“Don’t lie to me!” said Varrell, sternly. “What did he tell you to get in the closet?”
“Nothing.”
Varrell jerked open the closet door, ran his hand over the clothing hung on the hooks, gave the shoes on the floor a kick, and pulled down an empty pasteboard box from the shelf. Then he turned to Eddy.
“Look here, boy,” he said in a gentler tone, “Bosworth is a thief and a rascal, as you are perfectly well aware. You’d better tell what you know, and save your own skin while you can.”
“I haven’t anything to tell.”
Eddy’s lips were trembling, and his eyes promised tears, but his face still wore the expression of stubborn determination.
“The little fool!” groaned Varrell, turning away. “He’s too thoroughly terrorized to let anything out. And to think that we are so near the goal and can’t quite reach it! If only the villain had not moved his head when he did! Yellow book! I could have sworn he said ‘yellow book in the closet,’ but there’s no yellow book in the closet or anywhere else!”
He opened the closet door once more, and stumbled over one of the shoes he had contemptuously kicked a minute before. In a burst of irritation he stooped to pick up the shoe and throw it where it would trouble him no more. As he lifted it into plainer view, its color caught his eye and his arm paused in mid-air. “What a blunderer!” he ejaculated. “It was ‘boot,’ not ‘book’; how could I have made such an error!”
Eddy stood mute, staring with anxious, fascinated face, as the senior ran his hand into the shoe, turned it over, shook it, and threw it down. He stooped for the other, inverted it, and tapped it upon the floor; then rose and felt carefully inside, while he fixed his eyes on the trembling boy.
“There seems to be paper here,” he said slowly, “or at any rate something like it that is fitted close to the lining of the upper.” The next moment he had dropped the shoe, and was unfolding a small, square piece of paper. It was the check stolen from the office safe on the night of March seventh!