“They are both thinking about the same thing. That’s my guess,” Chick told himself. “Doc had something to do with that tracing that turned up in a boathouse in the marsh, and Mr. Vance knows it. And Doc knows he knows it, too! I’ll sit tight and see what happens.”
He had no long vigil.
Apparently so deep in his thoughts that he forgot the others, Vance sat in a brown study for a moment: Chick, quick of eye, observed that the control chief was not so oblivious as he pretended.
“He’s watching Doc,” he decided.
The silence was broken by Doc’s amused voice.
“Well, J. V., go ahead and unlock the drawer. You want to, you do, and you know it, you do that! Well, go on. Do it! I’d like to know what that sketch means, I would. Let’s see it again, eh?”
With a start of surprise that Chick sensed as “acting,” the other looked around quickly.
“Oh! Hello! What’s that, Doc?”
“You heard me.”
“About the tracing, it was.”