"Are you not looking for some writing?"
"Aye, aye, Mac," was the quiet reply, the speaker's glance kindling shrewdly, "aye, aye, Mac, you are correct."
He pointed to a blotter lying on the desk.
"See there, Mac; my fingers are just itching to get hold of that writing; but I fear it's gone. Mac, you haven't the first idea of its importance."
The young man slowly shook his head. "I'm afraid not, sir," said he simply.
"Well, it's just this: if we had it, we would know who is—" The speaker dropped suddenly into a reverie, leaving the thought incomplete. He picked up the blotter and stared fixedly at it for a moment; laid it back again on the table, still watching it, and concluded in a preoccupied manner, "What a game! what a game! How near—and how far—to both these deaths!"
McCaleb caught his breath.
"You don't say!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "De Sanchez—"
The Captain merely nodded once.
The blotter all at once became an object of magnetic interest for the young man, and he bent over it and began studying its cryptic markings with puckered brow.