“I can tell better after I have examined them,” I returned.

“Will you give them back if I let you see them?”

“Yes.”

He handed the precious papers to me and then sat down.

Oh, how eagerly I grasped the envelope!  How much of importance it might contain for me!

There were three letters and four legal papers.  Like Nicholas Weaver’s statement, all were badly written, and I had a hard job to decipher even a portion of the manuscript.

Yet I made out enough to learn that Aaron Woodward was the forger of the notes and checks that had sent my father to prison, and that the death of a relative in Chicago was only a pretence.  The work had been done in Brooklyn through that branch of Holland & Mack’s establishment.  Chris Holtzmann had helped in the scheme, and John Stumpy had presented one of the checks, for which service he had received six hundred dollars.  This much was clear to me.  But two other points still remained dark.

One was of a certain Ferguson connected with the scheme, who seemed to be intimate with my father.  He was probably the man my father had mentioned when we had visited him at the prison.  His connection with the affair was far from clear.

The other dark point in the case was concerning Agatha Mitts, of 648 Vannack Avenue, Brooklyn.  She was a boarding-mistress, and the three or four men had stopped at her house.  But how much she knew of their doings I could not tell.

“Well, what do you think?” muttered Sammy Simpson.  “Mighty important, I’ll be bound.”

“Not so very important,” I returned, as coolly as I could.  “They will be if I can get hold of other papers to use with them.”

“Exactly, sir; just as I always said.  Well, you can get them easily enough, no doubt.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said doubtfully.

“No trouble at all.  Come, what will you give?”

“Five dollars.”

“Ha! ha!  They’re worth a million.”  He blinked hard at me.  “Say, you’re a friend of mine, a good boy.  Meg, shall I give them to him?”

“You ought to do what’s right, Sam,” replied his wife, severely.

“So I ought.  You’re a good woman; big improvement on a chap like me.  Say, young man, give my lady ten dollars, keep the papers, and clear out.  I’m drunk, and when Sammy Simpson’s drunk he’s a fool.”

I handed over the money without a word.  Perhaps I was taking advantage of the man’s present state, but I considered I was doing things for the best.

A minute later, with the precious papers in my pocket, I left.

CHAPTER XXX

 The train for new York

Down in the street I hesitated as to where to go next.  I felt that the case on hand was getting too complicated for me, and that I needed assistance.

I did not relish calling on the police for help.  They were probably on the watch for me, and even if not, they would deem me only a boy, and give me scant attention.