Ruth at once flung herself down on a couch without removing her clothing. In a few minutes she was fast asleep, for she believed their difficulties were over. Bab did not feel as secure. She was still thinking of the speech the newspaper girl had made to her in the car.
At ten o'clock the Assistant Secretary of State, who was sitting alone in his study, heard a violent ringing of his telephone bell. He did not know that, at this same instant, his daughter Harriet had crept down to his study door intending to make a full confession of her mistakes to him.
Mr. Hamlin picked up the receiver. "'The Washington News?' Yes. You have something important to say to me? Well, what is it?" Mr. Hamlin listened quietly for a little while. Then Harriet heard him cry in a hoarse, unnatural voice: "Impossible! The thing is preposterous! Where did you ever get hold of such an absurd idea?"
Harriet stopped to listen no longer. She never knew how she got back upstairs to her room. She half staggered, half fell up the steps. Suddenly she realized everything! She had been used as a tool by Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon. Ruth and Barbara had been right. She had stolen her father's state papers. A newspaper had gotten hold of the story and already her father and she were disgraced.
In the meantime, Mr. Hamlin continued to talk over the telephone, though his hand shook so he was hardly able to hold the receiver.
"You say you think it best to warn me that the story of the theft of my papers will be published in the morning paper, that you know that private state documents entrusted to me keeping have been sold to secret spies? What evidence have you? I have missed no such papers. Wait a minute." Mr. Hamlin went to his strong box. Sure enough, certain documents were missing. Ruth and Bab had put the papers in the desk. "Have you an idea who stole my papers?" Mr. Hamlin called back over the telephone wire, his voice shaken with passion.
Evidently the editor who was talking to Mr. Hamlin now lost his courage. He did not dare to tell Mr. Hamlin that his own daughter was suspected of having sold her father's papers. Mr. Hamlin repeated the editor's exact words. "You say a young woman sold my papers? You are right; this is not a matter to be discussed over the telephone. Send some one up from your office to see me at once."
Mr. Hamlin reeled over to his bell-rope and gave it a pull, so that the noise of its ringing sounded like an alarm through the quiet house.
A frightened servant answered the bell.
"Tell Miss Thurston and my niece, Miss Stuart, to come to my study at once," Mr. Hamlin ordered. The man-servant obeyed.