“I must have dropped it here in the room,” said Jim. “I’ll look.”
But the most thorough search that he and Dick could make brought them no trace of the missing letter, which now loomed so important in the discussion. Jim’s landlady was called up, but she had seen nothing of it when she cleaned his room, and the one servant of the house, who was absolutely trustworthy, professed an equal ignorance.
“Could you have dropped it outside?” asked Dick.
“I don’t see how I could,” said Jim. “I put all the letters I got that morning in my pocket, and didn’t take them out until I was in the carriage with Bill Brady. I told him about thinking I had seen a second letter, and we looked in the wagon. But it wasn’t there.”
“You told Brady about it, eh?” said Dick. “That’s good.”
The next step was to find Brady and see if he could throw any light on the missing letter, which had assumed such great importance in the case.
“You can see how it is, Jim,” said Dick Merriwell. “I don’t say that you were to blame in any way. It may have been pure accident, and something that you couldn’t avoid, that resulted in the disappearance of that letter. But it’s got to be found. If it isn’t, and you simply say you didn’t receive it, how will we look? They’ll produce the receipt that is signed by you—always assuming that you did sign it, which we will soon find out—and say that you are naturally denying the receipt of the money. But your denial wouldn’t be accepted as proof by people who don’t know you, against the positive evidence of that receipt. That’s the thing that makes the whole thing look so bad and so difficult.”
Brady, furious at the idea of such a charge, was slow in becoming calm enough to try to remember what had happened. Then, however, he recalled what Jim had said about the second letter he thought had come to him.
“You didn’t have it while you were with me,” he said positively. “And you didn’t drop it while you were coming out of the house, either. You remember that Carpenter was with you, and I was surprised, because I didn’t think that you and he were friendly. So I was watching you more closely than I would have done as a rule.”
“Carpenter?” said Dick Merriwell, puzzled. “I don’t think I know the name. Who is he?”