. . .he bland merchant through a room equipped with a long row of vacant desks, like an old-fashioned counting house.

“Our clerks work here,” explained Chand, “but they have all gone out to lunch, so no one will know of your visit.”

Whether that was good or bad, Biff wasn’t sure. He felt a nervous tingling that seemed an instinctive warning of some close danger; yet it might be that all these precautions were for his benefit.

19

This seemed doubly so when they reached Chand’s quiet private office at the rear of the long counting room. There, the merchant closed the door, gestured Biff to a chair, and opened a small safe that was cunningly concealed in the elaborately carved woodwork of the wall.

“You received your father’s message,” commented Mr. Chand, “and now I have something for you to take to him. This.”

Biff gasped at the object Mr. Chand placed on the table before. . . Read More