“Yes.”
“And you've made an enemy of him? That's bad.”
Mr. Gashwiler tried to look dignifiedly unconcerned; but something in his visitor's manner made him uneasy.
“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.”