“Now listen, Mr. Zumwalt, you’re holding out on me; and it won’t do! If I’m going to work on this for you I’ve got to have the whole story.”
He looked thoughtfully at me for a moment through screwed-up blue eyes. Then he got up and went to the door of the outer office, opening it. Past him I could see the bookkeeper and the stenographer sitting at their desks. Zumwalt closed the door and returned to his desk, leaning across it to speak in a husky undertone.
“You are right, I suppose. But what I am going to tell you must be held in the strictest confidence.”
I nodded, and he went on:
“About two months ago one of our clients, Stanley Gorham, turned $100,000 worth of Liberty bonds over to us. He had to go to the Orient on business, and he had an idea that the bonds might go to par during his absence; so he left them with us to be sold if they did. Yesterday I had occasion to go to the safe deposit box where the bonds had been put—in the Golden Gate Trust Company’s vault—and they were gone!”
“Anybody except you and your partner have access to the box?”
“No.”
“When did you see the bonds last?”
“They were in the box the Saturday before Dan left. And one of the men on duty in the vault told me that Dan was there the following Monday.”
“All right! Now let me see if I’ve got it all straight. Your partner, Daniel Rathbone, was supposed to leave for New York on the twenty-seventh of