"I wish you'd let me see those papers," said Dalton, in his authoritative voice, and soon the two were pouring over a small book, written full; a document or two on parchment; a badge, in which the letters and the twisted serpents were wrought out of gun-metal into a cheap-looking pin; and several letters. Neither said much as they passed these from hand to hand, Dalton fully recognizing the right of his workman to know the full contents of what had been left in his care; the other never questioning the manager's interest and concern in all matters pertaining to his employees. As Dalton rose to go, he said:
"My boy, you fully understand the importance of keeping this to yourself, till we need it in evidence?"
"Yes, sir; I do."
"Well, I know you are to be trusted. Put them in some safe place, under lock and key, and wait till I give you the word. Good-night."
He went out the back way, though the crowd was mostly dispersed now, and, as he gained the street, glanced over toward the park. At its other end a light still gleamed in an upper window of the pretty house, and he hoped it was Joyce's window, for he was in that romantic stage, never fully explained by the psychologists, where every inanimate thing becomes interesting just in proportion to the nearness of its connection with one person—oftentimes a very ordinary young person to outsiders.
It was decidedly out of his way, but he plunged into the park shadows, and hastened through it, then stood in the narrow street which separated its broad end from Joyce's confines, and gazed up at the light.
His devotion ought to have been rewarded—perhaps it was.
Presently the glow fell off into a glimmer, but, as he was turning away, another sprang into brightness below. This he knew to be the library, and it gave him an idea which he was quick to act upon. He took a sprinter's pace for home, and, as soon as he arrived there, made straight for the telephone, where he called up Miss Lavillotte. In a moment her gentle "Hello!" came softly to his ears, and his face took on the look of a satisfied idiot, or possibly an inspired poet seeking for a rhyme; the eyes upturned and the mouth open.
"Do you know who is talking?" he asked.
"Yes; Mr. Dalton."