He had been careful not to push it completely shut before going to the door, for he feared that he might not be able to open it again.
Now open to his eyes lay the interior of the safe.
Eagerly he snatched open one of the drawers, and gave a little grunt of satisfaction when he found a couple of reasonably thick bundles of paper money. When the bundles were withdrawn, he caught a glimpse of several familiar-looking little packages, round, slender, and wrapped in manila paper.
“Gold, just as it came from the bank!” he muttered, snatching up one of the packages and tearing off the end of the wrapping.
A stack of ten-dollar gold pieces was revealed.
“This will do very nicely for current expenses,” Green Eye murmured, with a smile. “Now for the rest, though.”
He carried the money over to the table, and thrust notes and gold into the pockets of the coat he had taken off before he set to work, after which he returned to the safe and began his search for Nick’s precious secrets.
Packet after packet he drew out, chuckling at the inscriptions on some of them, then grimy with his work, and, still in his shirt sleeves, he set out to examine the records, his chair drawn up to the table, his fingers shaking with the excitement that possessed him. Once he stopped, and mechanically lighted a cigar, but it was soon forgotten, and went out, after which the end of it was chewed to a pulp.
The papers he unearthed were all he hoped they would be.
There, before him, were the histories of scores of the most important cases that Nick Carter had handled. Many of them, to be sure, were of such a nature that they afforded no opportunities for blackmail, but there were quite a number which, even to a casual glance, revealed alluring possibilities in that direction.