"I suppose so."
"But I may not get it."
She was silent.
"There is a paper," he said, "and that paper may stand between you and me—and Paris and Rome and the world...." He paused, and then said, carelessly: "Won't you go with me, Sarah—away from this? Won't you let me take you, to love and to make happy?"
Presently she spoke, so low her voice was scarcely audible to Scattergood. "I don't know.... I don't know," she said.
Scattergood had heard enough. He stole away silently. The time had come to act, if he were going to act ... if no woeful story were to be carried to old Nahum Pound concerning his daughter. He might even be too late.... The lure of great cities and foreign shores might have done its work, and Farley Curtis's eloquence have served its purpose.
In the morning Bob Allen was early at his office. His first act was to open the safe to take out a packet of papers he had been laboring over the afternoon before.... The packet was not where he had placed it the night before. He remembered distinctly how he had shoved it into a certain pigeonhole.... It was not there. He found it in the compartment below.... Bob was not easily startled or frightened, so now he paused and took his memory to account. No.... The fault was not with his memory. He had done exactly as he remembered doing.... Somebody had opened that safe since he closed it; somebody had fingered its contents.... He caught his breath, not at the fear of loss, but in sudden terror of the means by which that loss had been brought about, the person who might have been the instrument.... Furiously he began going over the contents of the safe—money, securities, papers. Everything seemed intact. But one thing remained—the little drawer. He had put off opening that, because he dreaded to open it, for it contained the paper that excluded Farley Curtis from a share in his uncle's estate.... Bob compelled himself to turn the little key, to open the drawer.... It was empty!...
Bob walked slowly to his desk and sat down, his eyes fixed upon the safe as if it fascinated him.... Facts, facts! His soul demanded facts. Those at hand were few, simple. First, the safe had been opened by some one who knew the combination. Three persons existed who might have opened it—or betrayed its combination: Scattergood, himself, Sarah Pound.... Second, he knew he had not opened it nor betrayed the combination. Third, he was equally certain Scattergood had not done so.... Fourth—he groaned!...
Bob comprehended what had happened; why Farley Curtis had wooed so persistently Sarah Pound. It was not out of love nor desire, but for a more sordid purpose ... it was to win her love, to blind her to honor, to make a tool of her, and through her to secure possession of that bit of paper which stood between him and riches.
Presently Sarah Pound entered. Bob could not force himself to look at her; did not speak. She gazed at him curiously, and when she saw the grayness of his face, the lines about his mouth, and eyes that advanced his age by twenty years, she felt a little catch at her heart, a breathlessness, a sudden alarm.