ith the rest of the furniture, dropping the curious
little rolls of money on the table, and running back for more. And then,
having apparently emptied the receptacle, he wriggled his body over
the dismantled fireplace, stuck his head into the opening, and peered
upward.

"Kinks in his nut, kinks in his nut!" Connie Myers was muttering. "I'll
drop the bar through from the top, mabbe there's some got stuck in the
pipe."

He regained his feet, picked up the bar, and ran with it into what was
evidently the front hall--then his steps sounded running upstairs.

Like a flash, Jimmie Dale was across the room and at the fireplace. Like
Connie Myers, he, too, put his head into the opening; and then, a queer,
unpleasant smile on his lips, he bent quickly over the man on the floor.
Hagan was no more than stunned, and was even then beginning to show
signs of returning consciousness. There was a rattle, a clang, a
thud--and the bar, too long to come all the way through, dropped into
the opening and stood upright. Connie Myers' footsteps sounded again,
returning on the run--and Jimmie Dale was back once more on the other
side of the kitchen doorway.

It was all simple enough--once one understood! The same queer smile
was still flickering on Jimmie Dale's lips. There was no way to get the
money out, except the way Connie Myers had got it out--by digging it
out! With the irrational cunning of his mad brain, that had put the
money even beyond his own reach, old Doyle had built his fireplace with
a hollow some eighteen inches square in a great wall of solid stonework,
and from it had run a two-inch pipe up somewhere to the story above;
and down this pipe he had dropped his little string-tied cylinders of
banknotes, satisfied that his hoard was safe! There seemed something
pitifully ironic in the elaborate, insane craftiness of the old man's
fear-twisted, demented mind.

And now Connie Myers was back in the room again--and again a puzzled
expression settled upon Jimmie Dale's face as he watched the other. For
perhaps a minute the man stood by the table sifting the little rolls of
money through his fingers gloatingly--then, impulsively, he pushed these
to one side, produced a revolver, laid it on the table, and from another
pocket took out a little case which, as he opened it, Jimmie Dale could
see contained a hypodermic syringe. One more article followed the other
two--a letter, which Connie Myers took out of an unsealed envelope. He