But Roy knew it was no use to take the clock. He was sure he could not sleep. He was far too anxious and excited for that. He lay down on the sofa in his own room and tried to read. But he did not see a word on the page. He was thinking of Sydney.
Presently Rex came in. He flung himself down on the bed, exclaiming: “Roy, I feel exactly as if something was going to happen. I can’t get to sleep, so there’s no use in my going to bed. I’m worried about Syd. There is something mighty queer about him.”
“Oh, he’s much better to-night,” Roy responded encouragingly.
“Yes, I know; but it’s his actions all through this thing that I’m worried about. Do you know that I sometimes think, Roy—” here Rex sat up on the bed and lowered his voice impressively—“I sometimes think that perhaps there was a touch of insanity in Syd’s family. You know we are always forgetting that he isn’t one of us.”
“Is it anything in particular makes you think that, Reggie?” said Roy, wondering what Rex would say if he knew about that night’s expedition.
“Well, yes, one thing taken with a lot of other things,” and he proceeded to tell of what Sydney had said to him at the office when he went down there the previous night.
“He seems to have the idea that he has committed some crime,” Rex went on. “I really think that we ought to watch him carefully.”
“It doesn’t seem to me to be as serious as that,” responded Roy. “But as you say, we ought to watch him carefully.”
Rex lay quiet for a time. Roy’s thoughts were disturbing ones. Reginald, too, was worrying over Sydney’s condition. But that note from Hannah Fox was something tangible. There was no chimera of the imagination about that.
Perhaps it was a real anxiety that was preying on Syd’s mind. Very likely something connected with his parentage.