Across the room the blind man groped, his hand held before him, as was his habit. "Strange! Remarkably strange!" he remarked to himself quite aloud. "I'm never mistaken in Gabrielle's voice. Gabrielle, dear, where are you? Why don't you speak? It's too late to-night to play practical jokes."
Flockart knew that he had left the safe-door open, yet he dared not move across the room to close it. The sightless man would detect the slightest movement in that dead silence of the night. With great care he left the girl's side, and a single stride brought him to the large writing-table, where he secured the document, together with the pencilled memoranda of its purport, both of which he slipped into his pocket unobserved.
Gabrielle dared not breathe. Her discovery there meant her ruin.
The man who held her in his toils cast her an evil, threatening glance, raising his clenched fist in menace, as though daring her to make the slightest movement. In his dark eyes showed a sinister expression, and his nether lip was hard. She was, alas! utterly and completely in his power.
The safe was some distance away, and in order to reach and close it he would be compelled to pass the man in blue spectacles now standing, puzzled and surprised, in the centre of the great book-lined apartment. Both of them could escape by the open window, but to do so would be to court discovery should the Baronet find his safe standing open. In that case the alarm would be raised, and they would both be found outside the house, instead of within.
Slowly the old man drew his thin hand across his furrowed brow, and then, as a sudden recollection dawned upon him, he cried, "Ah, the window! Why, that's strange! When I went out I closed it! But it was open—open—as I came in! Some one—some one has entered here in my absence!"
With both his thin, wasted hands outstretched, he walked quickly to his safe, cleverly avoiding the furniture in his course, and next second discovered that the iron door stood wide open.
"Thieves!" he gasped aloud hoarsely as the truth dawned upon him. "My papers! Gabrielle's voice! What can all this mean?" And next moment he opened the door, crying, "Help!" and endeavouring to alarm the household.
In an instant Flockart dashed forward towards the safe, and, without being observed by Gabrielle, had slipped the key into his own pocket.
"Gabrielle," cried the blind man, "you are here in the room. I know you are. You cannot deceive me. I smell that new scent, which your aunt Annie sent you, upon your handkerchief. Why don't you speak to me?"