y and reputable business in a set of
offices high up in a great building in Broad Street--a building so
large that the notice "Offices to let" was a permanent fixture in the
front porch. The firm's clients were chiefly steady-going investors of
the old-fashioned sort, who wished to avoid all speculative fireworks,
and to deal through a firm whose habits were conformable to their own.
The last Kingsley had left the firm and soon afterward died, some few
years back, and now the head of the firm was Mr. Robert Stanstead Bell,
a gentleman of some sixty years of age. There were a couple of sleeping
partners--relations--but the one other active partner was Mr. Clarence
Dalton, a young man but recently advanced to partnership, and, it was
said, likely to become Mr. Bell's son-in-law whenever the old
gentleman's daughter Lilian should be married.

The steady, even round of business to which Kingsley, Bell, and Dalton,
and their clerks were accustomed was suddenly interrupted by an
appalling loss. It was discovered that bonds were missing from the safe,
bonds to the amount of some L25,000; and whence, how, or when they were
taken was an utter mystery. It was this loss which had occasioned the
urgent message to Hewitt.

When Hewitt reached the spot he was shown at once into an inner office,
where Mr. Bell sat waiting. The old gentleman was in a sad state of
agitation, and it was with some difficulty that Hewitt got from him a
reasonably connected account of the trouble.

"The loss comes at such a time, Mr. Hewitt," the senior partner
explained, "that I don't know but it may ruin us utterly, unless my
clients' property can be recovered. We have had to pay out heavy sums of
late to the representatives of dead or retiring partners, and other
circumstances combine with these to make the matter in this way even
more terribly serious than the very large amount of the loss would seem
to suggest. So I beg you will do what you can."

"That of course," responded Hewitt. "But please tell me, as clearly as
you can, the precise circumstances of the case. Where were the bonds
taken from?"

"This safe," Mr. Bell answered, turning toward a very large and heavy
one, which might almost have been called a small strong room. "They were
kept, together with others, in this box, one of several, as you see. The
box was fastened, like the rest, with a Tripp's patent lever padlock,
the only key of which I kept, together with the key of the safe."