“I see.”
“He took the plans with him in a leather portfolio. He spent most of the day with Captain Backas, returning alone to Washington in the early evening. He was met at the Union Station by two young women, one the only daughter of Senator Barclay, the other a Miss Verona Warren, an intimate friend of Miss Barclay, and with whom Garland is deeply in love. The girls knew he was to arrive from Annapolis at seven o’clock, and they met him with Senator Barclay’s touring car, driven by his chauffeur. They at once took Garland to his apartments, where they dropped him and returned home.”
“Garland, I infer, brought back the plans taken to Annapolis,” Nick observed.
“He put them in the portfolio before leaving the office in which he had talked with Captain Backas. Their conference had been strictly private. The portfolio did not leave Garland’s hands from that time until he entered his apartments in the Grayling, where he has a safe in which to lock them. He opened the portfolio to inclose a memorandum relating to the plans—and found them gone.”
“The plans?”
“Yes. The portfolio contained, instead, a quantity of blank paper resembling them in size and thickness.”
“I disagree with you,” said Nick, after listening with scarce a change of countenance. “You have made one wrong statement.”
“Namely?”
“You said the portfolio did not leave Garland’s hands after he had placed the plans in it,” said Nick. “It did leave them, Welden, or there could not have been a substitution of worthless paper for such tremendously important plans.[{6}]”
Chief Welden smiled and nodded.