"Your own! By Gad! What are you using this machine for, then, if you've got one of your own? And why didn't you bring your own when you came here on important business like this?"
"I did; but as we found this one already here I started in on it; and when I found it difficult to work, I went out to get my own, which I'd left in the outer room, just as I'd taken it from the carrier who brought it over. But the careless beggar must have handled it as if it were a trunk, for the spring was broken, the carriage wouldn't work, and two of the type bars were snapped off."
"By _Jupiter!_" Cleek's voice struck in so suddenly and with such vehemence that it was almost a bark, like that of a startled terrier, and Mr. Narkom, knowing the signs, fairly jumped at him.
"You've found out something, _I_ know!" he cried. "What is it, old chap--eh?"
"Let me alone, let me alone!" flung back Cleek, irritably. "I want the dockmaster! I want him at once! Where is the man? Oh, there you are, Mr. Beachman. Speak up--quickly. Was that 'Hilmann' woman ever allowed to enter this room? Did she ever make use of this typewriter at any time?"
"Yes, sir--often," he replied. "She was one of the best and most careful typists I ever saw. Used to attend to all my correspondence for me and----Good God, man, what are you doing? Don't you know that that thing's Government property?"
For Cleek, not waiting for him to finish what he was saying, had suddenly laid hands on the machine, found it screwed fast to the table and, catching up the nearest chair, was now smashing and banging away at it with all his force.
"Government destruction, you mean!" he gave back sharply. "Didn't I tell you she was a very demon of ingenuity, stupid? Didn't I say----Victory! Now then, look here--all of you! Here's a pretty little contrivance, if you like."
He had battered the typewriter from its fastenings and sent it crashing to the floor, a wreck, not ten seconds before; now, his hand, which, immediately thereafter, had been moving rapidly over the surface of the sound-deadening square of felt beneath, whisked that, too, from the table, and let them all see the discovery he had made.
Protruding from the surface of that table and set at regular intervals there were forty-two needle points of steel--one for each key of the typewriter--which a moment before had pierced the felt's surface just sufficient to meet the bottom of the "key" above it, and to be driven downward when that key was depressed.