“I say it is bad, if you have.  Listen.  Before I left here, I found at a boardinghouse where he had boarded, and still owed a bill, a trunk which the landlord retained.  Opening it, I found some letters and papers to yours, with certain memoranda of his, which I thought ought to be in your possession.  As an alleged friend of his, I redeemed the trunk by paying the amount of his bill, and secured the more valuable papers.”

Gashwiler, whose face had grown apoplectically suffused as Wiles went on, at last gasped:  “But you got the trunk, and have the papers?”

“Unfortunately, no; and that’s why it’s bad.”

“But, good God! what have you done with them?”

“I’ve lost them somewhere on the Overland Road.”

Mr. Gashwiler sat for a few moments speechless, vacillating between a purple rage and a pallid fear.  Then he said hoarsely: 

“They are all blank forgeries,—­every one of them.”

“Oh, no!” said Wiles, smiling blandly on his dexter side, and enjoying the whole scene malevolently with his sinister eye.  “Your papers are all genuine, and I won’t say are not all right, but unfortunately I had in the same bag some memoranda of my own for the use of my client, that, you understand, might be put to some bad use if found by a clever man.”

The two rascals looked at each other.  There is on the whole really very little “honor among thieves,”—­at least great ones,—­and the inferior rascal succumbed at the reflection of what he might do if he were in the other rascal’s place.  “See here, Wiles,” he said, relaxing his dignity with the perspiration that oozed from every pore, and made the collar of his shirt a mere limp rag.  “See here, we”—­this first use of the plural was equivalent to a confession—­“we must get them papers.”

“Of course,” said Wiles coolly, “if we can, and if Thatcher doesn’t get wind of them.”

“He cannot.”

“He was on the coach when I lost them, coming East.”

Mr. Gashwiler paled again.  In the emergency he had recourse to the sideboard and a bottle, forgetting Wiles.  Ten minutes before Wiles would have remained seated; but it is recorded that he rose, took the bottle from the gifted Gashwiler’s fingers, helped himself first, and then sat down.

“Yes, but, my boy,” said Gashwiler, now rapidly changing situations with the cooler Wiles; “yes, but, old fellow,” he added, poking Wiles with a fat forefinger, “don’t you see the whole thing will be up before he gets here?”

“Yes,” said Wiles gloomily, “but those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time.  They never need hurry; all things wait for them.  Why, don’t you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them d—­n fellows turns up from San Francisco or Australia, having taken his own time to get here,—­gets here about half an hour after the President had signed the patent and sent it over to the office, finds the right man to introduce him to the President, has a talk with him, makes him sign an order countermanding its issuance, and undoes all that has been done in six years in one hour.”