"Don't think I am taking a liberty, Miss Longworth," he said calmly. "This place has been a sort of office for us, and your uncle lets us do about as we please here. I trust you are going to unlock that desk and give me the paper I want." Virginia shook her head slowly. "I am sorry," she said, "but my uncle will not discuss business matters at all. He did not seem to remember anything about a paper, and he said that everything must wait until his head is a little clearer. I am sorry I disturbed him. I am afraid that the doctor will be very angry with me." Mr. Weiss' face, clean-shaven and lined, with his spectacled eyes and thin, indrawn lips, was as expressionless as a face could be, but Virginia heard him draw a quick little breath, and his very attitude seemed to be the attitude of a man confronted with calamity. "Miss Longworth," he said slowly, "this is very unfortunate." "I am sorry," she answered. "Will you sit down?" he said. "I have something to say to you." She shook her head. "I am afraid that I cannot stay now," she said. "I have so many things to do, and so many notes to write." His spectacled eyes looked right into hers. "This," he said quietly, "is important. There are times, Miss Longworth, when the junior in command of a great enterprise is faced with a crisis, when he or she is forced to act upon their own responsibility. The person who is great enough to rise to an occasion like this is the person who wins and deserves success in life. You follow me, Miss Longworth?" "I suppose so," Virginia answered, a little doubtfully, although in her heart she understood him very well indeed. "Miss Longworth," he said, "have you pluck enough to save us all several millions of dollars, and to make your uncle grateful to you for life? In other words, will you help me look for that paper?" "Without my uncle's permission?" she asked. "Without a permission which he would give you in one moment," Mr. Weiss declared, "if he was in a fit state to look after his own affairs. Come, you shall not have to wait until he recovers. For a part of your reward, at any rate, there is a pearl necklace in Streeter's, which I saw yesterday marked forty thousand dollars. It shall be yours within half an hour of the time I get that paper, and I guarantee that your uncle will give you another like it when he knows what you have done." Virginia shook her head sorrowfully. Her great eyes seemed full of real regret. "Mr. Weiss," she said, "I am too dull and stupid to dare to do things on my own account. I can only obey, and I am afraid all these beautiful rewards are not for me. Even if my uncle sends me away when he gets well, I must do exactly as he told me, no more, nor any less, and one of those things," she added, turning and pressing the electric bell in the wall by her side, "was that no one, no one at all, should enter this room."