It seemed to go black for a moment before Jimmie Dale’s eyes, seemed to paralyse all action of mind and body.  There was a low cry that was more a moan, the clang of the iron bar clattering on the floor, and Mike Hagan had pitched forward on his face, an inert and huddled heap.  A half laugh, half snarl purled from Connie Myers’ lips, as he snatched a stout piece of cord from his pocket and swiftly knotted the unconscious man’s wrists together.  Another instant, and, picking up the bar, prying with it again, the loosened stone toppled with a crash into the grate.

It had come sudden as the crack of doom, that blow—­too quick, too unexpected for Jimmie Dale to have lifted a finger to prevent it.  And now that the first numbed shock of mingled horror and amazement was past, he fought back the quick, fierce impulse to spring out on Connie Myers.  Whether the man was killed or only stunned, he could do no good to Mike Hagan now, and there was Connie Myers—­he was staring in a fascinated way at Connie Myers.  Behind the stone that the other had just dislodged was a large hollow space that had been left in the masonry, and from this now Connie Myers was eagerly collecting handfuls of banknotes that were rolled up into the shape of little cylinders, each one grotesquely tied with a string.  The man was feverishly excited, muttering to himself, running from the fireplace to where the table had been pushed aside with 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.