Sandy lifted his shoulders in a gesture of impatience.
“I’m afraid you’d make a poor detective. You’re too honest, too cautious.” He paused, looked up and grinned. “Can you picture a case-hardened police officer or the average sleuth passing up such an opportunity? Candidly now?”
Dick was forced to admit that his chum was right. “I’ll grant you,” he smiled, “that no one, working on a case like this, ought to have trouble with his conscience.”
“No, he shouldn’t. As long as we are in the business, we might as well conduct ourselves like real detectives.”
“All right, you can have your way this time. We’ll follow Frischette. We’ll even pry open the box if you say so.”
A shadow flickered across Sandy’s forehead.
“But supposing the box is locked. There’s a possibility that hadn’t occurred to me. We’d be in a difficult position, wouldn’t we, if we broke it open and found that there was nothing there to incriminate him? Frischette would see that the box had been tampered with. He’d guess that one of us, you, Toma or I, had opened it, or possibly he might suspect Fontaine or Le Sueur.”
“If the box is locked,” reasoned Dick, “there is a key to open it.”
“Yes—and he probably carries it around his neck. Fine chance we’d have getting it from him.”
Their whispered conversation was interrupted at this juncture by the creak of a door opening, and the sound of footsteps along the floor. Startled, the boys looked up, just as Frischette came into the room where they were, the box under his arm. He had come sooner than they had expected. Again the boys noticed his strange behaviour. Some sudden impulse induced Dick to accost him.