“Who is this Hank the Bluffer?” questioned Dick, curiously.

“Oh, he’s an old one at this sort of game,” returned one of the detectives.  “He is a wonder at opening safes.  Somebody told me once that he made the assertion he could open any ordinary office safe inside of fifteen minutes.  He’s got it all in his finger ends.  They are so sensitive that when he turns the safe knob, he can feel every movement of the tumblers inside.”

“And he is at liberty now?” asked Sam.

“He was the last I heard of him.  He got out of a Massachusetts prison about three months ago.  Somebody told me he was in New York.  I haven’t seen him, but if he is here I think we can round him up sooner or later.”

“Well, what we want are those bonds,” declared Dick.

“Oh, sure!  That’s what we’ll go after,” declared the detective.  “Even if we locate our man, we won’t arrest him until we can get him with the goods.”

Following this conversation, the detectives made a memorandum of all the bonds that had been taken, along with the numbers thereon.

“If the thief is an old one at the game, it’s not likely that he’ll try to use those registered bonds,” said one of the detectives, “but he’ll find plenty of places where he can use the others, if he knows the game.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you on one point,” said Dick.  “And that is that no ordinary person could have worked the combination of that safe.  It must have been some professional.”

“You are right, Mr. Rover—­ unless somebody got the figures of the combination on the sly,” answered the sleuth; and a few minutes later he and his fellow-officer left, promising to make a report as soon as anything worth while was brought to light.

Having gotten rid of the detectives and also of the janitor and his family, the Rover boys shut themselves in the inner office to discuss the situation.  They had requested the authorities to keep the whole matter quiet for the present, and this the detectives had agreed to do.

“Now, first of all, Dick, tell us:  Will this loss affect any of our other investments?” asked Tom.

“Not for the present, Tom, but how we shall stand later on if the securities are not recovered, I am not prepared to say.”  Dick’s face clouded.  “You see, it is this way:  We have our investments in the West as well as those we went into in Boston some time ago.  We—­ that is, dad—­ was going to take a loan on that mining proposition.  That would involve our putting up some of those bonds—­ say forty or fifty thousand dollars’ worth—­ as collateral security with the banks.  Now, if we don’t get the bonds back, dad will either have to cancel that loan or, otherwise, put up something else as security—­ and what else we can put up just now, I don’t know.  It’s a bad state of affairs.”

“Oh, we’ve just got to get those bonds back!” cried Sam, impulsively.  “We’ve just got to!”