Pape, who duly had pressed his heart, bowed with care, if not grace, and was in the act of pressing the catch, felt the box snatched from his grasp. In his fumbling, however, his thumb had succeeded. As Jane seized her treasure the lid sprang back. One look she gave into it, then swayed in the patch of lamplight very like the limp ladies he had been mentioning. A face of the pure pallor of hers scarcely could be said to turn pale, but a ghastly light spread over it. Her eyes distended and darkened with horror. A shudder took her. She looked about to fall. “It is—empty! See, _it is empty_,” she moaned. Pape was in time to steady her into a chair. Aunt Helene hovered over her anxiously. “What’s gone wrong with you, childie? You’re the one that’s in a run-down state. Here’s your box, Jane dear. Look, it isn’t stolen at all. Pinch yourself. Waken up. Everything’s all right.” But Jane did not return her relative’s smile; clutched both fat arms of the chair with both slim hands; stared ahead fixedly, as if trying to think. “It is,” she repeated under her breath, “_empty_.” From his urgent desire to relieve and help her, Pape intruded into her painful abstraction. “Then it wasn’t the box you valued, so much as its contents,” he stated to her. “From the shock you have shown on finding it empty, I gather that the safe has been robbed after all. Will you tell me of what?” Her lips moved. He had to lean low to hear her sporadic utterances. “I have failed—in a trust. It meant more to me than—it will kill him—simply kill him. He trusted me. I can’t understand—who——” A sudden glance of virile suspicion she flung up into the young Westerner’s eyes. “Who and what are you?” she demanded. “Answer me!” CHAPTER IX—SNUFFED So unexpected was the girl’s attack that Pape felt at a loss how best to meet it. At his look of confusion, she continued in quick, fierce tones: “I can’t see how my affairs concern you. How dare you question me? Why are you around, anyhow, here and at the—— How did you happen to open that safe so easily? Who and what are you—I insist on an answer?” “My dear, don’t let excitement make you unreasonable,” Mrs. Sturgis intervened. “Mr. Pape is a detective from the Arsenal. I’ve told you that. Jasper brought him over after I——” “He isn’t. I know very much better. He is nothing of the sort.” The girl arose and straightened before him, all strength now. “I suppose you expect me to tell you all about everything like a little—like a ninny. Well, I won’t. I won’t tell you anything. _You_ tell _me_!” “Don’t mind in the least. Fact, I’d gladly tell you a lot about the who and what of Peter Stansbury Pape, but you’re not in a mood to hear. Out in Montana, where I hail from, we think a lot of straight friendship. If you could trust me, Miss Lauderdale, perhaps I’d be able to demonstrate the sort of friendship I mean.” “Well, I can’t trust you.” “Pardon me. Yes, you can.”