“What could it blow off from?”
“That’s so.”
“There’s the identical timber,” continued the operator, touching with his foot a piece of wood as they came out to the stove again. “I used half of it to mend the fire.”
Ralph picked up the piece of wood out of curiosity. As he did so he made a discovery.
Its smooth side, though blurred, bore some faint black marks like letters and words. It looked as if scratched with a blunt cinder on the ends of burned matches.
In breaking the wood to mend the fire the operator had split the piece transversely removing a part of a written line, but to his amazement Ralph could make out these words:
“Send word to Ralph Fairbanks, Stanley Junction, that Glen Palmer is--”
The remainder of this queer message was missing--ashes in the depot stove. What had been the writing complete, and what did it mean?
[CHAPTER XVIII—THE SLUMP “SECRET”]
“Wake up, Ralph.”