After plugging in the soldering-iron, I cut off two pieces of the copper wire just a little shorter than the thickness of the clock from front to back. When the iron was hot enough, I soldered them side by side on top of the clapper, putting on lots of solder and making it as rigid as I could. Then I wound the clock, set the alarm, and tried it out. The wire cross-arm vibrated nicely and held together all right.

Going out to the kitchenette, I opened a can of beer and came back to look at what I’d done so far. I’d know in a few minutes whether I could depend on it or not. I took a drink of the beer, lighted a cigarette, and went on with the job. First, I wrapped a sheet of sandpaper around each of the two rolls of cotton and made it fast with some of the thread. Then I took four of the big kitchen matches, laid them together with two pointing each way and overlapping a little in the centre, and placed them on the cross-arm I’d soldered on to the bell clapper. I secured them with several turns of the thread, letting them stick out about a half inch over the clock in front and back. After winding and setting the alarm, I placed the clock upright in the bottom of the box the market clerk had given me, and put in the two sandpaper covered rolls, one on each side. It didn’t fit right; the rolls were too large and tended to bind the clapper cross-arm so it couldn’t move freely. It had to have just the right amount of tension; that was the reason I’d used cotton to back up the sandpaper instead of something solid. A block of wood or something like that would do if you got the spacing absolutely correct to within a sixty-fourth of an inch or so, but if you didn’t the matches might not touch at all or it might be too close and bind.

I took out the rolls of cotton, pulled some of it off, and rewrapped them with the sandpaper. This time it was just right. The match heads pressed with just the right tension against the slightly yielding wall of sandpaper. Good, I thought. I took another drink of beer and sat back to wait. In a minute there was a click and the alarm went off, the cross-arm vibrating wildly. The match heads whirred against the sandpaper and all four of them burst into flame.

I tried it twelve times, and it never failed once. I took off the burnt matches for the last time and sat back with my beer to look at it. And that was when it really came home to me what I was about to do. I was going to rob a bank, committing the additional crime of arson in the process, and if I got caught I’d go to prison.

Well, I thought, go on selling second-hand jalopies for another forty years and maybe somebody’ll give you a testimonial and a forty-dollar watch.

6

WHEN I GOT BACK I left the whole thing in the trunk of the car. If I took it into my room the nosy old girl who ran the place would probably be in it the first time she cleaned, and it was crazy enough to start her wondering. I already had a blanket in the car, an old one which had been in it when I bought it eight months ago. That was safe enough; nobody would ever trace it. I still had to have a piece of line, though, and I didn’t want to buy it because something like that was too easy for a clerk to remember. If I kept my eyes open I should find a short length around somewhere.

I checked right in at the lot when I got to town and didn’t go out to the rooming house until after work. There were two letters for me on the hall table, addressed in the same hand and postmarked here in town, but with no return address on them. I sat down on the bed and tore them open.

“Dear Harry,” the first one said. “Please call me.