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 specific gravity seemed to have departed--what did it contain?
With trembling hands the terrified man unfastened the cord which bound it and inverted the bag over the table.
Instead of the sharp, musical collision and clink of metal, a sodden succession of thuds smote his ears.
With a shriek of utter wonderment and alarm, Raikes stood erect and petrified.
His hands fell, with inert palsies, to his sides. His eyes seemed about to start from his head, for, looming dully to his aching gaze, in place of the coin he had so confidently hidden away, was a rayless, squalid heap of small, black coals.
A moment he stood lean and limp; every particle of the fever which consumed him concentrated in his starting eyes, which turned, with savage inquiry, toward the fastenings of the door.
The next instant, with a leap like that of a wild beast, he reached the threshold, examined the bolt with vivid glance and searching fingers, then raised his hand to his forehead with a gesture of utter distraction.