“It’s fairly plain. You’re responsible for the stores and can’t tell us what has become of a quantity of the goods.”
“Suppose I own up that my tally’s got mixed?”
“Then you’d show yourself unfit for your job; but that is not the worst. If you had made a mistake the bags wouldn’t vanish. You had the cement, it isn’t in the store and hasn’t reached us in the form of concrete. It must have gone somewhere.”
“Where do you reckon it went, if it wasn’t into the mixing shed?”
“To the Santa Brigida mole,” Dick answered quietly, and noting the man’s abrupt movement, went on: “What were you talking to Ramon Oliva about at the Hotel Magellan?”
The storekeeper did not reply, but the anger and confusion in his face were plain, and Dick turned to the others.
“I think we’ll send for Oliva,” said Stuyvesant. “Keep this fellow here until he comes.”
Oliva entered tranquilly, though his black eyes got very keen when he glanced at his sullen accomplice. He was picturesquely dressed, with a black silk sash round his waist and a big Mexican sombrero. Taking out a cigarette, he remarked that it was unusually hot.
“You are doing some work on the town mole,” Dick said to him. “Where did you get the cement?”
“I bought it,” Oliva answered, with a surprised look.