She nodded.  “I can understand that.”

“If we could get proof positive it would be no trick at all to raise the country.”

“What sort of proof?”

“Well, I mentioned a list.  I don’t doubt his head man—­Ramon, I suppose, the one he’d trust with carrying out such a job—­must have a list of some sort.  He wouldn’t trust to memory.”

“And he wouldn’t trust it to Ramon until after he was dead!” said the girl with sudden intuition.  “If it exists we’ll find it here.”

She started toward the paper-stuffed desk, but I stopped her.

“More likely the safe,” said I.

Tim, who was standing near it, tried the handle.

“It’s locked,” he whispered.

I fell on my knees and began to fiddle with the dial, of course in vain.  Miss Emory, with more practical decision of character, began to run through the innumerable bundles and loose papers in the desk, tossing them aside as they proved unimportant or not germane to the issue.  I had not the slightest knowledge of the constructions of safes but whirled the knob hopelessly in one direction or another trying to listen for clicks, as somewhere I had read was the thing to do.  As may be imagined, I arrived nowhere.  Nor did the girl.  We looked at each other in chagrin at last.

“There is nothing here but ranch bills and accounts and business letters,” she confessed.

I merely shook my head.

At this moment Brower, whom I had supposed to be sound asleep, opened his eyes.

“Want that safe open?” he asked, drowsily.

He arose, stretched, and took his place beside me on the floor.  His head cocked one side, he slowly turned the dials with the tips of fingers I for the first time noticed were long and slim and sensitive.  Twice after extended, delicate manipulations he whirled the knob impatiently and took a fresh start.  On the proverbial third trial he turned the handle and the door swung open.  He arose rather stiffly from his knees, resumed his place in the armchair, and again closed his eyes.

It was a small safe, with few pigeon holes.  A number of blue-covered contracts took small time for examination.  There were the usual number of mine certificates not valuable enough for a safe deposit, some confidential memoranda and accounts having to do with the ranch.

“Ah, here is something!” I breathed to the eager audience over my shoulder.  I held in my hands a heavy manila envelope, sealed, inscribed “Ramon. (To be destroyed unopened.)”

“Evidently we were right:  Ramon has the combination and is to be executor,” I commented.

I tore open the envelope and extracted from it another of the blue-covered documents.

“It’s a copy, unsigned, of that last agreement with your father,” I said, after a disappointed glance.  “It’s worth keeping,” and I thrust it inside my shirt.