“Easy, professor! You are getting slangy. I am inclined to be somewhat curious, and I will admit that my curiosity is aroused. I want to solve this mystery; I want to know just what this business means. Besides that, Inza Burrage is somewhere in London.”
“And you might as well look for a needle in a haystack as to search for her. You will waste your time, Frank.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I shall write home, to know if she is here, and to obtain her address. I shall not leave London till I receive an answer to the letter.”
Scotch flung up both hands in despair.
“Have your own way!” he groaned. “It looks as if I might take you back to America in a coffin—if I am lucky enough to take you back at all.”
Frank laughed, seeming quite at ease, but fully settled in his mind and determined. He fell to studying the handwriting on the two sheets of paper before him. After a few minutes, he said:
“There is no resemblance. They were written by entirely different persons. The first is a warning of a friendly sort; but the second came from an enemy.”
The professor once more adjusted his spectacles and surveyed the writing. He spent at least fifteen minutes over the two notes, and then he straightened up, agreeing with Frank.
“You are quite right, quite right. The two notes were not written by the same person. The first is written in an undisguised hand, but it is plain that the writer of the second made an effort to disguise his writing.”
“I don’t know but the police would be interested in these,” said the boy. “I may take a notion to carry them to the police.”