“How do you know that?” asked Ralph.
“The cap he wore when he went away I found near the cabinet.”
Ralph looked serious and troubled.
“I hope we have not been mistaken in believing Earl to be an honest boy,” he said, and his mother only sighed.
Then Ralph began investigating. The rear door, he found, had been forced open. All the rooms and closets had been ransacked.
“This is pretty serious, mother,” he remarked.
Earl Danvers did not return that day. This troubled and puzzled Ralph. He could not believe the boy to be an accomplice of Farrington, nor could he believe that he was the thief.
Next morning Ralph reported the loss to the town marshal. When he went down the road, he 218 threw off a note where the men were working on the Short Line Route at its junction with the Great Northern. It was directed to Zeph Dallas, and in the note Ralph asked his friend to look up the two uncles of Earl Danvers and learn all he could about the latter.
It was two nights later when Mrs. Fairbanks announced to Ralph quite an important discovery. In cleaning house she had noticed some words penciled on the wall near the cabinet. They comprised a mere scrawl, as if written under difficulty, and ran:
“Earl prisoner. Two boys stealing things in house. Get the old coat I wore.”