“Gee whiz! That doll-faced girl! She don’t look capable of stealing a feather from a peacock’s tail.”
“That’s too true for a joke, Patsy,” said Chick, a bit dryly. “Are you really sure of it, Nick?”
“Dead sure, Chick, and then some.”
“By Jove, it seems almost incredible.”
“Let me explain,” said Nick. “I found on the highly polished face of one of the small interior drawers in Waldmere’s desk numerous dainty finger prints.”
“H’m, is that so?”
“I might not have been so quick to suspect, however, if I had found the same on the adjoining small drawers, also. But they were only on one. It was the one to which Waldmere reached when I asked him to let me see the inventory. I already felt sure it was in that drawer.”
“Ah, that explains it,” said Chick, smiling. “I wondered at what you were driving.”
“Gee! I was in on that, all right,” put in Patsy. “I couldn’t fathom it.”
“I suspected that they were the finger prints of the girl who sweeps and dusts the room,” Nick continued. “That would have given her an opportunity, or many of them, in fact, to stealthily examine the inventory, and even make a copy of it.”