been putting up a practical joke on you.”
“You did not send me a note round this morning, then?” Laverick insisted.
“I’ll swear I didn’t,” came the reply. “Do you seriously mean that you’ve had one purporting to come from me?”
Laverick pulled himself together.
“Well, the signature’s such a scrawl,” he said, “that no one could tell what the name really was. I guessed at you but I seem to have guessed wrong. Good-bye!”
He set down the receiver and rang off to escape further questioning. Now indeed the plot was commencing to thicken. This was a deliberate effort on the part of some one to secure his absence from his offices at a quarter to one.
With the document in his pocket and the safe securely locked, Laverick felt at ease as to the result of any attempted burglary of his premises. At the same time his curiosity was excited. Here, perhaps, was a chance of finding some clue to this impenetrable mystery.
There were thee clerks in the outer office. He put on his hat and despatched two of them on errands in different directions. The last he was obliged to take into his confidence.
“Halsey,” he said, “I am going out to lunch. At least, I wish it to be thought that I am going out to lunch. As a matter of fact, I shall return in about ten minutes by the back way. I do not wish you, however, to know this. I want you to have it in your mind that I have gone to lunch and shall not be back until a quarter past two. If there are visitors for me—Inquirers of any sort—act exactly as you would have done if you really believed that I was not in the building.”
Halsey appeared a good deal mystified. Laverick took him even further into his confidence.
“To tell you the truth, Halsey,” he said, “I have just received a bogus letter from Mr. Henshaw, asking me to lunch with him. Some one was evidently anxious to get me out of my office for an hour or so. I want to find out for myself what this means, if possible. You understand?”
“I think so, sir,” the man replied doubtfully. “I am not to be aware that you have returned, then?”
“Certainly not,” Laverick answered. “Please be quite clear about that. If you hear any commotion in the office, you can come in, but do not send for the police unless I tell you to. I wish to look into this affair for myself.”
Halsey, who had started life as a lawyer’s clerk, and was distinctly formal in his ideas, was a little shocked.
“Would it not be better, sir,” he suggested, “for me to communicate with the police in the first case? If this should really turn out to be an attempt at burglary, it would surely be best to leave the matter to them.”
Laverick frowned.
“For certain reasons, Halsey, which I do not think it necessary to tell you, I have a strong desire to investigate this matter personally. Please do exactly as I say.”
He left the office and strolled up the street in the direction of the restaurant which he chiefly frequented. He reached it in a moment or two, but left it at once by another entrance. Within ten minutes he was back at his office.
“Has any one been, Halsey?”
“No one, sir,” the clerk answered.
“You will be so good,” Laverick continued, “as to forget that I have returned.”
He passed on quickly into his own room and made his way into the small closet where he kept his coat and washed his hands. He had scarcely been there a minute when he heard voices in the outside hall. The door of his office was opened.
“Mr. Laverick said nothing about an appointment at this hour,” he heard Halsey protest in a somewhat deprecating tone.
“He had, perhaps, forgotten,” was the answer, in a totally unfamiliar voice. “At any rate, I am not in a great hurry. The matter is of some importance, however, and I will wait for Mr. Laverick.”
The visitor was shown in. Laverick investigated his appearance through a crack in the door. He was a man of medium height, well-dressed, clean-shaven, and wore gold-rimmed spectacles. He made himself comfortable in Laverick’s easy-chair, and accepted the paper which Halsey offered him.
“I shall be quite glad of a rest,” he remarked genially. “I have been running about all the morning.”
“Mr. Laverick is never very long out for lunch, sir,” Halsey said. “I daresay he will not keep you more than a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes.”
The clerk withdrew and closed the door. The man in the chair waited for a moment. Then he laid down his newspaper and looked cautiously around the room. Satisfied apparently that he was alone, he rose to his feet and walked swiftly to Laverick’s writing-table. With fingers which seemed gifted with a lightning-like capacity for movement, he swung open the drawers, one by one, and turned over the papers. His eyes were everywhere. Every document seemed to be scanned and as rapidly discarded. At last he found something which interested him. He held it up and paused in his search. Laverick heard a little breath come though his teeth, and with a thrill he recognized the paper as one which he had torn from a memorandum tablet and upon which he had written down the address which Mademoiselle Idiale had given him. The man with the gold-rimmed glasses replaced the paper where he had found it. Evidently he had done with the writing-table. He moved swiftly over to the safe and stood there listening for a few seconds. Then from his pocket he drew a bunch of keys. To Laverick’s surprise, at the stranger’s first effort the great door of the safe swung open. He saw the man lean forward, saw his hand reappear almost directly with the pocket-book clenched in his fingers. Then he stood once more quite still, listening. Satisfied that no one was disturbed, he closed the door of the safe softly and moved once more to the writing-table. With marvelous swiftness the notes were laid upon the table, the pocket-book was turned upside down, the secret place disclosed—the secret place which was empty. It seemed to Laverick that from his hiding-place he could hear the little oath of disappointment which broke from the thin red lips. The man replaced the notes and, with the pocket-book in his hand, hesitated. Laverick, who thought that things had gone far enough, stepped lightly out from his hiding-place and stood between his unbidden visitor and the door.
“You had better put down that pocket-book,” he ordered quietly.
The man was upon him with a single spring, but Laverick, without the slightest hesitation, knocked him prone upon the floor, where he lay, for a moment, motionless. Then he slowly picked himself up. His spectacles were broken—he blinked as he stood there.
“Sorry to be so rough,” Laverick said. “Perhaps if you will kindly realize that of the two I am much the stronger man, you will be so good as to sit in that chair and tell me the meaning of your intrusion.”
The man obeyed. He covered his eyes with his hand, for a moment, as though in pain.
“I imagine,” he said—and it seemed to Laverick that his voice had a slight foreign accent—“I imagine that the motive for my paying you this visit is fairly clear to you. People who have compromising possessions may always expect visits of this sort. You see, one runs so little risk.”
“So little risk!” Laverick repeated.
“Exactly,” the other answered. “Confess that you are not in the least inclined to ring your
