er, he escaped to the welcome refuge of his own office while father
and son took counsel together against this new and unsuspected peril.

"Anybody but an idiot like Dyckman would have found out long ago if
those papers were burned in Gordon's safe," snapped Vincent, when the
danger had been duly weighed and measured.

The president shook his head mournfully.

"Anybody but Dyckman would have burned them himself, you'd think. It was
criminally careless in him not to do so."

"They are the key to the lock," summed up the younger man. "We've got to
have them."

"Assuredly--if they are in existence."

"You needn't try to squeeze comfort out of that. I tell you, they went
through the fire all right, and Tom has them."

"I am afraid you are right, Vincent; afraid, also, that Dyckman so far
forgot himself as to set fire to Gordon's office in the hope of
retrieving his own neglect. But how are we to regain them?" Mr. Farley's
weapons were two, only: first persuasion, and when that failed,
corruption.

Vincent's cold blue eyes were darkening. The little virtues interpose
but a slight barrier to a sharp attack of the large vices.

"The fight has fallen into halves," he said briefly. "You go on with
your part as if nothing had happened, and I'll do mine. Has the old
iron-melter been taken in on it, do you think?"

"No; I don't believe Caleb knows."

"That's better. Are you going up the mountain to-night?"

"Yes, I had thought of it. Eva wants me to take her."

"All right; you go, and get Major Dabney to yourself for a quiet
half-hour. Tell him we are all ready to close the deal, and we're only
waiting on the Gordons. I'll be up to dinner, and if anybody asks for me
later, let it be understood that I have gone to my room to write
letters."

This bomb-hurling of Dyckman's occurred on the Wednesday. That night,
between the hours of nine and eleven, the new steel safe in Tom Gordon's
private office was broken open and ransacked, though nothing was taken.
On Thursday afternoon, while Martha Gordon was over at Deer Trace
training the new growth on Ardea's roses, Tom's room at Woodlawn was
thoroughly and systematically pillaged: drawers were pulled out and
emptied on the floor, the closets were stripped of their contents, and
even the bed mattresses were ripped open and destroyed.

Mrs. Martha was terrified, as so bold a daylight housebreaking gave her
a right to be; and Caleb was for sending to the county workhouse for