e 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. Then he remembered having given it to Collins to
put away.

A minute or two later it occurred to him that the stenographer was
taking a long time for a short errand. Rising silently, he crossed the
room and reached for the knob of the door of communication. In the act
he saw that the door was ajar, and through the crack he saw Collins
standing before the opened safe. The clerk was running his tongue along
the flap of a large envelope, preparatory to sealing it. Blount's first
impulse was to break in with a sharp command. Then he reconsidered and
went back to his desk; was still busy at it when Collins came in and
laid the freshly sealed envelope before him.

"That isn't the packet I gave you," said Blount curtly.

The clerk looked away. "You meant those letters, didn't you?" he
queried. "The rubber band broke and I put them in an envelope."

"When?" snapped Blount.

The young man faced around again and the innocence in his look disarmed
the questioner.

"When? Just now. That's what made me so long--I couldn't find an
envelope big enough."

Blount took up the letter opener and slipped the blade under the flap of
the envelope. If he had looked up at the stenographer then he would have
seen the mask of innocence slip aside to discover a face ashen with
terror. But whatever the shorthand man had to fear from the opening of
the lately sealed envelope was postponed by the incoming of Ackerton,
the working head of the legal department, with a damage suit to discuss
with his chief. Blount thrust the big envelope into his pocket unopened,
and later in the day, when he went around to his bank to put the
evidence letters into his safe-deposit box, the incident of the morning
had lost its significance so completely, or had been so deeply buried
under other and more important matters, that he deposited the packet
without examin