Robert Wade turned ashen pale as he read Hugh Worthington's carte blanche powers given under his own hand to the new vice-president.
"As I hold this, his power of attorney, and all his proxies, I presume that you recognize my authority," coldly remarked Ferris. "I will take charge of all here. I will be either here or at Parlor C, Fifth Avenue."
"When do you expect Worthington?" stammered the deposed manager. "I don't know," sharply said Ferris.
"For God's sake, consider my family, my business future, my reputation," cried Wade, with tears in his eyes.
"Pooh!" angrily rejoined Ferris. "Make that by-play on old Hugh. It's all lost on me!"
And, as the door closed, he sharply locked it, and, after examining the rooms to prevent any Peeping Tom observing his actions, Ferris sat down to study Clayton's telegraph book, and the messages which he had rifled from the dead man's desk.
"I am safe so far," muttered Ferris. "No one knows of my big secret deal. But from this fellow's dispatch to Hugh, he certainly intended to go out and see Edson at Bay Ridge. Now, did he start in good faith? I must set some good outside detectives at work on that.
"Then this dispatch to Alice, I wonder if she had still left a sneaking fondness for him! Who can read a woman's heart? It's like judging the depth of water by its smoothness: all mere conjecture. Half the women are liars, and the other half hide more than half the truth under their silken breastplates. They fight with double-edged lies as their keenest weapons.
"Unless Clayton was a very deep rascal, he certainly intended to go on West. Where the devil is he? Kidnapped, and held till the swag is safe? Dead? No!"
A guilty spasm of conscience suggested that the missing cashier might have secreted the funds and fled, to make private terms later from his hiding place, with the wary Hugh.
"He knew nothing, he suspected nothing of the Detroit land deal," finally decided Ferris. "It's just a case of plain, ordinary thief!"
The ambitious scoundrel had decided to conceal the finding of Clayton's dispatches and carbon-book from all the local officials of the company.
"Now to the practical," he muttered, as he spread out his girl wife's fateful telegram.