Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/212

198 I could hear him gasp, quite plainly, as I lifted out the first bundle of papers. Then still again he stared at me.

"Where did those things come from?" he asked. He seemed no longer interested in just how I got them.

"I don't know," I told him. And that, to all intents and purposes, was the truth.

"You don't know!" he repeated, as he took up one of the packages and riffled through it. "But you do know, I suppose, that these are what our commercial friends would call gilt-edged securities?" He did not wait for an answer, for ho was checking through that first package of documents. "And this bundle, I imagine, should be worth almost a hundred thousand dollars!"

"Gee!" I said. Then I stared down into the bag. There were five more packages there very much like the first. My face must have turned rather white, for the man at my side gave me a quick glance, half of inquiry, half of apprehension. Then he turned back to the table. I knew, by this time, that I was no longer in his thoughts. He was no more conscious of me, as he sat there with that worried look on his face, than a Wall Street magnate with a million-dollar deal