“Perhaps Pelter and Japson had nothing at all to do with it,” thought Tom, as he reviewed the situation.  “It may have been some outsider, who watched Dick alter the combination of the safe.”

All of the boys were up early in the morning, and accompanied by Dora, obtained breakfast in the hotel dining-room.

“If you want me to go along, I shall be glad to do so,” said Dora, during the course of the meal.  It cut her to the heart to have Dick so troubled.

“No, Dora, you had better stay here, or else spend your time shopping,” answered Dick.  “We’ll have to take care of this matter ourselves.”

“I’ll tell you what you can do,” broke in Tom.  “You can write a nice letter to Aunt Martha, telling her that we have arrived safely, and that we are going into some business matters with Dick.  Of course, you needn’t say a word about the robbery.  It will be time enough to tell her and Uncle Randolph after we have tried all we can to get the bonds back—­ and failed.”

As my old readers will probably remember, the offices formerly occupied by Pelter, Japson & Company were located at the lower end of Wall Street.  The building was an old one, five stories in height, which had recently been put in repair.  The offices were on the fourth floor in the extreme rear, and had a fairly good outlook.

The Rovers found the office boy, Bob Marsh, already on hand, and doing some work which Dick had given him.  He was a bright, sharp-eyed lad, his only failing being that he was a bit forward.

“Any one here to see me, Bob?” asked Dick, as they entered.

“Nobody, sir, but an agent that wanted to sell you some kind of a new calendar.  I told him we had bushels of calendars already,” and the boy grinned slightly.

Passing through two small offices, the Rovers came to one in the rear—­ that which had formerly been used by Jesse Pelter.

“Looks a little bit familiar,” observed Tom.  “Looks like when I visited it as Roy A. Putnam, from Denver, Colorado, and thought about taking stock in the Irrigation Company,” and he laughed shortly as he recalled that incident, the particulars of which have been related in “The Rover Boys in New York.”

“You’ve got pretty big offices for only you and the office boy,” remarked Sam.

“I took them just as the old concern had them,” returned Dick.  “But if business increases, I guess we’ll have to have quite some office help.  Anyway, a bookkeeper and a stenographer.”

“Hadn’t you better send that office boy out for a little while?” suggested Sam.

“A good idea,” returned his oldest brother, and sent the lad on an errand up to the post-office.

Left to themselves, the Rovers once more went over the details of the robbery so far as they knew them.  Dick opened the safe, showing his brothers how the combination lock was worked; then the boys looked inside the strong-box, and into the private compartment which, so Dick told them, had contained the missing box of bonds.