“Has it ever occurred to you,” Ned replied, “that your father acted rather strangely on the night he was attacked in his house—the night your emerald necklace was stolen and the office building searched?”
“I have never thought of his attitude as remarkable,” replied Frank, “but, come to think the matter over from this distance, it does seem that he did act queerly when asked to reveal the nature of the information he had received. Lieutenant Gordon was angry with him.”
“Yes; the lieutenant believed that the papers would help him a lot if he could get hold of them. He still thinks so.”
“I understand that he still, in his mind, accuses father of disloyalty to his country,” said Frank.
“It seems to me,” Ned continued, “that one of two propositions is true. Either the papers would be useless in revealing the plot, or they deal with a situation which your father believes himself capable of handling alone.”
“I wonder what he will think when he gets the cable Lieutenant Gordon took up to Panama for me?” asked Frank.
“What did you say in the message?”
“I told him to keep an army of men in the basement of the newspaper building—to look out for bombs all over the structure.”
“I am glad you were able to warn him,” Ned said, “but I can’t help believing that he knew something of the peril he was in before we left New York. He was altogether too quiet that night when his house and his office were searched. He appeared to me to be planning a revenge both effective and secret.”
“And he never made a row about Pedro leaving him,” Frank said. “Why, he used to think Pedro was the whole works.”