A touch upon the electric button brought
the stenographer from the anteroom.
"Who's been into my desk, Collins?" he demanded, pointing to the
confusion and scrutinizing the face of the young man sharply for signs
of guilt.
"Goodness gracious! How could anybody get into it when you've got the
only key, Mr. Blount?" stammered the clerk. Then he went on,
parrot-like: "I've been putting the letters and telegrams through the
letter-slit, as you told me to, and I've kept the private office
locked."
"Nevertheless it is very evident that somebody has been here," said
Blount. Then he had a sudden shock and wheeled shortly upon the
stenographer. "Collins, what did you do with that packet of papers I
gave you last Monday--the one I told you to put away in the safe?"
"I did just what you told me to; put it in the inner cash-box, and put
the key of the cash-box on your desk. Didn't you get it?"
Blount felt in his pockets and found the key, which he handed to
Collins. "Go and get that packet and bring it to me," he directed. The
shock was beginning to subside a little by now, and he sat down to bring
something like order out of the confusion on the desk. At first, he had
thought that the sheaf of evidence letters which gave him the
strangle-hold upon Gantry and the lawbreakers had been left in a
pigeonhole of the desk.
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