Hutchinson wasted no time. Testing the desk, he found it locked, whereupon he produced a huge bunch of keys, muttering:
“If one of these won’t do it, I’ll have to break it open. I’m going into it now, anyhow.”
Selecting the keys most likely to fit such a lock, he found that the fourth one tried served his purpose. The bolt clicked, and he opened the lid. Although he was moving swiftly, apparently he was still as cool and unagitated as Locke might have been himself while opening the desk with the proper key, which the pitcher carried in his pocket.
Immediately on lowering the lid of the desk, Hutchinson’s eyes discovered something that gave him a feeling of satisfaction. It was an unfinished letter, written on the paper of the hotel, pushed back and left lying under the pigeonholes.
“This ought to tell me something,” muttered the man. “It’s a letter the fellow hasn’t found time to finish, and, at least, it will furnish the needed specimen of his handwriting.”
In the most informal way, without giving the full name and address of the person for whom it was intended, the letter began: “My dear Grandall;” and went on to give an account of the experiences of the writer since his arrival in Kingsbridge.
The chirography was strong and manly, and extremely easy to read, although not at all of the “copper-plate” variety.
Hutchinson, running through the letter swiftly in search of the proof he desired, gave little heed to the quaintly humorous description of the pulp-mill town, “baseball batty”; and he skimmed through the somewhat graphic, self-chaffing account of the first game pitched by the writer, in which, as he laughingly confessed, he began with “a combination attack of stage fright and buck fever.” These paragraphs, however, he perused without missing a word: