Chapter XV

A REAL JOB AHEAD
★

There was a strange mist in Bob’s eyes as he looked up at his uncle.

“Shake, Bob. You’ve got a real job ahead of you and I know you’ll come through with flying colors.”

“Thanks a lot. This is the biggest thing that has ever come to me and I’m going to succeed if it is at all possible.”

There was a grim sort of a chuckle from Tully Ross, who had shoved his leather case with its card and badge into an inside pocket.

“You’re going to have to step some if you think you can put anything over on me.”

Tully and his uncle left the office and Bob watched the door close behind them.

“Nice people,” he grinned.

“I don’t like the looks of this case,” said his uncle. “It isn’t pleasant to think that you’ve got someone else in the same department, who goes out of his way to make it unpleasant for you, working on the same case.”

“Then why is Adams assigned to team up with you?” asked Bob.

“Perhaps because we have a habit of getting results,” admitted Merritt Hughes, with a rueful smile. “We’ve been pretty lucky on a number of cases where we have worked together. The breaks have been about fifty-fifty and now we both want a really smashing victory that will bring us advancement. It looks like this may be the case, but it’s going to be dangerous business.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, look back over the events of the last few hours. We know that an important paper, containing part of a new radio discovery, was sent over to your department from the radio engineering division. Before it can be properly filed, a guard is overpowered and two offices ransacked to find this paper. Later in the night another attempt is made to enter your room and this morning there was an attempt to kidnap you. Looks to me like you’re in a key position, but I don’t know just what it is yet.”

“I’ll admit the attempt to get into my room last night and the trouble this morning have me worried,” said Bob. “I’m only a filing clerk so why such attention should be centered on me is a mystery.”

They walked out into the corridor.

“We’ll stop at the bureau of identification and see if we can learn anything about the fellows who tried to kidnap you,” said the federal agent.

They dropped down a floor and entered a long room where a number of clerks were working at filing cases.

Merritt Hughes walked up to a slender chap busy at a flat-topped desk.

“Look alive, Jimmy,” he said. “There’s business at hand.”

Jimmy Adel, chief of the filing division, looked up.

“Hello, sleuth. Who are you trailing this morning?”

“One red head and one fellow with a scar on his forehead.”

“Now isn’t that a lot of help! Don’t you know that there are a good many red heads and a whole lot of people with scars on their foreheads? Just be a little more exact, please.” But he grinned as he chided the federal agent.

“Jimmy, this is my nephew, Bob Houston. He’s detailed to help me on a new case that’s breaking pretty fast.”

“The radio case?”

“You hear about that?”

“Sure, it’s all over the department. Looks big to me. Adams working on it too?”

Merritt Hughes nodded.

“That means you’ll have to step fast. I hear that whoever solves this thing will be in line for an inspectorship.”

“Hope you’re right, Jimmy, because Bob and I are going to clear up this mystery. That is, if you’ll give us a little help. A couple of hoodlums tried to kidnap Bob a while ago. He can give you an accurate description of them and you may be able to pull their pictures out of the files.”

“We’ll find them for you if they’ve any record at all.” He pulled a blank form from a file and fired question after question at Bob on height, weight, color of eyes, and any possible peculiarities which they might have had. When he had finished both forms, he leaned back in his chair.

“I’d call that an almost perfect description of these chaps. If we don’t dig them out of the files, I’ll miss my bet. We’ll get something for you before midnight. Good luck.”

Bob and his uncle left the identification bureau and took an elevator down to the main floor. Bob’s hands still smarted from the scratches they had suffered from the barberry and he kept the handkerchiefs wrapped around them.

“I want to drop in at the police station and question the man caught last night,” said Merritt Hughes, “but we can stop at your apartment on our way down and give it the once-over. We might find something of interest in the hall.”

The federal agent flagged a taxi and they sped swiftly toward Bob’s apartment.

“Well, how does it feel to be a federal agent, even though you’re only a provisional one?” his uncle asked.

“I’m not quite used to it,” replied Bob, taking out the small leather case and extracting the card and badge which it contained.

He turned the badge over carefully in his fingers. His name was engraved on the back and behind this small emblem stood the mighty law enforcement machinery of Uncle Sam. Bob thrilled even though he was as yet a small and comparatively unimportant part of that great system, which was rapidly building up a worldwide reputation for “getting its man.”

Merritt Hughes settled back in the cushions.

“This is likely to be a rather long-drawn out case,” he said, “and from the way it’s started, it may be extremely dangerous. When it comes to that, I want you to step aside and let the regular agents take the chances. Do you understand, Bob?”

“But I’m not afraid of trouble,” insisted Bob.

“That isn’t it. When the pinches come we want men who have been tried under fire in there. You’ll be used as an inside man in the archives division and in that capacity you are going to be highly important. There must have been a leak somewhere, else how would it have been known that a part of the new radio development had been sent over for filing? It will be up to you to find where this information leaked before Tully Ross and Condon Adams learn it.”

The federal agent paused a moment, before continuing.

“After we find the leak in your department, we’ll have something to work back on. That should lead us to the man or the men who now have the papers that disappeared last night.”

“Won’t the man arrested last night be the key to that?” asked Bob.

“Perhaps, but I hardly believe so. Usually the boys who do the rough stuff in a case like this know little of what is really going on. But we’ll see him a little later. No use in letting anything slip.”

The cab slowed down in front of the apartment house and Bob’s uncle paid the taxi bill.

They walked up to the third floor and then back along the corridor to the door which opened into Bob’s room. The door was slightly ajar and Merritt Hughes was about to push it open when Bob seized his arm and put his finger on his lips. Then he pulled his uncle back several steps.

“That door was locked when I left,” he whispered. “Someone’s been in my room.”

Merritt Hughes looked startled.

“Sure?” he whispered.

“There’s no question about it,” replied Bob.

“Then keep back and let me go ahead.” It was a whispered command that Bob dared not disobey and he saw his uncle reach under his left arm and draw a revolver from a shoulder holster.

They stepped close to the wall and again advanced toward the door, treading silently on the heavy carpet of the corridor. There was no sound of anyone moving about inside the room, but Merritt Hughes did not believe in taking unnecessary chances.

After listening a moment at the door, he reached out with one foot and gave it a hard shove inward, at the same time leaping into the doorway, gun in hand and ready for action.

It was a breathless moment for Bob until he saw his uncle lower the weapon and nod to him.

“Come here and take a look at your room.”