“Things are going to move fast from now on,” predicted the lieutenant. “By the way, Bob, aren’t you a little young to be a federal agent?”
“I’m not a full-fledged agent,” explained Bob. “When my uncle was assigned to this case and it looked like some valuable information might be gained by an inside man in our office, I was delegated to help him and given papers as a provisional agent. If I make good on this case I may get into the service permanently, even though I’m a little young.”
“I think you’re going in with a rush and I know you’re going to make good even though Edgar gave you a pretty short time when he said you’d have the case solved within twenty-four hours.”
“That’s what scares me,” confessed Bob, “but I’ve got to find my uncle. Once he’s safe I’ll start worrying about the radio secret.”
“When you find him you’ll recover the radio secret,” predicted the intelligence officer.
Fifteen minutes of fast driving in a taxi took them to the apartment where Arthur Jacobs resided.
The building superintendent, curious and somewhat worried over Bob’s telephoned orders, was waiting at the door to meet them.
Bob identified himself and the superintendent admitted them to the building, taking them into the basement where an incinerator bulked in the background. Beside it were a number of bales of paper.
“We’ve been baling and selling the waste paper,” he explained, “but I can’t tell you in what bale the paper from the fourth floor, where Jacobs lives, can be found. It’s a good thing you phoned. We were going to have this trucked out sometime during the day.”
Bob looked at the bales and a feeling of dismay crept into his heart. All he wanted was one envelope—a small slip of paper—yet there were literally hundreds of pieces of paper in each one of the bales. He turned to Lieutenant Gibbons. The intelligence officer grinned.