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stopwatch to it with a magnet glued to its back. Twelve seconds gone.
    He opened the control box and began the process of disconnecting first the telephone line to the box, then the wire to the siren. This was necessary because he didn’t know the disarming code sequence. He looked at the watch; thirty-two seconds had passed. Not bad. The alarm would go off in thirteen seconds, and since he had done all he could, he would just have to wait and see what happened. At forty-five seconds there was an audible click and the sound of tone dialing from the central computer unit. No siren, and, since the telephone line had been disconnected, no phone call to the central security station of the alarm company. There was the possibility, though, that the disconnecting of the phone line had sent some sort of code to central security, so he would not dally.
    The safe was conveniently located in the same closet as the alarm control box; he had examined it briefly on his previous visit. It was sturdy and electronically operated, requiring a four-digit code and a key to open the door. The key was absent, but the lock would not be a problem. He retrieved a small screwdriver from his tool kit and removed the battery access panel from the front of the safe, then took a palmtop computer from a jacket pocket. A wire attached to tiny alligator clips ran from the computer, and he attached the clips to the safe’s battery terminals. He had written a simple program for the computer that would start at the lowest possible four-digit number, then go to the highest possible four-digit number and back and forth until the safe clicked open. The process would be shortened by the fact that most of these electronic safe keypads would not allow the repetition of a number in the code, so there would be fewer codes to try. He had test-run the program, and he knew that it required nine minutes and eighteen seconds to try all the possible codes. He tapped the instructions into the small keyboard, and the program began to run. He set the computer on top of the alarm control panel and settled in to wait. Four minutes and nine seconds into the program, he heard a click from the safe, and the program stopped.
    Quickly, in case there was a time limit, he picked the safe’s conventional lock, and the door swung open. Inside were two delightful surprises. The firstwas three thick stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, with a rubber band around each, and another stack of fifties. The bills looked well used, and a cursory inspection revealed that the serial numbers were not consecutive. He estimated that they totaled approximately thirty-five thousand dollars, but this was no time to start counting; he stuffed them into one of his jacket’s large pockets. The other surprise in the safe was a small, nickel-plated automatic pistol, with, of all things, a silencer! He stuffed that into a pocket, then opened a jewelry box, which was full of a lot of junk that didn’t interest him, except for a Cartier watch with a gold bracelet. That he kept; he loved watches.
    He had just closed the safe door and was putting away his equipment when from a distance he heard a noise like the front door opening, followed by voices. No time to reconnect the alarm system; he closed the cabinet door, switched off the light, and left the closet, closing the door behind him. While he was doing all this he wondered if he had somehow caused this to happen. His heart was racing; he loved it. The voices came closer, and he dove into the kneehole of the desk, pulling his knees up to squeeze in.
    “We got a disconnect signal,” a voice said. The lights came on in the study. “If somebody cuts the phone line or disconnects it, we get a signal. Usually means a burglar has visited.”
    “Do you really need a gun?” another voice asked, sounding nervous.
    “There might be somebody in the apartment right now,” the other voice replied. “If there is, I’m going to be ready.”
    The voices were muffled