CHAPTER III
THE DERELICT
“Didn’t you find anything, Tom?” Ruth Fielding asked, as Helen’s twin re-entered the summer-house.
His long automobile coat glistened with wet and his face was wind-blown. Tom Cameron’s face, too, looked much older than it had—well, say a year before. He, like Ruth herself, had been through much in the war zone calculated to make him more sedate and serious than a college undergraduate is supposed to be.
“I did not see even a piece of paper blowing about,” he told her.
“But before we came down from the house you said you saw a paper blow over the roof like a kite.”
“That was an outspread newspaper. It was not a sheet of your manuscript.”
“Then it all must have been stolen!” she cried.
“At least, human agency must have removed the things you left on this table,” he said.