These papers were some that they had used the night before drawing plans and making measurements of the house.
Scanning the papers, Wise was startled to see a scrawled message on the corner of a sheet. It read:
They’ve got me. L. N.
It had been so hastily jotted down as to be almost illegible.
Had North managed to scribble it while his captor or captors looked another way? It was all too unbelievable!
The thought would creep in that North was implicated in the mystery himself. Yet that was quite as unbelievable as the rest of it,—if not more so.
Wise turned his attention to the disordered furniture.
The overturned chair was not broken, but a glass tumbler was. Evidently it had been knocked off the night stand. The rug was in wrinkles and one window curtain had been partly pulled from its rod.
The scratches on the hardwood floor were apparently made by scuffling feet, but of that Wise could not be sure.
In fine, the whole disorder of the room could have been made by struggling men, or could have been faked by any one desiring to produce that effect.