"Yes; you had scarcely gone before he began his tactics. First he led
me very politely to a room where there was a bed; then he brought me a
bottle of the vilest rum you ever drank; and then he sat down to be
affable. While he talked I was at ease, but when he finally got up and
said he would try to get a snatch of sleep I grew suspicious, and
stopped drinking the rum and set myself to listening. He went directly
to a room not far from me and shut himself in. He had no light, but in a
few minutes I heard him strike a match, and then another and another.
'He is searching under the boards for more treasure,' thought I, and
creeping into the next room I was fortunate enough to come upon a closet
so old and with such big cracks in its partition that I was enabled to
look through them into the place where he was. The sight that met my eye
was startling. He was, as I conjectured, peering under the boards, which
he had ripped up early in the evening; and as he had only the light of a
match to aid him, I would catch quick glimpses of his eager, peering
face and then lose the sight of it in sudden darkness till the gleam of
another match came to show it up again. He crouched upon the floor and
crept along the whole length of the board, thrusting in his arm to right
and left, while the sweat oozed on his forehead and fell in large drops
into the long, narrow hollow beneath him. At last he seemed to grow wild
with repeated disappointments, and, starting up, stood looking about him
at the four surrounding walls, as if demanding them to give up their
secrets. Then the match went out, and I heard him stamp his foot with
rage before proceeding to put back the boards and shift them into place.
Then there came silence, during which I crept on tiptoe to the place I
had left, judging that he would soon leave his room and return to see if
I had been watching him.
"The box was on the bed, and throwing myself beside it, I grasped it
with one arm and hid my face with the other, and as I lay there I soon
became conscious of his presence, and I knew he was looking from me to
the box, and weighing the question as to whether I was sleeping sound
enough for him to risk a blow. But I did not stir, though I almost
expected a sudden crash on my head, and in another moment he crept away,
awed possibly by my superior strength, for I am a much bigger man than
he, as you must see. When I thought him gone I dropped my arm and looked
up. The room was in total darkness. Bounding to my feet I followed him
through the halls and came upon him in the room of death. He had the
lamp in his hand, and he was standing over his sister with an awful look
on his face.
"'Where have you hidden it?' he hissed to the senseless form before him.
'That box is not all you had. Where are the bonds and the stocks, and
the money I helped you to save?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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