But he did nothing of the kind, and for what he considered a very good reason.  The wind was blowing in eddying gusts, of the kind that seizes and whirls things; such a gust swooped into the room when he opened the door, seized upon some papers which lay on her writing desk, and sent them clear across the room.

Starr hastily closed the door and rescued the papers where they had flattened against the wall; and he wished he had gone blind before he saw what they were.  A glance was all he gave, at first—­the involuntary glance which one gives to a bit of writing picked up in an odd place—­but that was enough to chill his blood with the shock of damning enlightenment.  A page of writing, it was, fine, symmetrical, hard to decipher—­a page of Holly Sommers’ manuscript; you know that, of course.

But Starr did not know.  He only knew the writing matched the pages of revolutionary stuff he had found in the office of Las Nuevas. There was no need of comparing the two; the writing was unmistakable.  And he believed that Helen May was the writer.  He believed it when he glanced up and saw her coming in from the kitchen, and saw her eyes go to what he had in his hand, and saw the start she gave before she hurried to take the paper away.

“My gracious!  My work—­” she said agitatedly, when she had the papers in her hand.  She went to her desk, looking perturbed, and gave a quick, seeking glance at the scattered papers there; then at Starr.

“Did any more—?”

“That’s all,” Starr said gravely.  “It was the wind when I opened the door, caught them.”

“My own carelessness.  I don’t know why I left my desk open,” she said.  And while he stood looking at her, she pulled down the roll-top with a slam, still visibly perturbed.

It was strange, he thought, that she should have a roll-top desk out here, anyway.  He had seen it the other time he was at the house, and it had struck him then as queer, though he had not given it more than a passing thought.

As a matter of fact, it was not queer.  Johnny Calvert had dilated on the destructiveness of rats, “pack rats” he called them.  They would chew paper all to bits, he said.  So Helen May, being finicky about having her papers chewed, had brought along this mouse-proof desk with her other furniture from Los Angeles.

Her perturbed manner, too, was the result of a finicky distaste for having any disorder in her papers, especially when it was work intrusted to her professionally.  She never talked about the work she did for people, and she always kept it away from the eyes of those not concerned in it.  That, she considered, was professional etiquette.  She had strained a point when she had read a little of the manuscript to Vic.  Vic was just a kid, and he was her brother, and he wouldn’t understand what she read any more than would the horned toad down by the spring.  But Starr was different, and she felt that she had been terribly careless and unprofessional, leaving the manuscript where pages could blow around the room.  What if a page had blown outside and got lost!