CHAPTER XIX
THE FOURTH DAY
THE time lock is not an old device, but it is already a necessity. Just as the invention of new and impenetrable armor for battle-ships has only produced new cannon or new projec- tiles which make necessary a still harder pro- tective shell about the ship, so has the increasing ingenuity with which banks guard their treasure been met by a corresponding advance in audac- ity and skill by those whose trade it is to rob the banks. An old-fashioned safe would be to a bank as useless a toy as one of Gustavus Adol- phus’s wooden cannon in a modern fort ; and a safe cracker of the past generation would be as helpless as John Bagsbury’s daughter Martha in the presence of a great Harvey ized-steel sphere with its electric apron burglar alarm, its half- dozen separate co
