Waldon took it up and turned it over with curiosity. Then, deliberately tearing it open, he pulled out its contents.
It was, he found to his dismay, only a blank piece of tracing paper!
“Ah! that is what she has placed here, after taking out a similar envelope, I suppose,” snapped the keen-eyed old man, grasping the situation in a moment. “I have suspected this all along—ever since those fortress plans so mysteriously disappeared. And now she has taken another document. I was foolish to allow her to leave with you.”
“The document—or whatever it is—is in my safe keeping.”
“You have it!” he cried quickly. “Please hand it to me.”
“I shall do no such thing, Commendatore,” was Hubert’s defiant reply.
“It is a secret of State, and you, as a foreigner, have no right to its possession!”
“It has been given to me for safety, and I shall hand it over to His Majesty, and to him alone.”
“Signor Waldron, I demand it,” the old man said angrily, raising his voice as he flung the safe door to with a clang and re-locked it. “I demand it—in the name of His Majesty!”
“And I refuse.”