A glance at the envelope showed his own name written plainly thereon. Evidently the boy had carelessly transposed the messages, giving Bainbridge the one intended for the tool of his bitterest enemy. To Bob the annoyance of realizing that, in all probability, Kollock was in possession of Tweedy’s wire about the loan was swallowed up in the interest of those ten words before him.
That they were written in a secret code Bainbridge had not a doubt. There was a superficial coherency about them, but when one studied the message, the impossibility of a careless operator being responsible for those errors became plain. Just what that code might be Bob did not know, but he meant to find out if such a thing were possible. A cryptogram addressed to Bill Kollock must, almost certainly, be of vital importance to himself.
The reading of the ciper—if such it could be called—proved ever simpler than he had expected. Taking the first letters of each word from left to right made no sense at all. Reversing the process, however, produced this cryptic phrase:
“Touch torch.”
“About as dotty as the other.” grumbled Bob, crumpling the message into a pocket. “I’m hanged if I’ll bother with the thing any longer.”
He could not help thinking about it, however, and after a futile walk to the telegraph office, and equally futile attempt to locate the operator, he went back to the hotel and turned in.
But even here his mind refused to respond to the urgings of his tired body. Though he did best to forget those two tantalizing words, he found it impossible. What did they mean? What could they mean? Perhaps, after all, they meant nothing in themselves, but were simply a cryptic sort of signal which the recipient alone would understand.
“Touch torch,” he murmured drowsily, as he stretched his weary body luxuriously on the first real bed he had known in months. “What the deuce! Touch torch——Great guns! The mill!”
With a single bound he cleared the space between bed and bureau. In a second the lamp was lighted, and he was flinging on his clothes in mad haste. What a thick-headed fool he had been! That was it, of course! Thwarted in those other cowardly attacks, it was the most natural thing in the world for Elihu Crane to make use of this means of crippling his competitor. He who had not hesitated at attempted assassination was not likely to stop at arson.
Within five minutes Bainbridge had left the hotel, and was tearing down the road in the direction of his property. The sky was still dark and placid, and for a little while he thought he would be in time. But as he reached the fence surrounding the mill, and ran along it toward the nearest gates, a sudden reddish glow flashed up through the blackness beyond the high board structure, followed by a little shower of sparks like a feathery rocket.