“Aunt Cornelia thinks the money’s still here.”

Miss Cornelia snorted.

“I know it’s here.”  She started to open the closets, one after the other, beginning at the left.  Bailey saw what she was doing and began to help her.

Not so Lizzie.  She sat on the floor in a heap, her eyes riveted on the Unknown, who in his turn was gazing at Miss Cornelia’s revolver on the hamper with the intent stare of a baby or an idiot fascinated by a glittering piece of glass.

Dale noticed the curious tableau.

“Lizzie—­what are you looking at?” she said with a nervous shake in her voice.

“What’s he looking at?” asked Lizzie sepulchrally, pointing at the Unknown.  Her pointed forefinger drew his eyes away from the revolver; he sank back into his former apathy, listless, drooping.

Miss Cornelia rattled the knob of a high closet by the other wall.

“This one is locked—­and the key’s gone,” she announced.  A new flicker of interest grew in the eyes of the Unknown.  Lizzie glanced away from him, terrified.

“If there’s anything locked up in that closet,” she whimpered, “you’d better let it stay!  There’s enough running loose in this house as it is!”

Unfortunately for her, her whimper drew Miss Cornelia’s attention upon her.

“Lizzie, did you ever take that key?” the latter queried sternly.

“No’m,” said Lizzie, too scared to dissimulate if she had wished.  She wagged her head violently a dozen times, like a china figure on a mantelpiece.

Miss Cornelia pondered.

“It may be locked from the inside; I’ll soon find out.”  She took a wire hairpin from her hair and pushed it through the keyhole.  But there was no key on the other side; the hairpin went through without obstruction.  Repeated efforts to jerk the door open failed.  And finally Miss Cornelia bethought herself of a key from the other closet doors.

Dale and Lizzie on one side—­Bailey on the other—­collected the keys of the other closets from their locks while Miss Cornelia stared at the one whose doors were closed as if she would force its secret from it with her eyes.  The Unknown had been so quiet during the last few minutes, that, unconsciously, the others had ceased to pay much attention to him, except the casual attention one devotes to a piece of furniture.  Even Lizzie’s eyes were now fixed on the locked closet.  And the Unknown himself was the first to notice this.

At once his expression altered to one of cunning—­cautiously, with infinite patience, he began to inch his chair over toward the wicker clothes hamper.  The noise of the others, moving about the room, drowned out what little he made in moving his chair.

At last he was within reach of the revolver.  His hand shot out in one swift sinuous thrust—­clutched the weapon—­withdrew.  He then concealed the revolver among his tattered garments as best he could and, cautiously as before, inched his chair back again to its original position.  When the others noticed him again, the mask of lifelessness was back on his face and one could have sworn he had not changed his position by the breadth of an inch.