Dick Fleming stared at her for a moment. Then he burst into
laughter.
"A Hidden Room--that's rich!" he said, still laughing. "Never heard
of it! Now, let me get this straight. The idea is--a Hidden Room--
and the money is in it--is that it?"
Dale nodded a "Yes."
"The architect who built this house told Jack Bailey that he had
built a Hidden Room in it," she persisted.
For a moment Dick Fleming stared at her as if he could not believe
his ears. Then, slowly, his expression changed. Beneath the
well-fed, debonair mask of the clubman about town, other lines
appeared--lines of avarice and calculation--wolf-marks, betokening
the craft and petty ruthlessness of the small soul within the
gentlemanly shell. His eyes took on a shifty, uncertain stare--they
no longer looked at Dale--their gaze seemed turned inward, beholding
a visioned treasure, a glittering pile of gold. And yet, the change
in his look was not so pronounced as to give Dale pause--she felt a
vague uneasiness steal over her, true--but it would have taken a
shrewd and long-experienced woman of the world to read the secret
behind Fleming's eyes at first glance--and Dale, for all her courage
and common sense, was a young and headstrong girl.
She watched him, puzzled, wondering why he made no comment on her
last statement.
"Do you know where there are any blue-prints of the house?" she
asked at last.
An odd light glittered in Fleming's eyes for a moment. Then it
vanished--he held himself in check--the casual idler again.
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