“Even at risk of being arrested?”
“Oh, I shan’t be arrested,” he laughed. “Don’t think I’m afraid of that. Why, my dear girl, perhaps you wouldn’t believe it, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been in this very room. I know what’s in all those drawers yonder, and even the balance in your father’s banker’s pass-book.”
“You’ve been here before!” gasped the girl astounded. “How did you get in?”
“Why, with your own key. It was easy enough. Your servants never bolt the front door. They really ought to be more careful, you know,” he laughed.
She hesitated for a moment, and in that slight hesitation he, crafty malefactor that he was, recognised that he had triumphed.
“I may presume, I suppose, that you’ve read that document upon the writing-table?” she asked a moment later.
“I have—every word of it,” he replied, with a polite bow.
“That is why you came here?”
“It was. I really expected to experience greater trouble in finding it. I opened only three drawers before coming across it.”
“Probably you’d like a copy of it,” she said, with bitter sarcasm.