“And now let's have some of that old Scotch. I feel a little weak.”
We loitered into the next apartment—the dining-room. We turned our footsteps toward the sideboard. We stopped—both of us—as if transformed to stone.
The door was off the silver-safe. The drawers lay about the floor. And the little safe itself was as empty as the day it left the cabinet-maker!
“D-d-d'you see it, too?” cried Hawkins in a scared, husky voice.
“Yes,” I replied, stooping to look into the safe. “It must have been a sneak-thief, Hawkins. Every vestige of your beautiful service is gone!”
The inventor glared long at the wreck.
“And now that's got to be explained,” he muttered at last, continuing his journey to the sideboard. “How can I get around it?”
He poured out a generous dose of the Scotch, imbibed it at a swallow, and shuffled drearily back to the library, where he dropped once more into a chair and stared through fast-swelling eyes at the glazed tile fire-place.
And I? Well, just then I heard Mrs. Hawkins' step on the vestibule flooring without; she had returned for the minutes of the last meeting.
The bell rang. I walked quickly upstairs to call up the police and notify them. It wasn't my place to answer that bell, with William in the house.