Mr. Weiss stood quite still. He seemed to be thinking, but Virginia could see that his hands were tightly clenched, and the bones of his long sinewy fingers were standing out, straining against the flesh. "I am disappointed in you, Miss Longworth," he said. "You have a great opportunity. It need not be only a matter of the necklace--" She held out her hands. "You mustn't!" she begged. "I am too frightened of my uncle." Then she turned suddenly and opened the door to the servant, whose approaching footsteps she had heard. "Will you please show Mr. Weiss out?" she said. "He is in rather a hurry." Mr. Weiss went without a word. CHAPTER VII A PROFESSIONAL BURGLAR There were three men in New York that day, who, although they occupied their accustomed table, the best in one of its most exclusive clubs, and although their luncheon was chosen with the usual care, were never really conscious of what they were eating. Weiss was one, John Bardsley another, and Higgins, the railway man, the third. They sat in a corner, from which their conversation could not be overheard; and as often before when their heads had been close together, people looked across at them, always with interest, often with some envy, and wondered. "I'd like you both to understand," Weiss said, speaking with unaccustomed emphasis as he leaned across the table, "that I don't like the look of things. We tackled something pretty big when we tackled Phineas Duge, and if he has the least idea that these Chicago brokers have been operating on our behalf, it's my belief we shall find ourselves up against it." Higgins, who was the optimist of the party, a small man, with the unlined, clear complexion and face of a boy, shrugged his shoulders a little doubtfully. "That's all very well, Weiss," he said, "but if Phineas had been going to find us out at all, he'd have found us out three weeks ago, when the thing started. He wouldn't have sat still and let us sell ten million dollars' worth of stock without moving his little finger. I guess you've got the jumps, Weiss, all because we were d-----d fools enough to sign that rotten paper last night. All the same I don't quite see how he could ever use that against us. His own name's there." "I'm not so sure of that," Weiss said quietly. "I tell you it occurred to me to look across just as he was blotting the page, and I saw that he had his arm right round the paper, and it didn't seem to me that he was blotting the place where his signature ought to have been." "Why didn't you ask to read the thing through again?" Higgins demanded. "I wish I had," Weiss answered gloomily. Bardsley, a large man, with grey beard and moustache, and coarse, hard face, spoke for the first time. "Do any of you know," he asked, "whereabouts in that infernal little room of his Duge keeps his papers?" Weiss looked up.