Dazed, staggered, he groped toward the desk. From the drawer he took the slip of paper bearing the combination. With an effort that taxed all his strength he opened the safe, opened the money-compartment. His trembling fingers caught up the few remaining bills there.
“God above!” he gulped.
Then all at once a change, a swift metamorphosis of wrath and outraged love swept over him. He seemed to freeze into a stern, avenging figure, huge of shoulder, hard of fist. The bulk of him loomed vast, in that enfolding bathrobe like a Roman patrician’s toga, as he strode through the door and up the stairs.
Silent and grim, he struck Hal’s door with his fist. The door resisted. One lunge of the shoulder, and the lock burst.
Hal stood there in corduroy trousers, heavy gray reefer and oilskin hat. Two strapped suit-cases stood by the bureau. Over the floor, the bed, lay a litter of discarded clothes and papers.
“What the hell!” cried the thief, clenching angry fists.
“You, sir!” exclaimed old Captain Briggs, in a voice the boy had never yet heard. “Stand where you are! I have to speak with you!”
Not even the effrontery of Hal’s bold eyes could quite meet that blue, piercing look. Had the old man, he wondered, a revolver? Was he minded now to kill? In that terrible and accusing face, he saw what Alpheus Briggs had been in the old, barbarous days. The brute in him recognized the dormant passions of his grandfather, now rekindling. And, though he tried to mask his soul, the fear in it spied through his glance.
“You snake!” the captain flung at him. “You lying Judas!”
“Go easy there!” Hal menaced. That he had been drinking was obvious. The scent of liquor filled the room, abomination in the old man’s nostrils. “Go easy! I’m not taking any such talk from any man, even if he is my grandfather!”