“This will about kill him!”
Holman nodded. “And look here”—he struck the ledger near him with an angry fist—“I say, do you know anything about safes?”
“Not much.”
“Well, ours is the finest made. And the one make that is ‘safe.’ There probably aren’t a dozen artists that could pick it—all told, Sing Sing, Portland, Joliet—that could pick it in a week. Well, look here; this ledger was taken from the safe—I suppose one night a week or more ago—the page referring to the dock negotiation torn out—and so prettily you can’t see that it was ever in, except for the missing number—and the ledger returned to its place and the safe relocked without so much as a scratch being left to show how it was done.”
“No wonder we were outbid for the site—somebody knew our price!”
“Knew our price!”—he closed the ledger with a bang, and slapped it. “Why, damn it, man, somebody’s got us tied in a knot, and it’s being drawn tighter every day—every hour.”
“It’s beyond me, Holman!”
Holman rose and laid his hands on Tom Carruthers’ shoulders. “Mr. Carruthers, you don’t for one moment believe this awful—simply awful—sequence of disasters to be due to accident, do you? Sunken ships, docks burnt to the water’s edge, strikes on shore, mutinies afloat, and—and above all—the disappearance of Mr. Basil?”
“I don’t know what to believe—I simply don’t. What does it all mean, Holman? I say it looks like some curse, don’t you know, come home to roost!”
“You are in the confidence, quite outside of business, of Mr. Gregory,” the manager said, sitting down again heavily—“of Mr. Gregory and his family. I want to ask you a straight question.”