Sam Pepper was hardly in the room when something happened to give him a temporary shock. He heard the scratch of a match, and then a gas jet was lit and turned low in the room.
"I've put my foot into it," he groaned. "Maybe I had better git out as fast as I came in."
Cautiously he peeped from behind the curtain, and to his astonishment saw Homer Bulson approach the safe and kneel down before it. He also saw that Bulson was alone, and that the doors to the other parts of the mansion were tightly closed.
"Something is up that's not on the level," he told himself. "This man don't live here."
Scarcely daring to breathe, he watched Homer Bulson work at the combination of the safe. To get the strong box open was not easy, and soon the fashionable young man uttered a low exclamation of impatience.
"I must have it wrong," Pepper heard him say. "Confound the luck! And I wanted that money to-night, too."
At last the safe came open, and Homer Bulson breathed a sigh of satisfaction. With trembling fingers he pulled open one of the upper drawers.
"Found!" he murmured. "I wonder if I have time to read them over, to make sure they are all right? Uncle is a queer stick and he may have made some mistake."
He brought some documents forth and began to unfold them. Then he reconsidered the matter and placed the papers on a chair beside the safe. In a moment more he had found the gilded knob, pressed upon it, and opened the secret compartment at the bottom of the strong box.
The sight that met his gaze caused his eyes to glisten. There were several stacks of ten- and twenty-dollar gold pieces—at least two thousand dollars in all. Without waiting he placed a large handful of the coins in the outer pocket of his coat.