He stood up and pointed at Adams.
“Get out! Get out! Leave Bob here I’ll talk to him; I can trust him!”
Condon Adams half rose in utter surprise at the force of Jacobs’ words. Then he dropped back into his chair and a look of sullen resentment swept over his face.
“You’ll tell me, or no one,” he growled.
But from the back of the room, where he had stepped in unnoticed, Waldo Edgar spoke quietly.
“Let Jacobs talk in his own way,” he ruled. “The rest of us will step out while Bob talks with him.”
The legs of the chair in which Tully Ross had been leaning back against the wall struck the floor with a thud and Tully started to protest, but his uncle, realizing the futility, waved him into silence.
Lieutenant Gibbons grinned at Bob as the others left the room. He was the last to step out and he closed the door carefully behind him.
When they were alone a tremendous burden seemed to lift from the shoulders of the filing chief.
“I’ve got to talk,” he told Bob, in a voice so low that it would have been impossible for anyone at the door to hear. “But I had to talk with someone I could trust.”