"You—you blithering idiot!"
"Easy, brother. Keep your shirt on, see!" advised the Brady operative with justifiable resentment. "There aint nothin' been taken out o' that there grip while I was watchin' it, that's a cinch. Say, 'bo, what was in it, anyways?"
Alderson caught Nickleby's eye and shook his head in warning. Nickleby stepped across the room, opened the satchel and flung out upon the table a package of blank brown wrapping paper, cut to the size of bank-notes and fastened together with rubber bands. He pointed his finger at it contemptuously.
"Instead of the legal papers which were in that satchel when it left this office, there's what we found when Ferguson and I opened it. Now, explain that, will you? No, wait! 'Phone your chief to come over here himself at once; I think he'd better hear what you have to say. What's your name?"
"McCorquodale. An' I takes no lip from nobody, see!"
While the man was at the telephone Jimmy Stiles knocked on the door to report that he had delivered the satchel safely to its destination. It was an amazed youth who was yanked unceremoniously into the room by the coat-collar while the irate Nickleby blazed forth anew. He took hold of the bookkeeper's shoulders and was shaking the frightened young man in speechless fury when Podmore came in.
"Here, here, leave him alone!" he commanded sharply as he stepped between them. "What crazy nonsense is this, J. C.?"
No fuss or fury about Hugh Podmore in time of stress. It was Podmore's way to turn calm and cold and calculating in proportion to the extent to which any given crisis disturbed him. The news which had reached him over the 'phone from the incoherent Alderson had been grave enough; but he was much the coolest of the three most vitally concerned in this mysterious miscarriage of carefully laid plans. The first thing he did was to have Alderson clear the outer office of stenographers and junior clerks. He suggested that Alderson dismiss them for the afternoon, and began at once to question the bookkeeper and the detective who had followed him. The two recitals agreed in every particular.
Podmore at once despatched the detective to the Union Station in Nickleby's car to find Clayton at all costs and arrest him if he would not come otherwise.
"Tell us all you know about this man, Jimmy. Take your time," advised
Podmore kindly. "No occasion to get scared stiff."