The boy Jim entered the office room and Slavin took a key out of his pocket.
“See here,” he said, “if you want your back pay and something more, all in cash, take that key and go to the place where I room. You know where it is?”
“I’ve been there a dozen times—yes, sir,” answered Jim.
“Well, you get quietly to my room. There’s a broken trunk under the bed. In the bottom is a package done up in a pasteboard box. You can’t miss it. Fetch it here and I’ll pay you as I say.”
“Let me go instead of you,” whispered Randy, breathlessly, as Jim returned to his room. “Go to my hotel,” and he told the lad where it was. “Wait for me there and I’ll give you double what that man promised.”
“You will?” challenged Jim, earnestly.
“Yes, and a position at the Standard in the bargain. Slavin is arranging to run away, I can see that.”
The boy Jim agreed willingly. Randy’s pulses beat high as he left the New Idea by the rear. Jim, accompanying him as far as the hotel, told him in detail of the location of Slavin’s room.
“If it’s only the great film that Slavin has sent for!” cogitated Randy, as he hurried on his way. “It looks so. He’s going to throw up his hands here and maybe make for Europe, where he could dispose of it easily.”
Twenty minutes later, as Randy reached the room indicated and lifted the box Slavin had told about from under the bed, he made investigation enough to be sure that he had found what he had hoped to find. It was the great film.