Jack nodded his head and, turning quickly, stared blindly across the fields that sloped and stretched from the terrace. He didn't see them. His brain was working just then as it had never worked before. Cyril's words about the money had raised a sudden storm of temptation in him which seemed to carry him out of himself. He must try to think—to decide.
At midnight Cyril turned in, but could not sleep; his thoughts were too busily occupied with Madge, Jack, and the present uncertainty of his own future. He had heard the clock in the little sitting-room adjoining chime every hour from midnight to three. Then a strange thing happened. As he lay broad awake in the dark, a slender pencil of yellow light stole across the carpet from his door. Jack's room was next to his. He heard no sound in the corridor, though he sat up in his bed and listened intently. The pencil of light remained stationary a few moments, then wavered, and finally, sweeping slowly round the room, disappeared.
Something prompted Cyril to rise and investigate. Putting on his dressing-gown and slippers, he noiselessly crossed his room and looked out. The feeble yellow light was dancing on the ceiling of the corridor, but the bearer of it, unseen, was already descending the broad oak staircase.
Cyril hurried quietly along the corridor and, looking over the balustrade, saw Jack. He was at the foot of the stairs, and about to enter the lower corridor.
Cyril remained where he was in the darkness a few moments, when the light began to reappear and a cool breath of air swept up the stair.
Jack must have opened the French window which gave access to the garden. He now approached the foot of the stair with stealthy tread; but, instead of mounting it, he passed on in the direction of the other wing.
Cyril felt instinctively that something was wrong, and descending the stairs he followed in Jack's wake. Turning the corner of the corridor he was just in time to see the young man insert a key in the lock of the study door, and then enter.
By the time Cyril had arrived Jack had placed his candle on the writing-table and was stooping, with his back to the door, in front of his lather's safe, which he had just opened.
This safe was of peculiar construction. For the convenience of the doctor it opened by means of the simple pressure of a small button in the wainscot. But the room in itself was a safe, for the door was of steel with a powerful lock, and the one window was heavily shuttered within and barred without.
All unconscious of a watcher, Jack was cautiously engaged in disconnecting the wires switched on to an alarm in the doctor's room above, when Cyril, unable to contain his feelings any longer, stepped forward.