Chapter IX

SUSPICIONS
★

Bob and his uncle stared at Arthur Jacobs with unbelieving eyes, and the filing chief saw their doubt.

“The papers are gone—gone I tell you.” His voice rose almost to a frenzy for this was the first time that such a thing had occurred in his usually well ordered and carefully routined department, and he had visions of losing his job.

“Yes, yes, we heard you,” replied Merritt Hughes. “But perhaps you missed them in going through the file. Let’s go through together.”

“It won’t do any good,” said Jacobs in a flat and hopeless voice. “I know this file from A to Z and the papers that came in this afternoon are not here.”

The federal agent paused and looked hard at the filing chief.

“You say they were important papers?”

Jacobs nodded. “They were so important that I refused to trust them to anyone else.”

“You’re sure no one in the department knew these papers were coming through?” insisted the federal agent.

“I can’t be sure,” replied the filing chief, “for there has been talk drifting around the last few days about some important radio discoveries that have been made by the army engineers. But I am sure that no one knew the exact time these papers came over.”

“Was it a complete file on the new discoveries?” asked Merritt Hughes anxiously.

“I don’t know, but from the usual procedure, I would say that it was only a partial file. Just as a precautionary step they usually send the records of new formulas, and developments over in several sections so that it would be almost impossible to take one section and know what it was all about.”

“But you’re not sure about this special file?”

“No, except that it was small; a single sheet of paper in a sturdy manila envelope.”

“We’d better go through everything in the room,” decided Bob’s uncle, and they got down on their hands and knees and started rummaging through the litter of papers.

It would take days to place these back in their proper sequences and Bob felt sorry for Jacobs.

They finished one side of the room and started down another. There was no sign of the missing envelope and Bob’s uncle phoned the precinct police station to learn if such an envelope had been found on the prisoner.

“Search him again,” he instructed the police when they informed him that no envelope or papers of any description had been found.

Bob looked toward the half opened window.

“Do you think it would have been possible for him to toss that paper out the window and have it picked up by someone on the ground?” he asked.

Merritt Hughes went to the window and looked down. It was better than a hundred feet to the ground and the sharpness of the wind had not lessened. He shook his head.

“I don’t think that happened,” he said. “It would have been too risky. Either that paper is still in this room or it was taken out by that fellow when he left.”

“But the police haven’t found anything,” protested Bob.

“Sometimes even the police slip up when they run into an especially clever crook and this man had to be clever to get in here in a guard’s uniform and stand night duty.”

Their search of the room neared an end and Arthur Jacobs looked even more downcast.

“I knew it was missing when I failed to find it in the file,” he groaned. “This is where I lose my reputation.”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ve got to find this paper first,” said Merritt Hughes. “Go through the file once more.”

With the federal agent on one side and Bob on the other, the filing chief examined every paper in the cabinet, but without success.

Merritt Hughes turned on his nephew.

“You’re sure that you were the only one in this office until this fellow got in?” he asked Bob.

Bob hesitated, wondering whether he dared implicate Tully Ross by mentioning his name. But Tully had been there and the disappearance of the radio document was too important to let anything like that interfere, he decided.

“Well, Tully Ross dropped in for a few minutes,” said Bob.

“Why didn’t you tell me this in the first place?” asked the federal agent, and Bob felt the color in his cheeks mounting at the rebuke which was implied by his uncle’s words.