Most of the missing papers concerned individuals or families in and around New York, which seemed to imply that a quick clean-up was contemplated. Some few, though, involved persons farther away, and these appeared to have been selected because they had offered particularly tempting bait to the blackmailer. It needed only the brief entries in the index to bring back to Nick’s mind all of the important details of each case, and he ground his teeth as he pictured the scoundrel gloating over those same details, and cleverly scheming to demand the top price for their suppression. “What a haul!” he murmured aloud. “All those papers, and seventy-five or eighty thousand in gold, to boot! If it’s really Ernest Gordon with whom we have to deal—and I’m morally certain it is—he must be drunk with joy, for he has made blackmailing an art, and he could not ask anything bigger or more promising of that sort. In his calmer moments, though, he must realize that he won’t have the chance to hold up many of these people. “Doesn’t he know that the first man he approaches will in all probability come running to me to demand an explanation, if nothing more? And hasn’t it occurred to him that I would receive an urgent summons home under such circumstances? Well, if it has, he’ll see all the more reason for striking while the iron is hot.” He had put the papers away temporarily, intending to find a safer place for them at the earliest opportunity, when the butler entered the study with a telegram. It proved to be from the warden at Clinton prison, and was a long one—sent “collect,” of course. It contained certain new and significant, though minor, details concerning the supposed death of Green-eye Gordon, and the escape of the yegg from Buffalo, which served to confirm Nick’s suspicions, but the most striking thing about the message was the tone of it. It gave the impression that the warden had been doubtful, or was doubtful now concerning the identity of the man who had been burned. He did not say so, of course, but Nick could read doubt between the lines. Obviously, the identification had been a very careless one, or else the prison authorities had deliberately winked at the misleading statement which had found their way into the newspapers. Very likely they took it for granted at first that the partially burned body was that of Gordon, and afterward preferred to hush the thing up rather than let it be known that there was any reason to believe that the redoubtable Green Eye had escaped. “Well, that settles it, I think, for all practical purposes,” the detective told himself. “Cray’s identification was a very hasty one, made under very unfavorable circumstances, but when it’s taken in connection with this transparent telegram, and especially in connection with the nature, daring, and adroitness of the crime itself, it seems safe enough to conclude that Ernest Gordon is the man I must look for—and find.”