Patsy heard the door closed and the steps of the man within, and he still lingered and listened.
“Is it Goulard himself?” he questioned mentally. “Who else would be in his office? I must find a concealment from which I can watch the other door.”
Patsy found it under the rise of stairs to the third floor, a dusty corner from which he could see a portion of both corridors.
He had been waiting about ten minutes, when, much to his surprise, another man emerged from Goulard’s office and appeared in the back corridor.
He was a bowed, round-shouldered man in a gray suit, and entirely unlike the fashionable garments worn by the junior member of the firm. He appeared to be about sixty, a man with grizzled hair, a full beard, and wearing steel-bowed spectacles. He paused for a moment, glancing sharply toward the stairs, and then he closed the rear door from which he had come and hastened toward the stairway.
“That beats me,” thought Patsy. “I’m sure there was no one in that office when I looked into it, and who but Goulard would have entered it? Who the dickens is this fellow, then, and why——”
Patsy did not continue his train of thought. He decided that the matter needed immediate investigation. He darted to the rear door of the office again and listened.
Not a sound came from within.
Stepping around to the other door, bent upon knocking and learning positively whether Goulard was within, Patsy now found on the door a written card:
“Will return at two o’clock.”