There was a flat-topped desk in the centre,
a telephone on the desk; and at the rear of the room a connecting door,
leading presumably to the bedroom, was open. A clean-shaven, dark-eyed
man of perhaps thirty-five, Kenleigh obviously, was pacing nervously up
and down. His face was pale, his hair ruffled; and, in his distraction,
apparently, he had forgotten to remove the cloak which he was wearing
over his evening clothes. In the far corner of the room, Meighan, the
detective, knelt upon the floor amidst a scene of grotesque disorder.
The door of a very small safe had been "souped," and now sagged open.
Books and papers littered the floor, and were strewn over a mattress
that, evidently dragged from the inner room, had been swaddled around
the safe to deaden the sound of the explosion.
"You don't understand!" Kenleigh burst out, with a groan. "This means
absolute ruin to me! A hundred thousand dollars in bonds--payable to
bearer--and--and, God help me, they weren't mine!"
"Say"--Meighan, still busily occupied with the fractured safe, spoke
gruffly, though not unkindly, over his shoulder--"I understand all
right, but don't lose your nerve, Mr.
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