This one I don't know, but they meant
business. They had enough dynamite with them to blow the house up."
She crossed to her uncle's desk and looked downward. The carpet had
apparently not been disturbed. There were no signs that it had been
touched at all.
"Are these men ordinary burglars?" she asked Leverson.
He hesitated.
"Why, I imagine so," he answered. "Their tools are as smart a lot as
ever I saw in my life. They had spies all round the house to help them
escape, and this one would have got away too, if I hadn't tripped
him up."
"Curse you!" the bound man muttered.
Virginia looked at him and shivered.
"Well, I am glad you caught one of them," she said. "I will go and tell
my uncle."
But Phineas Duge already knew all about it. He smiled when Virginia
brought him her news.
"They must be desperate indeed," he said, "to run such risks. However, I
suppose they have bought these fellows' silence safe enough."
The midday papers were full of the attempted burglary. Before the
magistrates, the man who had been apprehended said not a word. He seemed
to accept his position with stolid fatalism. The cross-examination as to
his associates, and the motive of the attempted robbery, was absolutely
futile.
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