"You did your best, you couldn't help it," said her son soothingly.
"No, some thief has visited your attic," declared Ralph.
"But no one except Mrs. Davis and myself knew that the box was there," suggested the weeping woman.
"Someone surely found out," said Ralph. "I found the window forced up and the trunk lock broken."
"Mother, you really must not take on so," spoke the young man in a worried tone. "You are shaking all over. I must get you to some shelter."
[CHAPTER XXVI--A CLEW!]
The young switch-tower man had lost all interest in the fire now. He stood thinking deeply, and felt quite depressed.
He was very certain that the papers Mrs. Davis had placed in the tin box in some way referred to her interest in the twenty thousand dollars' worth of railroad bonds, to which she had so frequently and significantly alluded.
She had told his mother that she was going to get something from a friend to show her and Ralph. Was it not these very same papers?
It was very possible, Ralph reflected further, that in some way Mrs. Davis' kidnappers had got a clew to the hiding place of these self-same documents.