the wall as could be done, and it had beveled seams that were half an inch deep and an inch wide where it was joined to its steel frame. On the top, bottom, and right-hand side these seams had been filled tightly with a contiguous charge of gelignite, a grayish plastic explosive that resembled carpenter's putty, although it was a good deal more rubbery and more cohesive than putty. On the right-hand side, where the door and the frame joined, there were three massive hinges as large as automobile shock absorbers, each twelve inches long and four inches in diameter. These were protected from assault by heavy blue steel casings that had been shaped to the hinge cylinders and then riveted shut when the door was hung in place. Edgar Bates had carefully molded six ounces of gelignite to each of these hinge casings.
        "One of the finest vaults made," Edgar said as he worked. He was flushed and happy. "Pekins and Boulder Company of Ashland, Ohio. They're always a challenge."
        Tucker was kneeling on the floor on the other side of Bates's open satchel, in front of the vault door. "Has one of their safes ever stumped you?" he asked the older man.
        Bates was disgruntled by the question, and he made no effort to conceal his irritation. "Hell, no. Of course not. You know how good I am."
        Tucker smiled. "Sorry I asked."
        "I've knocked down and split open maybe thirty of them over the years. Not a bit of trouble any time. They're always a lot of fun, though."
        The safe's hatchlike opening handle, a wheel with a two-foot diameter, the design for which had been borrowed straight from the watertight doors in submarines, was also packed with gelignite at every jointure. It was most likely affixed too smoothly and too seamlessly to the main body of the door to be easily blown loose. However, there was no harm in trying.
        Bates had chiseled away the manual combination dial above the wheel, had removed the guardian plate that was soldered beneath it, and had squeezed several ounces of gelignite into the vault door's primary mechanisms. This lump of explosives had been tied to that around the wheel and to that which was molded in the door's seams by a thick gray thread of itself.
        Consulting his wristwatch, Tucker said, "It's five minutes of one. You about finished?"
        "Done," Bates said, getting to his feet and quickly massaging his tension-knotted thighs. Again, he might have been a Russian peasant working out the kinks in his muscles after a long day in the fields. "Except for the