The old watchman, being on day duty now, was standing in that same door-way, smoking the self-same pipe, and had his ignorant eye listlessly fixed upon the laborer, busy with his measurements.

As the laborer paused abreast of the door, he glanced down at the tape.
"The even seventy feet from the center of that manhole," he murmured, as though he thus registered the figures in his mind.
And the old watchman, and the pedestrians hurrying along the pavement, thought the laborer busy with his measurements from the manhole to the little Treasury door had been at work for the public.
That night, had it not been for the moonless dark of it, you might have seen the same laborer who had been so concerned with tape-measures and distances near the Treasury Building, a long shallow basket stoutly woven of willow on his arm, making secretly for the mouth of the drain that once witnessed the investigations of Storri.

The basket concealed a short pickax of the sort that miners use, a little spade such as children play with on the seashore, but very strong, and a pinch-bar, or "jimmy," about two feet long.

Besides these suspicious implements, there were food, a flask of whisky, another of coffee, and a bicycle lamp, to make up the basket's furniture.
The laborer entered the drain's mouth, and when beyond chance of observation from without, he paused as aforetime had Storri to light his lamp.

As the match illuminated his face, you would have identified the features of London Bill, celebrated safe-blower, box-worker, and 'peter-man, presently about to begin his first night's work on that thirty-million-dollar job over which he and Storri had shaken hands.
Having lighted his lamp, London Bill journeyed on his way until the same bend in the great drain that had hidden Storri shut him out from view.
London Bill splashingly proceeded to the second turn in the drain; from that point he counted the manholes until he stood beneath the one from which you saw him measuring with the tape.