“‘Father has had a valuable paper stolen from him,’ explains Grace.  ’A very valuable paper.’

“‘Valuable!’ howls her dad.  ’Valuable!  Why, if Gordon and his gang get that paper, they’ve got me, that’s all.  Their suit’s as good as won, and I know it.  And to think that I’ve kept it safe up to within a month of the trial, and now—­Grace Sterzer, you stop pattin’ my head.  I’m no pussy-cat!  By the—­’ And so on, indefinite.

“When he called his daughter Sterzer, instead of Robinson, I cal’lated he was loony, sure enough.  But Peter T. slapped his leg.

“‘Oh!’ he says, as if he’d seen a light all to once.  ’Ah, now I begin to get wise.  I knew your face was—­See here, Mr. Sterzer—­Mr. Gabriel Sterzer—­don’t you think we’d better have a real, plain talk on this matter?  Let’s get down to tacks.  Was the paper you lost something to do with the Sterzer-Gordon lawsuit?  The Aluminum Trust case, you know?’

“The old man stopped dancin’, stared at him hard, and then set down and wiped his forehead.

“‘Something to do with it?’ he groans.  ’Why, you idiot, it was it!  If Gordon’s lawyers get that paper—­and they’ve been after it for a year—­then the fat’s all in the fire.  There’s nothin’ left for me to do but compromise.’

“When Peter T. mentioned the name of Gabriel Sterzer, me and Jonadab begun to see a light, too.  ’Course you remember the bust-up of the Aluminum Trust—­everybody does.  The papers was full of it.  There’d been a row among the two leadin’ stockholders, Gabe Sterzer and ‘Major’ Gordon.  Them two double-back-action millionaires practically owned the trust, and the state ’twas in, and the politics of that state, and all the politicians.  Each of ’em run three or four banks of their own, and a couple of newspapers, and other things, till you couldn’t rest.  Then they had the row, and Gabe had took his playthings and gone home, as you might say.  Among the playthings was a majority of the stock, and the Major had sued for it.  The suit, with pictures of the leadin’ characters and the lawyers and all, had been spread-eagled in the papers everywheres.  No wonder ‘Robinson’s’ face was familiar.

“But it seemed that Sterzer had held the trump card in the shape of the original agreement between him and Gordon.  And he hung on to it like the Old Scratch to a fiddler.  Gordon and his crowd had done everything, short of murder, to get it; hired folks to steal it, and so on, because, once they did get it, Gabe hadn’t a leg to stand on—­he’d have to divide equal, which wa’n’t his desires, by a good sight.  The Sterzer lawyers had wanted him to leave it in their charge, but no—­he knew too much for that.  The pig-headed old fool had carted it with him wherever he went, and him and his daughter had come to the Old Home House because he figgered nobody would think of their bein’ in such an out-of-the-way place as that.  But they had thought of it.  Anyhow, the paper was gone.