The letter dropped so carefully by Carpenter—for he had done his work well—was found by Jim Phillips himself on Friday morning. Jim was nervous and upset. The team was to start that evening for Cambridge, and he knew, despite Dick Merriwell’s optimistic way of speaking, that things were still looking very bad, and that he was as far as ever from being cleared of the charge against him. The feeling that he was regarded by many of his friends and fellow students as one who had for money deliberately violated his standing as an amateur and a Yale athlete, and that Yale would suffer the next day because of his absence, had had a bad effect on him, as was only natural.
Bill Brady was with him as he found the letter. Jim, bending over by his desk, saw a little speck of white protruding from the edge of the carpet. He pounced on it, and, with a cry of amazement, held up the envelope.
Eagerly he and Brady examined it. Outwardly, it was exactly as Chetwind had described it. The number stamped on it by the post-office was the same that had appeared on the card receipt which Jim had signed, now in Chetwind’s possession. But inside they found the real surprise. The money was missing. There was only a single sheet of note paper, folded three times, with no writing at all on it. That, too, confirmed Chetwind, in a way. He had said that the two fifty-dollar bills he had sent had been put inside a sheet of folded note paper.
“We must have overlooked this when we searched the room,” said Jim, tremendously excited.
“Not a bit of it,” cried Brady. “I took up the whole carpet myself, and went over the whole floor. I shook out the carpet, too, and I couldn’t possibly have missed this. Look here, Jim! This envelope has been slit open by a knife. Some one has opened it, and taken the money out. And it isn’t here by accident, either. It’s been put here for you to find—or for some one else. Probably they would rather have had some outsider find it than you—but that’s a small matter. A criminal, or you, if you were guilty, might destroy this. But I think it may work the thing out yet. I’m no detective, but Merriwell is. If he doesn’t call this a first-class clew, I’ll eat my hat.”
“Let’s take it to him right away,” cried Jim eagerly, seizing his hat.
“Hold on!” cried Brady, almost as excited as his friend, but because he was less deeply concerned personally, finding it easier to keep his head. “I want him to see this just as we found it, before there’s any chance to have things changed around in the room.”
He went to the window, and looking out into York Street, soon saw a freshmen walking past.
“Hello, there, freshie!” he called. “Beat it up to Mr. Merriwell’s rooms, and ask him if he can’t come down here right away.”
The freshman obeyed—he would have been venturesome, indeed, had he not—and Bill and Jim Phillips waited impatiently for the universal coach to appear. He did not keep them waiting long, for he knew that such a summons must mean an important discovery.