The following morning the premonition became a certainty.  In the Gordonia mail there was a note from the younger Gordon, directing him to come to the office of the pipe foundry, bringing the cash-book and ledger for a year whose number was written out in letters of fire in the bookkeeper’s brain.  He went, again lacking the courage either to refuse or to disappear, and found Gordon waiting for him.  There were no preliminaries.

“Good morning, Dyckman,” said the tyrant, pushing aside the papers on his desk.  “You have brought the books?  Sit down at that table and open the ledger at the company’s expense account for the year.  I wish to make a few comparisons,” and he took a thick packet of papers from a pigeonhole of the small iron safe behind his chair.

Dyckman was unbuckling the shawl-strap in which he had carried the two heavy books, but at the significant command he desisted, went swiftly to the door opening into the stenographer’s room, satisfied himself that there were no listeners, and resumed his chair.

“You have cut out some of the preface, Mr. Gordon; I’ll cut out the remainder,” he said, moistening his dry lips.  “You have the true record of the expense account in that package.  I’m down and out; what is it you want?”

The inexorable one at the desk did not keep him in suspense.

“I want a written confession of just what you did, and what you did it for,” was the direct reply.  “You’ll find Miss Ackerman’s type-writer in the other room; I’ll wait while you put it in type.”

The bookkeeper’s lips were dryer than before, and his tongue was like a stick in his mouth when he said: 

“You’re not giving me a show, Mr. Gordon; the poor show a common murderer would have in any court of law.  You are asking me to convict myself.”

Gordon held up the packet of papers.

“Here is your conviction, Mr. Dyckman—­the original leaves taken from those books when you had them re-bound.  I need your statement of the facts for quite another purpose.”

“And if I refuse to make it?  A cornered rat will fight for his life, Mr. Gordon.”

“If you refuse I shall be reluctantly compelled to hand these papers over to our attorneys—­reluctantly, I say, because you can serve me better just now out of jail than in it.”

Dyckman made a final attempt to gain fighting space.

“It’s an unfair advantage you’re taking; at the worst, I am only an accessory.  My principals will be here in a few days, and—­”

“Precisely,” was the cold rejoinder.  “It is because your principals are coming home, and because they are not yet here, that I want your statement.  Oblige me, if you please; my time is limited this morning.”

There was no help for it, or none apparent to the fear-stricken; and for the twenty succeeding minutes the type-writer clicked monotonously in the small ante-room.  Dyckman could hear his persecutor pacing the floor of the private office, and once he found himself looking about him for a weapon.  But at the end of the writing interval he was handing the freshly-typed sheet to a man who was yet alive and unhurt.