SHAUGHNESSY stirred uneasily in his chair. Then, with a convulsive shudder, he sat erect, one hand instinctively pressed against his left side. His head reeled, his bewildered eyes strove to pierce the gloom. With a swift intake of breath the deathly smell of the drug crept into his nostrils. Then he remembered.
With a snarling curse he sprang to his feet, drawing a match from his vest pocket with shaking fingers. He lighted the gas and glanced toward the safe, expecting to find it forced open. All seemed to be in order. The boss was perplexed. What had they wanted, those mysterious visitors?
With a sudden apprehension he thrust his hand swiftly into an inner pocket and found it empty. Then Shaughnessy, momentarily beyond oaths, collapsed helplessly into his chair. There was expression enough in his white face now, and it was of fear.
The papers were gone, filched from him in open assault, in a way of which the boss had never dreamed. He could have groaned in bitterness of spirit as he remembered what zealous care he had taken of those damning documents, veritable blood pacts of dark, unprincipled deeds, through which Shaughnessy held the wretched signers in the hollow of his hand. Though cunningly giving the impression that they were kept in his office, Shaughnessy generally had them in safe keeping elsewhere and disturbed them only when it was expedient that they serve some purpose like the cruel intimidation to which Judge Boynton had been subjected. And now they were gone. Shaughnessy cursed in his heart the fatal weakness for melodramatic effect, in which he was prone to indulge, that had exposed him to this fatal risk.
But who had them? Shaughnessy sprang up and paced the floor. He clenched his fists as he thought of Judge Boynton. Was it a plot of his? He dismissed the thought with a sneer. Such a desperate expedient was beyond the nerveless old jurist.
He felt mechanically for his keys and started to find them gone. What new deviltry was this? Then, for a moment, the impassive mask was utterly discarded. The white face of the baited boss grew absolutely diabolical, and he cursed as best he knew, and he was not an indifferent expert. Finally, with a weary shrug, he ceased and walked to a drawer in the bookkeeper's desk. He wrenched it open and took out two keys he kept there for emergency's sake. One was for the office door and the other would admit him to his lodgings.
Shaughnessy picked up his hat, which had fallen off in the recent melee, dusted it and replaced it. He kicked the cigar, from whose enjoyment he had been riotously debarred, into a corner and drew a fresh one from his case. Reaching into his vest pocket for a match, his fingers encountered something. Drawing it forth, his eyes rested upon the card which O'Byrn, on a recent evening, had with easy insolence handed him.
The boss' eyes, indifferent at first, stared fixedly at the card. Slowly kindling into the interest born of sudden recollection of the incident, the sparks deepened till they glowed like the orbs of an angry cat. Shaughnessy pondered, his face an evil thing to see.
"Damn you!" muttered Shaughnessy, at last, still staring balefully at the card, "I believe one of 'em was you, God help you!"
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