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"We'll have all the lights on at any rate," he said, as he turned the switches. "And, Morton," he added, when the butler brought the coffee, "get me a screwdriver or something to undo this box. Whatever the animal is, he's kicking up the deuce of a row. What is it? Why are you dawdling?"
At last, reassured, he walked to the front of the machine, and with the screwdriver pried the name plate from its position on the radiator and tossed it into the tumbling, yellow stream beside the road. Then he turned back to the machine, only to stop suddenly and blink with surprise. The road was not level!
The man must be got rid of anyhow. "I say," said Hoopdriver, with an inspiration, "can you get me a screwdriver?" The man simply walked across the shed, opened and shut a box, and came up to the kneeling Hoopdriver with a screwdriver in his hand. Hoopdriver felt himself a lost man. He took the screwdriver with a tepid "Thanks," and incontinently had another inspiration. "I say," he said again.
A sense of fear and constriction was upon me as I drew softly from my pocket a screwdriver I had brought with me. It never occurred to me, I swear, that the quest was no business of mine, and that even now I could withdraw from it, and no one be the wiser. But I was afraid I was afraid. And there was not even the negative comfort of knowing that the neighbouring cell was tenanted.
Me, I got to drop into the writin' room and dash something off. Here we are. Go to it." Course, he could have bugged things. Might have dropped the screwdriver through a grating, or got himself caught in the act. But Barry has surrounded the idea nicely. He couldn't have done better if he'd been sent out to a listenin' post.
He got wearily into the borrowed fur coat, took a last comprehensive survey of the room from the doorway, went back to erase certain sentences scrawled on the blackboard by some would-be humorist, took another look at the work of his aching hands, and went away with the coffeepot in his hand and the screwdriver showing its battered wooden handle from the top of his pocket.
Stimulated curiosity would not allow her to recede now. She fetched a screwdriver, withdrew the screw, pulled the door open with a penknife, and found inside a cavity about ten inches square. The cavity contained Letters from his wife Eunice. Letters from Anne herself, including that she wrote in answer to his advertisement. A small pocket-book. Sundry scraps of paper.
Never found any di'monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says, 'What do you reckon he wanted with that? I said I didn't know; but when he wasn't looking I hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we'd got to give it up. That was what I was waiting for. I says: "'There's one place we hain't searched. "'What place is that? he says. "'His stomach.
Inside of two minutes Barry had everybody in sight on the jump, from the bus boy to the steward, and in with the demi tasse came the screwdriver. "Now what, lieutenant?" demands Barry. "S-s-s-h!" says I, mysterious. "We got to drill around until midnight." "Why not at the Follies, then?" suggests Barry. "Swell thought!" says I.
"Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went smashing through my head was, I know where he's hid the di'monds! You look at this boot heel, now. See, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn't a screw about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why."
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