"I find that I shall have to leave home again the first thing in the morning," he said. "I shall sit up a great part of the night arranging matters, as I may have to go away for some considerable time. You, however, may go to bed. I will call you about six, and will then give you all needful instructions before going away."
Pringle nodded his usual careless goodnight, and went. But instead of going upstairs to the room he usually occupied, he took off his shoes and stole down to the basement floor. He had put out the kitchen gas before taking up the coffee, but a few embers still glowed in the grate.
In the passage that led from the foot of the stairs to the strong-room there was still a faint glimmer of gas, as there was in the strong-room itself, in which the gas was seldom turned entirely off. The safe was locked as usual, and seemed never to have been touched since Van Duren left home.
"He's nearly sure to come down here some time in the night, and here I'll wait for him," muttered Pringle to himself.
He groped about in the dark till he had found Bakewell's easy-chair, in which he established himself comfortably in front of the fire, with his feet on another chair, and there in the dark he waited. He could hear Van Duren moving about occasionally, and two or three times he seemed to pace the room for several minutes. The fire slowly burnt itself out, the crickets chirped loudly in the silence, the city clocks clanged out the hours one after one, some lightly and carelessly as it seemed, others solemnly and slowly, as though warning all who might hear them that they were another hour nearer eternity. Still Jonas Pringle sat waiting, nor ever closed an eye.
At length, about three o'clock of the early summer morning, he heard footsteps slowly descending the stone stairs, and he knew that the occasion for which he had waited so long had come at last. The kitchen door was shut, but not latched, so that he could hear but not see anything that might happen outside. The footsteps came slowly and deliberately downstairs, and then went along the passage towards the strong-room. Then Pringle, listening intently, heard the bolts of the great iron door shoot back as the key was turned, and next moment he knew that Max Van Duren had entered the strong-room. He was still without his shoes, and rising from his seat he stepped noiselessly across the floor, and opening the door a little way, looked out. There was still the same faint glimmer of light in the passage, but the brighter glare that issued through the open door of the strong-room showed that Van Duren had turned up the gas inside. As quietly and stealthily as a tiger creeps on its prey, Pringle stole along the passage, and only paused when he reached the fringe of stronger light that issued from the room.
There, with his back towards him, stood Max Van Duren, peering into the open safe, some of the contents of which were already scattered on the floor. For a few seconds--while a clock might tick twenty times--he stood watching him with a devilish sneer on his face. Suddenly Van Duren turned, and his eyes met the eyes of Pringle. An exclamation of surprise burst from his lips; but before he had time to stir from the place where he was standing, Pringle had dashed forward, had seized the handle of the door, had pulled it to with all his might, and had turned the key. Max Van Duren was locked up in his own strong-room, ten feet below the surface of the earth.
"Caged at last!" muttered Pringle to himself, as he drew out the key and put it in his pocket. "Past three o'clock: it will be broad daylight soon. I think I could relish some breakfast. Pity old Mother Bakewell isn't here to get it ready for me." Whistling a tune under his breath, he went back into the kitchen, flung open the shutters, and began to set about lighting a fire. "Shall I have those two eggs boiled or poached?" he asked himself, as he prepared a foundation of firewood and paper. "I think I'll have 'em poached, just for variety. I'm sick of boiled eggs."
Van Duren had not been silent all this time. "Pringle! what devil's trick is this?" were his first words as he sprang at the closing door. "Pringle, Pringle, I say, you have fastened me in! Open the door, you fool, or it will be worse for you!" But Pringle was in the kitchen, cutting the string of a bundle of firewood.
"Come, now, Pringle, my good fellow, a joke's a joke, as everybody knows, but I've had enough of this. If you only knew how important is the business I've got to attend to, you wouldn't keep me here, I know." Pringle by this time was down on his knees, blowing away at the blaze like a pair of wheezy bellows.