“Did you?” pressed Zeph eagerly.
“The old man ain’t right, you know, but he sticks to that click-clack contrivance all the time. I watched the two, and the prisoner promised Palmer all kinds of things if he’d get free and send a certain message to a certain party, or somehow get the telegram sent. Well, since then the old man has been terribly busy with his play telegraph device, and excited, too. About an hour since he calls me to him, and says he will certainly get me a thousand dollars if I will take a message to the operator here. Only ten words, he says--one hundred dollars a word. I told him I wouldn’t do anything until the sheriff came back tomorrow. He said only ten words. I asked him what ten words, and he shot out a lot of gibberish I couldn’t take in.”
“A cypher telegram,” murmured Zeph.
“Well, I left it that way.”
“Let me lurk around a bit, will you?” inquired Ralph.
“Certainly,” assented the marshal.
For the next ten minutes Ralph, hidden in a corner of the detention room, posted himself and listened. When he came out his face was excited and eager.
“Don’t let those prisoners send out a word or see a single person until I come back to you,” he directed the marshal.
“All right. Found out something?”
“I think I have. I’ll know for sure inside of six hours.”