He said nothing to Pringle explanatory of his sudden appearance, or of the condition in which he was--unshaven, haggard, and with a great wound on one side of his head. He flung himself on to a couch, and told Pringle to lower the gas and order some coffee. He hardly seemed to hear his clerk's explanation that the Bakewells had gone out for a holiday, but that he, Pringle, would make him some coffee. Five minutes later, when Pringle came to ask him whether he would not like some toast with his coffee, he was fast asleep on the sofa.
Pringle went back to his coffee-making, chuckling to himself, "What a fool he was to come in search of me, if he only knew! What a fool he is to let me make his coffee for him! Why shouldn't I put a dose of poison in it? That wouldn't be such a bad sort of revenge; and if I hadn't decided on something different, I might perhaps have adopted it. He looks half crazy to-night. Something queer has happened to him while he's been away. How did he come by that gash in his head? But all that matters nothing to me. It only matters to me that he's here, under this roof, in my power. Better, far better for him had he never set foot across this threshold again!"
He was wide awake when Pringle took in the coffee. "This is kind of you, Pringle," he said, and he began to drink it eagerly.
"I find that I shall have to leave home again the first thing in the morning," he said. "I shall sit up a great part of the night arranging matters, as I may have to go away for some considerable time. You, however, may go to bed. I will call you about six, and will then give you all needful instructions before going away."
Pringle nodded his usual careless goodnight, and went. But instead of going upstairs to the room he usually occupied, he took off his shoes and stole down to the basement floor. He had put out the kitchen gas before taking up the coffee, but a few embers still glowed in the grate.
In the passage that led from the foot of the stairs to the strong-room there was still a faint glimmer of gas, as there was in the strong-room itself, in which the gas was seldom turned entirely off. The safe was locked as usual, and seemed never to have been touched since Van Duren left home.