CHAPTER IX
A MESSAGE IN THE NIGHT
Patricia took the crumpled scrap of paper to the table and smoothed it out under the lamp. It was a single sheet and was torn almost in two, one way across and partially along all its edges, as if an attempt had been made to destroy it, an attempt that had not been totally successful, probably because the paper was rather thick and tough. It looked very much as if some one had tried at first to tear it in pieces, and, not having succeeded in this, had simply crumpled it and thrown it away. The writing was in a fine, cramped, almost foreign-looking hand. And the note, for such it appeared to be, was un-addressed, beginning abruptly, without a name, and signed at the end with only an initial. Patricia read it through wonderingly. It ran thus:
"Mary and George have arrived. Heard they got home yesterday. Can it be true? Let no circumstances detain you. Need I say more to you? If they stay in town while here, I can no longer visit them. We go out every week to see cousins. Their house is quite new in the suburbs. See Hanford before you leave. At a store there once had good cream. Meet Mary soon and you will find Josephine there.
"F."
"Well of all the silly letters!" thought Patricia, after the first reading. "What can it all mean? Of course, it refers to people and circumstances I don't know anything about, but even so, it sounds sort of scrappy. I wonder why Chet wanted me to read it? I suppose I really shouldn't have done so. I feel as if I'd been prying into some one's affairs in a rather horrid way, reading the letter they thought they had destroyed. I suppose it was one of Madame Vanderpoel's. It isn't in the least interesting, anyway, and I do wonder why Chet saved it and asked me to read it. All I get from it is that somebody 'arrived' and she had to go, probably to meet them. Perhaps that explains why they left so suddenly. Well, Chester will have to explain later why he thought it worth showing to me."
Then her mind reverted to the strange, unnerving revelations the boy had made concerning her father, the unknown pair who had known so much about his affairs and had left before they arrived, and the terrible Franz and Hofmeyer who had doubtless been spying on them all the time, and who, even now, were probably in possession of the Crimson Patch. And Peter Stoger—spy without doubt and a disguised one at that—confirming her worst suspicions of him! By what a hideous net they were surrounded! And her father did not even know all these details. How helpful they might be to him in his search, if she could only put him in possession of the facts. But that was impossible till he was with her again in person. And meantime, there was all this long night to be got through, without her father to share her anxiety.
She took up the crumpled note once more and read it again, critically. At the second reading it struck her as even more foolish and disjointed than at first. It really meant very little when boiled down to the bare facts. It seemed scarcely possible that Madame Vanderpoel could find any very informing news in it.
While she was still studying it, the telephone rang with a sudden shrillness that caused her to jump, and she hurried over to take down the receiver.
"Hello! hello!" she heard from very far away. "Is that you, Patricia?" And she recognized her father's voice.
"Oh, yes, yes, Daddy! Where are you? Are you coming back to-night?"