“The mine!” he muttered to himself. “They’re going through the mine to-morrow, and McDonough’s foreman on the lower level. What a chance!”
Without stopping to hear more, he sprang up and went hurriedly into the writing room, where he sat down at a small table and drew a sheet of the hotel paper from the rack.
First carefully tearing off the heading, he picked up a pen and wrote rapidly. Then he looked around for a blotter, but there was none in sight.
“Where the deuce do they keep the things?” he muttered angrily.
Finally he jerked open a drawer and found a stack of new ones inside. He snatched up one of them and carefully blotted the scrawl. Then he folded the note and put it in his pocket.
“I must get a plain envelope at the stationer’s,” he murmured, “and then find a boy to take it to Dolan’s before Bill gets away. I rather think you may have an interesting time at the mine to-morrow, my friend.”
As Morrison peered out into the lobby, he was dismayed to find that Merriwell and his friend Buckhart had left the sofa and were talking to the clerk at the desk. His first instinctive impulse was to dodge back into the writing room. Then he gave a muttered exclamation.
“Pshaw! What a loon I am! I’ve got as much right in this hotel as he has, and he’ll never know what I came here for.”
Squaring his shoulders, he stalked toward the entrance, with eyes averted from the desk, and disappeared into the darkness.
“There goes your friend, the pitcher, pard,” Buckhart grinned. “Wonder what that varmint’s doing here.”