ve queries, which were gradually diminishing from fabric
to ravel, Raikes finally reached his room and, securely bolting the
door, began to prepare to retire.

This was not an elaborate proceeding.

His outer garments removed, he had only to seek the seclusion of the
bedclothes, clad in the remainder of his attire.

In this manner he economized on the cost of a night-robe and the time it
would consume to don and doff such a superfluity.

At all events, if such was not his sordid reasoning, the promptness with
which he fell asleep indicated that he did not propose to squander
useless time in wakeful speculation upon the intangible nothings to
which his recollection of the narrative began to fade.

However, if Raikes had succeeded in passing the boundaries of slumber,
he had admitted, at the same time, extravagances of which he would never
have been guilty in his wakeful hours, for he found himself so engaged
in all sorts of uneasy shiftlessness and inconsiderate expenditure that
when morning came and he awoke, as usual, with the sunrise, he resumed
his customary identity, peevish and unrefreshed.

For a moment he sat with his knees huddled to his chin, over which his
eyes peered like vermin in the wainscoting, and then, urged by an
impulse whose source he could not determine, he leaped with surprising
agility to the floor and proceeded to the false radiator.

For a short space of inexplicable indecision he stood with his hands
resting upon the button which released the fastenings in the rear, an
uneasy thoughtfulness converging the ugly wrinkles downward to the root
of his nose and contracting his eyebrows with senile apprehension.

Suddenly his wonted decision asserted itself. He pressed the button and
the radiator swung toward him; a few moments later the inner
compartments responded to his manipulation, and the last door opened.

Apparently everything was as he had left it.

To his rapid enumeration the quantity of the small bags, containing his
beloved coin, remained undisturbed. But, upon nearer regard, one of
them--that within easiest reach--seemed to betray, through its canvas
sides, a variety of unusually sharp angles and definite lines.

With a suffocating sensation of impending disaster, Raikes grasped the
bag.

It pended from his tense grip with a frightful lightness. He caught up
its neighbor for further confirmation. It responded with reassuring bulk
and weight. But this one from which all speci