The scrap-basket had a pile of waste in it, including a couple of evening papers. However, I turned it over and examined it while Craig watched.
As I did so I fairly pounced on a sheet of paper crumpled into a ball, and eagerly straightened it out flat on the table.
“Humph!” I ejaculated in disgust. “Blank! Might have known she wouldn’t leave anything in writing around, I suppose.”
I was about to throw it back when Kennedy took it from me. He held it up to the light. It was still just a crumpled sheet of white paper. He looked about. On a dressing-table stood an electric curling-iron. He heated it and passed it over the paper until it curled with the heat. Still it was just a blank sheet of paper.
Was he pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp?
For a moment he regarded it thoughtfully. “If I were in the laboratory,” he ruminated, “I could tell pretty quick whether— Wait!—that’s foolish. She hasn’t any laboratory here. Walter, fill that basin with warm water.”
In the bottom of the basin Craig laid the sheet of paper and we bent over it.
“Nothing doing,” I remarked, disappointed.
“Why not?” he returned, eagerly, turning the wet paper. “We had it wrong side up!”
There, before our eyes, under the water, characters of some sort were appearing.