"Anybody but an idiot like Dyckman would have found out long ago if those papers were burned in Gordon's safe," snapped Vincent, when the danger had been duly weighed and measured.
"Anybody but Dyckman would have burned them himself, you'd think. It was criminally careless in him not to do so."
"They are the key to the lock," summed up the younger man. "We've got to have them."
"You needn't try to squeeze comfort out of that. I tell you, they went through the fire all right, and Tom has them."
"I am afraid you are right, Vincent; afraid, also, that Dyckman so far forgot himself as to set fire to Gordon's office in the hope of retrieving his own neglect. But how are we to regain them?" Mr. Farley's weapons were two, only: first persuasion, and when that failed, corruption.
Vincent's cold blue eyes were darkening. The little virtues interpose but a slight barrier to a sharp attack of the large vices.
"The fight has fallen into halves," he said briefly. "You go on with your part as if nothing had happened, and I'll do mine. Has the old iron-melter been taken in on it, do you think?"
"That's better. Are you going up the mountain to-night?"
"Yes, I had thought of it. Eva wants me to take her."
"All right; you go, and get Major Dabney to yourself for a quiet half-hour. Tell him we are all ready to close the deal, and we're only waiting on the Gordons. I'll be up to dinner, and if anybody asks for me later, let it be understood that I have gone to my room to write letters."
This bomb-hurling of Dyckman's occurred on the Wednesday. That night, between the hours of nine and eleven, the new steel safe in Tom Gordon's private office was broken open and ransacked, though nothing was taken. On Thursday afternoon, while Martha Gordon was over at Deer Trace training the new growth on Ardea's roses, Tom's room at Woodlawn was thoroughly and systematically pillaged: drawers were pulled out and emptied on the floor, the closets were stripped of their contents, and even the bed mattresses were ripped open and destroyed.
Mrs. Martha was terrified, as so bold a daylight housebreaking gave her a right to be; and Caleb was for sending to the county workhouse for the bloodhounds. But Tom was apparently unmoved.