His uneasiness was not decreased by a bit of unpremeditated eavesdropping that fell in his way the next evening....  Farley Curtis was talking, Sarah Pound was listening—­eagerly.

“You can’t understand what living is,” the man was saying, “How could you?  You haven’t lived.  Here in this backwater you will never live....  You move around in a fog of monotony.  Every day the same.  But out there....  Everything!  Everything you want and can imagine is there for the taking.  A beautiful woman can take what she wants—­that’s what it’s all for—­for her to help herself to.  Life and excitement and pleasure—­and love ... they are all out there waiting.”

Sarah sighed.

“Did you ever try to imagine Paris, London, Madrid, Rome?” he went on.  “You can’t do it....  But you can see them.  I—­I would take you if you would let me ... if things fall out right.  I’m poor ...but with this Beatty money I could take you anywhere.  It would give us everything we want....  Half of that money belongs to me rightfully, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“But I may not get it.”

She was silent.

“There is a paper,” he said, “and that paper may stand between you and me—­and Paris and Rome and the world....”  He paused, and then said, carelessly:  “Won’t you go with me, Sarah—­away from this?  Won’t you let me take you, to love and to make happy?”

Presently she spoke, so low her voice was scarcely audible to
Scattergood.  “I don’t know....  I don’t know,” she said.

Scattergood had heard enough.  He stole away silently.  The time had come to act, if he were going to act ... if no woeful story were to be carried to old Nahum Pound concerning his daughter.  He might even be too late....  The lure of great cities and foreign shores might have done its work, and Farley Curtis’s eloquence have served its purpose.

In the morning Bob Allen was early at his office.  His first act was to open the safe to take out a packet of papers he had been laboring over the afternoon before....  The packet was not where he had placed it the night before.  He remembered distinctly how he had shoved it into a certain pigeonhole....  It was not there.  He found it in the compartment below....  Bob was not easily startled or frightened, so now he paused and took his memory to account.  No....  The fault was not with his memory.  He had done exactly as he remembered doing....  Somebody had opened that safe since he closed it; somebody had fingered its contents....  He caught his breath, not at the fear of loss, but in sudden terror of the means by which that loss had been brought about, the person who might have been the instrument....  Furiously he began going over the contents of the safe—­money, securities, papers.  Everything seemed intact.  But one thing remained—­the little drawer.  He had put off opening that, because he dreaded to open it, for it contained the paper that excluded Farley Curtis from a share in his uncle’s estate....  Bob compelled himself to turn the little key, to open the drawer....  It was empty!...