“Do you know if anything came by express for Professor Barrington to-day?” he asked.
“Why, yes—just now,” was the response. “Is that it?” and the clerk searched in a rack behind him and produced a satchel with a tag attached to it.
Frank noted that it was addressed to his friend, and bore the printed name of the hotel in New York that he had ’phoned to the evening before. The clerk pushed the satchel towards him as if he expected Frank to take it away, but the latter said:
“I won’t take it just now; not until I see Professor Barrington. It would be a great favor to me if you would place that satchel under special lock and key, and not deliver it to anybody under any circumstances except to the professor himself.”
“It contains something of value, then?” asked the hotel clerk.
“Immensely valuable, yes,” responded Frank.
“I’ll put it in one of the safes, then,” declared the clerk, and did so.
Frank went back to his room. He was satisfied now. If the professor had been called away to leave the coast clear for some new rascality, then Slavin and his friends would be disappointed. Frank’s faint suspicions faded from his mind as he sat down at a table and began figuring on a pad of blank paper.
For an hour he was wrapped in many calculations. Then he sat back like a person planning and dreaming. Finally he got to pacing the floor, his face still wearing an expression of deep thought.
“Hello!” he exclaimed at length, gazing in surprise at his watch. “Why, here I’ve been dreaming the time away for nearly two hours. And it’s strange, with all the interest the professor has in those leases, that he doesn’t return or send me some word. I can only wait, though.”