Gangway! (18 page)

    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.

    "Now and then we stamp an issue of five-dollar half eagles, but it don't happen very often here so if you find a half eagle with our stamp on it maybe you want to hang onto it. They're as rare as a pair of clean socks around a bunkhouse."

    Vangie had the metal grating unscrewed. She lifted it out of its frame and set it aside on the ceiling beams. She waited until the minute hand of the watch she'd stolen last week came around to exactly ten-thirty, and then she dropped silently into the vault room.

    She slipped across the room, keeping close to the wall. At the front corner she turned, went across to the barred door, and waited just inside it.

    The tourists entered the anteroom beyond.

    "… rest assured your money's safe. Nobody's ever tried to rob the United States Mint, of course-nobody's ever been stupid enough to try. I reckon someday somebody will, but you probably won't even read about it in the papers because whatever they do they ain't gonna get anywheres near your Government's gold."

    Finally the group turned and left the anteroom. When the tourists turned left, Gabe, Roscoe and Ittzy turned right and waited just around the corner until the group was gone.

    Vangie stepped to the barred door. She had the flask in one hand and the knuckle-duster in the other.

    "Stick 'em up."

    The guards whipped around in amazement and stared at her. "Huh?"

    "Stick 'em up. These are guns."

    They grinned. One of them pointed to the whisky flask. "That one must have quite a kick," he said.

    "I mean it. They really are guns."

    "Sure they are." The guard lifted his key ring. "I don't know how you got in there, honey, but you're about to come out." He began to unlock the door.

    "Don't make me shoot. Don't make me prove it!" Her voice was rising toward a hysterical pitch.

    The two guards yanked the barred door open.

    That was when Gabe and Roscoe arrived. Gabe said mildly, "Okay, hold it right there." Ittzy came in behind them. All three were holding guns that actually looked like guns.

    Vangie, her voice still shaky, said, "I thought you said you'd be right down."

    "We got here as fast as we could," Gabe said.

    The guards were getting over their surprise. One of them said, "You'll never get away with this."

    Vangie said, "That's what I keep telling them."

    "Let's move it along," Gabe said. "We're in kind of a hurry."

    Roscoe relieved the guards of their weapons and tied them up in a corner of the anteroom while Gabe locked the outer entrance-the steel-plated door that fitted right over the incoming handcart rails. Now they were sealed off from the rest of the Mint.

    Ittzy and Gabe climbed into the hole in the ceiling; Roscoe stood guard with his huge pistols. Presently the canisters and the box of dynamite made their way down to the floor, whereupon Roscoe carried the gas canisters out into the anteroom and placed one on each side of the door. Ittzy opened the box of dynamite, removed several sticks, got out his book again, and went thumbing through the pages.

    Roscoe returned from the anteroom, wheeling the handcart in. "Okay to turn those valves now?"

    Gabe said, "Not yet. Come on."

    As Ittzy approached the vault, lip-reading slowly in his dynamite book, Gabe led Vangie out to the anteroom, followed by Roscoe. "We'll wait out here," Gabe said. "Ittzy will set the charges in there and then come out here before they go off."

    "I don't know," Vangie said, "how I ever got invol…"

    There was a sudden explosion.

    The three of them turned, open-mouthed, and stared at the doorway to the vault room. A cloud of smoke puffed out through the doorway, and Ittzy came walking out through it, leafing through the book. He seemed mildly bewildered but otherwise unhurt. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "It shouldn't have done that."

    Awed, Vangie said, "Ittzy, are you okay?"

    He looked up from the book, blushed when he met Vangie's eye, and said, "Fine. Uh, I'm fine. Why not?"

    Roscoe said, "What about the vault?"

    "Right," said Gabe. He and Roscoe hurried into the next room through the settling smoke, with Ittzy and Vangie right behind them. Inside they found the steel door of the vault sagging wide open like a tin can that had been pried apart with a chisel.

    And just inside it were piles and piles of dull yellow metal.

    "That's the stuff," Gabe said. "I'd know it anywhere."

    Roscoe said, "That's pretty."

    "The handcart," Gabe told him.

    "Right."

    Roscoe wheeled the handcart as close as possible to the ruined door and he, Gabe and Ittzy went to work filling it with the ingots, stacking them with loving care.

    Gabe said, "Vangie? Get the valves, will you?"

    "Right."

    Vangie went back to the anteroom and across to the outer door, took a deep breath, held it, opened wide the valves of both canisters of laughing gas, left them hissing, hurried back to the inner room, slammed the steel door shut behind her, and let out the breath she'd been holding.

    Ittzy said, "This stuff's heavy."

    "Keep loading," Gabe told him.

    Throughout the building armed men were beginning to react to the sound of the explosion. For most of them, the first reaction was to say, "What was that?" And stand looking blankly at one another. But a few had already remembered the gold and were starting to move, and the rest would catch on any second now.