All this business completed, provisions and gasoline bought, and letters sent away, the boys went back to the Rambler to study up the three mysterious papers as forming a whole. But the black wallet held no paper of any kind! There were a few half-rotten banknotes in it, a small flat key, and nothing else!
“We are up against it again!” cried Case. “Well,” with a smile, “we’ll go right on and try to uncover the mystery without the third piece of paper. I wonder what this key fits, and if King got that third paper? He might! What?”
CHAPTER XIII.—ALEX PLANS A NIGHT ADVENTURE.
The boys talked over the possibility of King having the third paper for a long time. They could not see how the deputy had been able to secure it, if he had done so, unless he had discovered it in the cellar, which seemed to them to be highly improbable.
“That uncle of yours must have been a quaint old chap,” Clay said, laughingly. “How, for instance, did he know that you would ever find the bonds in the strong room?”
“I’m sure that he left a paper somewhere which tells about them,” was the boy’s reply. “Perhaps this third paper will unravel the whole mystery. Uncle told us about some papers the last time we saw him at the shack in the Grand Canyon, but he did not tell us where they were. He said we would find them after he was dead. I believe that all the papers were left in a letter for us, and that this man Trumbull stole it.”
“How do you account for his having a chance to get them?”
“He was there, in the canyon, living near Uncle, when the latter died—suddenly and alone, and was the first one there, the others say. It is said, too, that a letter was left for us, and that it disappeared. I knew Trumbull to be a thief, because he salted a mine and sold it, so I naturally suspected him of taking the letter. This is how I came to get the two papers and the money!”
“How did you come to find Trumbull in Chicago? All this is very interesting to me. Wasn’t that a long chance—to find him at all?”
“We were in Chicago, earning our own living, when Uncle died. The people living near the canyon wrote us about Uncle’s death, and about this man Trumbull being there, and about the disappearance of the letter. I thought the letter might have contained the promised papers, and so watched for Trumbull, never expecting to see him there, though!”