“Yes,” admitted his chum, “Dock’s a hard customer, but not so very smart when you come right down to it. He fell headlong into my trap, which is a very old one with lawyers who wish to coax a man to betray his guilt.”
“You mean about saying it was a paper that had been lost?” said Carl. “Yes, you fairly staggered him when you asked him how he knew that.”
“There’s no question about Dock’s being the guilty one,” asserted Tom. “He gave himself away the worst kind then. The only thing we have to do is to try and get the truth from him. Sooner or later it’s got to be found out.”
“Yes,” continued Carl, dejectedly, “but if he’s handed that paper over to Mr. Culpepper in the meantime, even if we could prove that Dock took it what good will that do? Once that paper is torn up, we could recover nothing.”
“But I’m sure he hasn’t made his bargain with old Amasa yet,” Tom ventured.
“Why do you believe that?” asked the other, eagerly.
“You heard what he said about the meanness of his employer, didn’t you?” was what Tom replied. “Well, it proves that although Dock sounded Mr. Culpepper about being in a position to give him the paper they haven’t arrived at any satisfactory conclusion.”
“You mean Dock wants more than Amasa is willing to pay, is that it, Tom?”
“It looks that way to me,” the other boy assented; “and that sort of deadlock may keep on indefinitely. You see, Dock is half afraid to carry the deal through, and will keep holding off. Perhaps he may even have put so high a price on his find, that every once in a while they’ll lock horns and call it a draw.”
“I hope you’ve hit on the right solution,” sighed Carl; “if it didn’t do anything else it would give us a chance to think up some other scheme for getting the truth out of Dock.”