“Did you find an envelope in the car, after I left?” asked Tom eagerly, as he got aboard, and told the circumstances.
“Didn’t find anything but an old lunch box, and there was nothing in it,” said the conductor.
“Then I must have dropped it before I got on the car,” decided Tom.
Arriving at the place where he had first boarded the electric vehicle, he alighted and hurried over the ground toward the house of the eccentric doctor. No sign of a white envelope greeted his anxious eyes.
“I’m going to ask if it’s in the house,” the boy said to himself, as he stood in front of the big, dark mansion. “I might have let it slip when I thought I put it in my pocket, and perhaps they picked it up on the floor. Though if Mr. and Mrs. Sandow did, they’re likely to keep it, if what Charley Grove says is true.”
Tom rang the bell. It seemed like a quarter of an hour before some one opened a window over his head and called:
“Well, what’s the matter? Is it a telegram?”
“I’m from Townsend’s book store,” replied Tom. “I came——”
“What! More books!” exclaimed a voice Tom recognized as Mrs. Sandow’s. “You can’t leave ’em here to-night. Everybody’s to bed long ago. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”
“I haven’t got any books,” said Tom. “I dropped the envelope with the ten-dollar bill the doctor gave me, and I thought maybe it might be in the house. Would you mind looking?”