He had guessed truly, though the apartment in which they found themselves more closely resembled a business office. A roll-top desk, a swivel chair, filing cases and a solidly compact safe met their gaze; the rugs, the upholstered furniture and tall bookcases which completed the appointments formed merely an incongruous background.
“Unless you’re up in safe-blowing, which I doubt, I don’t see as this room is going to tell us anything!” Dennis remarked. “Them keys that you stuffed your pockets with will do no good.”
“Won’t they?” McCarty chuckled grimly and strode toward the nearest filing case. “Hold your light steady, Denny; fireproof this thing may be, but all the sections of it open with the one lock and I could pick it with a buttonhook!”
The lock confirmed his opinion by yielding to the third key tried, and the various sections filled with an orderly arrangement of ledgers and documents were at their disposal.
“Look at the fine, neat writing of him.” Dennis was rummaging in the topmost one. “What’s this? ’Tis a lot of typed stuff with his own notes on the margin and headed: ‘Report. Chris Porter, 1913-1920.’ He’s wrote under it: ‘Reasonable doubt. Pardon essential’; then, ‘Pardon granted, help needed.’”
“Give it to me!” McCarty demanded. “Are there any more like it? These ledgers have nothing in them but notes on charity cases.”
“Here’s another; something about a reformatory, and in his own writing: ‘Weak not vicious. Useful if right influence.’ It’s headed: ‘Danny Sayre, 17.’—This one is about that Jennie Malone—”
“Let me have them all!” McCarty interrupted. “Don’t you see what they are? The criminal records of all the hired help! Take the next section, after.”
A pause broken only by the rustling of papers ensued and then Dennis exclaimed in an awestruck whisper:
“Mac! Here’s a lot of notes about ways of killing, all mixed up with religion, and—and among ’em’s poison gas! Fluorine, hydrogen and H2F2—!”