The air certainly did, if anything, heighten the beauty of Elaine and at last they arrived at Aunt Tabby’s, tired and hungry.

The car stopped and Elaine, Aunt Tabby and the dog got out.  There, waiting for them, was “Uncle” Joshua, as Elaine playfully called him, a former gardener of the Dodges, now a plain, honest countryman on whom the city was fast encroaching, a jolly old fellow, unharmed by the world.

Aunt Tabby’s was an attractive small house, not many miles from New York, yet not in the general line of suburban travel.

. . . . . . .

Kennedy and I had decided to bring Bennett’s papers and documents over to the laboratory to examine them.  We were now engaged in going over the great mass of material which he had collected, in the hope of finding some clue to the stolen millions which he must have amassed as a result of his villainy.  The table was stacked high.

A knock at the door told us that the expressman had arrived and a moment later he entered, delivering a heavy box.  Kennedy signed for it and started to unpack it.

I was hard at work, when I came across a large manila envelope carefully sealed, on which were written the figures “$7,000,000.”  Too excited even to exclaim, I tore the envelope open and examined the contents.

Inside was another envelope.  I opened that.  It contained merely a blank piece of paper!

With characteristic skill at covering his tracks, Bennett had also covered his money.  Puzzled, I turned the paper over and over, looking at it carefully.  It was a large sheet of paper, but it showed nothing.

“Huh!” I snorted to myself, “confound him.”

Yet I could not help smiling at my own folly, a minute later, in thinking that the Clutching Hand would leave any information in such an obvious place as an envelope.  I threw the paper into a wire basket on the desk and went on sorting the other stuff.

Kennedy had by this time finished unpacking the box, and was examining a bottle which he had taken from it.

“Come here, Walter,” he called at length.  “Ever see anything like that?”

“I can’t say,” I confessed, getting up to go to him.  “What is it?”

“Bring a piece of paper.” he added.

I went back to the desk where I had been working and looked about hastily.  My eye fell on the blank sheet of paper which I had taken from Bennett’s envelope, and I picked it up from the basket.

“Here’s one,” I said, handing it to him.  “What are you doing?”

Kennedy did not answer directly, but began to treat the paper with the liquid from the bottle.  Then he lighted a Bunsen burner and thrust the paper into the flame.  The paper did not burn!

“A new system of fire-proofing,” laughed Craig, enjoying my astonishment.

He continued to hold the paper in the flame.  Still it did not burn.