"This thing appears to have served its purpose," he commented absently, as if talking to himself. Then casually he tore the envelope across, and then again and again; finer and finer; yet not so fine as to excite suspicion. Looking for a wastebasket and finding none, he was about to drop the fragments in his coat pocket.
"I will take them," said the vault custodian, holding out his hand. To it the minister unhesitatingly committed the shredded envelope and card which contained the only documentary clue to any other person than himself as the thief of the Dounay diamonds. A few minutes later, this clue was in the wastebasket outside. The next morning it was in the furnace.
The group in the vault room broke away with dispirited slowness, as mourners turn from the freshly heaped earth. Behind all the minister lingered, as if unwilling to leave the presence of his dead reputation.
But the man's appearance somewhat belied his mood. He was thinking swiftly. This was no uncommon plot which had overtaken him. It was conceived in craft and laid with power to kill. The diabolical cunning of the scheme was that it forced him to be silent or to be a traitor. The indications were that he had been betrayed outrageously; but he did not know this positively, therefore he could venture no defense at all against this black array of circumstances. It might be only some terrible mistake, and for him to venture more now than the most general denial might bring about the very calamities he was trying to avert. He dared not even tell the truth: that he did not know the diamonds were in the box. Especially, he dared not say that he did not put them there.
For the first time an emotion like fear entered his soul, but it passed the moment the priestly ardor in him saw which way his duty lay. If Rollie had grossly sold him into the power of the actress at the price of his own es-
