“Y’ went out?” he queried, when Craig had finished. “Why didn’t you leave the bonds in the hotel safe?”
“I should have,” groaned Craig wretchedly. “But no one knew I had them with me. Only the president of my firm and myself knew I had them. We thought that if I just went on up to New York quite casually, as if on an ordinary business trip, there’d be no suspicion of my having anything valuable with me. God! If I’d only known!”
“How long were you gone?” asked Jamison, fishing in his baggy pockets for tobacco and paper to roll another cigarette.
“I don’t know,” said Craig despairingly. “I finished my dinner, wrote a note, and went out to the street. I asked the way to the nearest mail box and dropped my letter in. Then I came back, came up to my room, and the bonds were gone! I’m ruined! I’ll be suspected of stealing them myself!”
Jamison yawned and rolled a cigarette with one hand, watching his own fingers with the absorbed attention of one who has but recently acquired the feat.
“Well,” he said in a moment, after licking the paper. “I guess we’ve got a job ahead of us. What train did you come in on?”
“I got in about four-thirty.”
“That’s number twenty-seven,” commented Jamison. “You came to the hotel right away?”
“Yes. I registered, washed up, had my dinner, and——”
“Bonds negotiable?” queried Jamison uninterestedly. “What issue and numbers?”