"Then look through the safe and see if you can find it."
He opened the safe and she went through it package by package, while he waited with that patience that comes of long training, until, the search finished, she looked up and said:
"It isn't here!"
"It was here at nine o'clock on the night of the tenth; it wasn't here at six on the morning of the eleventh. What do you make of that?"
"It had been stolen!" she gasped, looking pale and perplexed.
"There might be one other explanation," he interposed; "and we are bound to look at that carefully. Mr. Wing might have burned them. He had a fire that evening."
"Yes," she said, "he might."
"I made sure on that point," he then explained, "the morning of the murder. Not from any suspicion that papers were missing, but on the principle of taking note of everything, even the most trivial. I can assure you that there were no papers of any amount burned in the fireplace the night before.
