It was not yet dark, for it will be remembered it was summer time, but stepping to the bar, behind which the landlord was standing serving a customer, Harvey asked for the key to his room. It was handed to him from a nail and he was directed to ascend the stairs to the upper hall, along which he was to walk until he saw the number “34” on the door.
As Harvey started to follow directions, he glanced about the bar-room, in which there were six or eight persons, but the author of the mysterious message was not among them. He was standing on the porch outside, and looked for an instant through the window at Harvey, but no sign or signal was exchanged between them.
Not until he had entered his room and locked the door did Harvey unroll the paper pellet, and, standing by the window where the light was good, read the following words:
“I shall knock at your door at nine o’clock this evening. Keep your colored servant out of the way. I have something important to say to you. When we meet outside of your room neither must show that he has ever met the other. Don’t fail me.
S. P.”
After the perplexity caused by these curious sentences, Harvey Hamilton’s feeling was that of amusement.
“I have come to Chesterton in my aeroplane, and dived head first into one of the most tremendous mysteries that ever was. Bunk and I set out to find adventure and it looks as if we had struck it rich. But what the mischief can it all mean?”
Try as hard as he might, he could not take the matter as seriously as it seemed to him he ought to do. The time was well on in the twentieth century, he was in one of the most civilized sections of the Union, and things as a rule were conducted in accordance with law. Surely “S. P.” was not hinting at murder, or burglary, or incendiarism, or any other heinous crime.
“What is he driving at and who is he?”
Harvey Hamilton would not have been a bright, high-spirited youth of seventeen years had he not been stirred by the curious communication that had been delivered so oddly to him. He speculated and theorized, and the more he did so the more he was puzzled.