as
just then, and I had to pretend to be busy to head off any suspicion
from him. Mr. Carlis left soon after, and I could feel his eyes boring
into the back of my neck as he passed through the room. Mr. Mallowe
sent for me almost immediately, to find an old letter for him, from
one of the files of two years ago, and it was funny, the suspicious,
worried way he kept watching me!"

"There is nothing else you can tell us?" the detective inquired.
"Nothing out of the usual run happened while you were there?"

"Nothing, except that a couple of days ago, he had an awful row with a
man who called on him. It was about money matters, I think, and the
old gentleman got very much excited. 'Not a cent!' he kept repeating,
louder and louder, until he fairly shouted. 'Not one more cent will
you get from me. This systematic extortion of yours must come to an
end here and now! I've done all I'm going to, and you'd better
understand that clearly.' Then the other man, the visitor, got angry,
too, and they went at it hammer and tongs. At last, Mr. Mallowe must
have lost his head completely, for he accused the other man of robbing
his safe. At that, the visitor got calm and cool as a cucumber, all of
a sudden, and began to question Mr. Mallowe. It seems from what I
heard--I can't recall the exact words--that not very long ago, the
night watchman in the offices was chloroformed and the safe ransacked,
but nothing was taken except a letter.

"'You're mad!' the strange man said. 'Why in h--l should anybody take
a letter, and leave packets of gilt-edged bonds and other securities
lying about untouched?'

"'Because the letter happens to be one you would very much like to
have in your possession, Paddington,' the old gentleman said. Oh, I
forgot to tell you that the visitor's name was Paddington, but that
doesn't matter, does it? 'Do you know what it was?' Mr. Mallowe went
on. 'It was a certain letter which Pennington Lawton wrote to me from
Long Bay two years ago. Now do you understand?'"

"'You fool!' said Paddington. 'You fool, to keep it! You gave your
word that you would destroy it! Why didn't you?'

"'Because, I thought it might come in useful some day, just as it has
now,' the old gentleman fairly whined. 'It was good circumstantial
evidence.'

"'Yes--fine!' Paddington said, with a bitter kind of a laugh. 'Fine
evidence, for whoever's got it now!'

"'You know very well who's got it!' cried Mr. Mallowe. 'You don't pull
the wool