A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear.  He started up and looked about.  All was black and still.  He groped for his light and swung it about him.  Then he knew!  The great stone door had swung to.  He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face.  Then with a sigh he went methodically to work.  The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped.  He had just room to squeeze through.  There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff.  He stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated.  The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor.  He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corpse.

He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard.  The watchman sat as if asleep, with the gate swinging free.  With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault.  In vain he called to the guards.  His voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly.  Up into the great basement he rushed.  Here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still.  A fear arose in the messenger’s heart.  He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank.  The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men.  The messenger paused and glanced about.  He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling!  “Robbery and murder,” he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his desk.  Then a new thought seized him:  If they found him here alone—­with all this money and all these dead men—­what would his life be worth?  He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind.  Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street.

How silent the street was!  Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high-noon—­Wall Street?  Broadway?  He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs.  With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight.

In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can—­as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death.  Slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart.  He met a business man, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too, along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips.  The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb.