Tully seemed satisfied and his anger subsided when Jacobs once more told him to go to his desk and start work.
Bob glanced at the other clerks in the room. All of them had been covertly watching the entire proceedings. Bob felt that they were all trustworthy, but he felt better in knowing that they were not aware that he was a federal agent. Such knowledge might have spoiled any later efforts of his to gain information from them.
Chapter XIX
THE MISSING PAPER
★
The affairs of the filing office gradually returned to routine with Bob and Tully once more at their desks. There was a tremendous amount of work to be done, for hundreds upon hundreds of papers had been removed from their usual places in the mêlée of the night before. Bob realized that it would take days for them all to be restored to their places and he rather hoped, as he contemplated the long and tedious task, that his uncle would have work for him to do that would take him outside the office.
As the afternoon waned Bob tried to analyze the character of the other clerks in the office. He had known them casually for more than a year now, but until this time he had never really tried to probe into their inner characters.
It was a task that he was particularly well fitted to do, for he had a rare gift of discernment of character and anything untrue in another usually sounded an alarm bell in Bob’s mind.
One by one he checked them off his list of possible suspects in connection with the disappearance of the radio paper. Could one of them have tipped off anyone outside? It was an unpleasant possibility, but Bob knew that in his new work he would be up against many unpleasant things.
The list narrowed down until Bob’s eyes rested on Tully’s broad shoulders. The other was hunched over his desk, apparently gazing through a nearby window and certainly not much concerned with the work on the desk in front of him.
Was Tully linked up with the mystery? Could he have been the one inside who had learned of the arrival of the precious paper and given the information to someone outside?
Bob didn’t want to believe that, yet he had checked all of the others off his list. His eyes rested on Arthur Jacobs, the filing chief. Could it have been Jacobs? It was possible, but Bob scouted serious consideration of the thought, for Jacobs’ heart was too much in his work and his pride was too great for such a deed.