It was a curious sort of a letter, and seemed to contain a warning of some sort. It was written upon a typewriter whose ribbon was far from clean. Not only did it contain a warning, but it seemed to me there was a threat in the words. But more important than anything else was the statement that the writer would call upon Warren. As it had been written the day before, Warren must have seen the person only an hour before he died.
Without a word I handed the letter to Ranville and watched his face as he read. When he came to the end, I saw his eyebrows raise a little, and he turned to me.
“This looks important, Pelt. Any signs of the missing portion of the sheet?”
I shook my head, and we both turned to the desk. We went through every paper, lifting them from each other, and even turning the pages of the books. But we found nothing. Then we turned our attention to the wastebasket, turning the contents upon a small rug. But the basket contained only the discarded notes which had been thrown aside and a few matches. The missing half of the letter we did not find.
As we paused, I noticed that the chief and Carter were before the bookcase—the bookcase with the broken glass. Ranville placed the letter in his pocket and said: “What do you make of it?”
I told him what I thought, that it contained both a warning and a threat, and then said that it looked as if the missing part had been taken in order to destroy the signature.
“True enough,” came the drawling answer. “But why did they not take the entire letter? Why destroy half of it and leave the other? If the whole note had been taken we would never have known anything about it. To take but half seems a very illogical thing to do.”
Hearing our voices, Carter and the chief came to the desk and asked what we had found. Ranville handed him the letter, and after they had both looked at it the chief held it a long while in his hand. His face was a study, and he slowly shook his head. He might have spoken if Carter had not said:
“The chief agrees with me that the murder of Professor Warren is going to make a great deal of comment. He will have the inquest to-morrow, and hopes before then to have something to go on. As it stands now all we know is that Warren was murdered, but nothing else. The—”
There came a commotion at the door, and we turned, only to see the housekeeper rush into the building. Her face was red as if she had been running, but why she had taken so long to come to the library after Carter called up I could not tell. For a second she leaned against the door as if out of breath, and then gave a quick glance around the room. In her eyes was terror, and the glance at length rested upon Carter. With one step in his direction, she gasped in a trembling voice so low that we could barely hear her: