For a minute or two Barry did not move, but at length, unable to restrain his curiosity, he stole to the grille and peered through. The stranger was still standing near the fence, gazing intently up and down the street. Presently he disappeared toward Madison Avenue, and Barry, after waiting a few moments, undid the grille and stole out.
Peering over the fence, the Harvard man watched the mysterious stranger move slowly down the street, staring keenly into every doorway as he passed it. Finally, at the corner, he paused, glanced swiftly back, stood for some time undecided, then vanished from sight.
The instant the man was gone, Barry emerged, and made his way straight back to the hotel. He managed to brush his top hat into some semblance of decency, and rid his coat of the bits of ice and snow which clung to it. Happily the elevator boy was half asleep, and did not notice anything unusual in his appearance, so that Lawrence reached his rooms without attracting undue comment.
His first move was to examine the lump on his head, which felt about the size of a billiard ball. He had a feeling that his hair must be smeared and clotted with blood, and was agreeably surprised to find that the skin had scarcely been broken. The weapon, whatever it was, had evidently struck just the right spot to produce momentary unconsciousness, without doing any very permanent damage.
Stripping off his clothes, and getting into pajamas and a loose dressing gown, Barry bathed the bump carefully with warm water, then with cold, placed a wet towel against it, and sat down to think over the night's experiences.
They had certainly not lacked interest and excitement. When he started out in that whimsical manner from the Waldorf he had expected nothing quite like this.
The last adventure naturally received his attention first. Who was the bearded man, and why had he such an interest in Lawrence? Remembering the distasteful encounter with Tappin at the Waldorf, Barry wondered whether it were possible that the bank president had set his detectives again on the trail.
Swiftly he thrust the idea aside. Though he realized that the sudden display of affluence on the part of one who had so short a time ago been in abject poverty was sufficient reason for Tappin to make another effort to find out what had become of the missing funds, Lawrence did not see how there could possibly have been time to get into communication with the agency, and summon a detective to the hotel.
"I left them at table," he murmured aloud, his forehead wrinkled in a puzzled manner. "No one could know where I was going—I didn't even know myself; yet that fellow was waiting outside the Broadway restaurant."
With Tappin eliminated, what motive remained? Was the bearded man a common thief who had marked him down as a profitable undertaking? Had he by any chance caught a glimpse of the serpent ring? Barry had not been oblivious to the fact that the unique jewel had attracted attention in many quarters that evening; and now, as he lifted his hand, and surveyed the great, square, dully gleaming stone, with its strange setting, he wondered suddenly whether there was anything uncanny about the thing. He had read before of jewels like this coming out of the mysterious East, and leaving a trail of violence in their wake. Perhaps there was something about it——