"I'm glad to know you, Miss Hollister. I certainly am! My son has been telling me what you've done for us, and I think you're a great little girl! That was bully work you did, and I appreciate it. I was watching you out there in the office. You were as cool as a cucumber. You ought to be a detective. You found your men all right, did you?"
"Yes, sir," said Shirley, much abashed, and feeling the return of that foolish trembling in her limbs. "Yes, they are both out there, and the short one with the rings and the blue necktie is the one that did the talking."
"Exactly what I thought," drawled the father, with a keen twinkle in his kindly eyes. "I couldn't somehow trust that chap from the start. That's why I sent my son out to investigate. Well, now, will you just step into my private office, Miss Hollister, and take your seat by the typewriter as if you were my stenographer? You'll find paper there in the drawer, and you can just be writing—write anything, you choose, so it looks natural when the men come in. When we get to talking I'd like you to take down in shorthand all that is said by all of us. You're pretty good at that, I judge. Sid, will you phone for those officers now? I think it's about time for the curtain to rise." And he led the way into his own office.
Shirley sat down at the typewriter as she had been directed and began to write mechanically. Mr. Graham touched the bell on his desk, and told the office boy who answered to send in Mr. Kremnitz and his companion.
Shirley was so seated that she could get occasional glimpses of the men without being noticed, and she was especially interested in the twinkle that shone in the bright blue eyes of the elder Graham as he surveyed the men who thought he was their dupe. Her heart warmed to him. His kindly, merry face, his hearty, unconventional speech, all showed him to be a big, warm-hearted man without a bit of snobbishness about him.
The son came in, and talk began just as if the matter of the mine were going on. Mr. Kremnitz produced some papers which he evidently expected to be signed at once, and sat complacently answering questions; keen questions Shirley saw they were afterwards, and in the light of the revelation she had overheard in Mr. Barnard's office Kremnitz perjured himself hopelessly by his answers. Presently the office-boy announced the arrival of some one in the next room. Shirley had taken down minutely a great deal of valuable information which the Grahams had together drawn from their victim. She was surprised at the list of wealthy business men who were to have been involved in the scheme.
Then suddenly the quiet scene changed. The elder Graham gave a signal to his office-boy, which looked merely like waving him away, and the door was flung open, revealing four officers of the law, who stepped into the room without further word. Graham arose and faced his two startled callers, his hand firmly planted on the papers on his desk which he had been supposed to sign.
"Mr. Kremnitz," he said, and even in the midst of this serious business Shirley fancied there was a half-comic drawl to his words. He simply could not help letting his sense of humor come on top. "Mr. Kremnitz, it is not going to be possible for me to sign these papers this morning, as you expected. I do not feel satisfied that all things are as you have represented. In fact, I have the best evidence to the contrary. Officer, these are the gentlemen you have come to arrest," and he stepped back and waved his hand toward the two conspirators, who sat with startled eyes and blanched faces, appalled at the sudden developments where they had thought all was moving happily toward their desired end.
"Arrest! Who? On what charge?" flashed the little gaudy Kremnitz, angrily springing to his feet and making a dash toward the door, while his companion slid furtively toward the other end of the room, evidently hoping to gain young Graham's office before he was noticed. But two officers blocked their way and the handcuffs clanked in the hands of the other two policemen.
"Why, arrest you, my friend," said Graham senior, as if he rather enjoyed the little man's discomfiture. "And for trying to perpetrate the biggest swindle that has been attempted for ten years. I must say for you that you've worked hard, and done the trick rather neatly, but you made one unfortunate slip that saved all us poor rich men. It seems a pity that so much elaborate lying should have brought you two nothing but those bracelets you're wearing,—they don't seem to match well with your other jewels,—but that's the way things go in this world. Now, take them away, officer. I've no more time to waste on them this morning!" and he turned and walked over by Shirley's desk, while the curtain fell over the brief drama.