Gantry wagged his head dubiously.  “I’m not the big boss, but I can tell you right now that, if you could have shown me what I was fully expecting to see, the wires between here and wherever Mr. McVickar’s private car happens to be would have been kept pretty hot for a while.”  Then, upon second thought:  “Yes; I guess you could have pulled it off.  We couldn’t stand for any such bill-boarding as you were threatening to give us.”

Blount turned to his desk, opened it, and began to arrange his papers.

“You’ve been a good friend, after all, Dick,” he said, talking as he worked.  “I’m going to ask you to go one step farther and take charge of the funeral, if you will.  Find Mr. McVickar and wire him that I’ve dropped out.  I’ll write him a resignation from somewhere, when I have time.”

Gantry left his chair and came to stand beside the quitter.

“Honestly, Evan,” he said slowly, “I thought you were a grown man.  You’ll forgive the mistake, won’t you?”

Blount turned upon his tormentor and swore pathetically.  “What’s the use—­what in the devil is the use?” he rasped, when the outburst began to grow measurably articulate.  “You know as well as I do what’s been done to me, and who has done it.  Can I lift my hand to strike back, even if I had a weapon to strike with?”

“Perhaps you can’t.  But you owe it to yourself, and to a certain bright-minded young woman that I know of, not to fly off the handle without at least trying to see if you can’t stay on.  Wait a minute.”  The railroad man took a turn up and down the floor, head down and hands behind him.  When he came back to the desk end he began again.  “Evan, who’s got those original papers?”

“The man who blew up my safe, of course.  You’ve said you didn’t hire him, and that leaves only one alternative.”

Gantry took the dummy packet from his pocket and held one of the blank sheets up to the light of the window.  It was growing dusk, and when he failed to discern what he was looking for, he turned on the electric lights and tried again.  At this the script “T-C” water-mark was plainly visible, and he showed it to Blount.

“That proves conclusively that the substitution was made here in your own office.  Whom do you suspect?”

In a flash Blount remembered:  how he had sent Collins to get the packet out of the safe, the stenographer’s delay, the hasty sealing of the envelope, and the suspicion which had been cut short by the incoming of Ackerton.

“I know now who did it, and when it was done,” he said.  “The day before the office was broken into I told Collins to bring me the papers from the safe.  What he brought me was that dummy—­in a freshly sealed envelope.  I was going to open the envelope, but just then Ackerton came in.”

“All clear so far,” said Gantry; and then:  “Where is Collins now?”

“I don’t know; he comes and goes pretty much as he pleases when I’m not in town.”