“With my secretary, Colonel Pironti, I examined each one last night. The documents in question have undoubtedly disappeared.”
Hubert Waldron stood before the open safe in pensive silence.
Then he bent, and taking his gold, half-hunter watch from his pocket and opening it, used the small lens as a magnifying glass with which he carefully examined the lock of the safe.
“There are no marks of the lock having been tampered with,” he remarked to His Excellency. “A false key must evidently have been used.”
“That is Ghelardi’s opinion.”
Then the diplomat, with His Excellency’s permission, removed the whole of the papers from the safe, and carefully examined the sides and back of the interior, satisfying himself that they were all intact.
“Which wall is this?” he asked, tapping it with his hand.
“The outer wall—in the courtyard,” was the Minister’s prompt reply. “It could not have been attacked from behind, as we are fifty feet from the ground. The exterior wall has already been examined.”
Waldron made no reply. He was thinking deeply—wondering whether, after all, His Excellency, General Cataldi, Minister of War, knew more about the affair than he had admitted? The corruptness of Monte Citorio was too universally known, and Austria would, no doubt, give a very substantial sum for such important information as that which had been stolen.
His Excellency, on his part, stood with his cigar half-smoked between his teeth, a smart figure in his General’s undress uniform, with the green-and-white cross of Maurice and Lazarus at his throat, controller of an army which in case of war would consist of three and a half million men.