As I held the message, Reid looked over my shoulder and read for a moment. Then, turning, he cried, “Come over here, boys, and look at this a little more closely. That’s old parchment, just like that of some of those papal bulls in the glass cases over in the library.”
As he spoke a sudden remembrance flashed across me. “Anybody got a microscope around here?” I asked quickly.
“There’s a reading glass,” said Ordway, and opening a drawer he handed one to me. I took the paper to the sunlit window, and began examining it closely with the lens. The rest watched me curiously. At last I shook my head. “No use,” I exclaimed. “I thought I had a clue, but it didn’t pan out. There’s a good story though, without anything more. Here, Ordway,” and I handed back the letter.
The other correspondents moved away, seeking fresh fields for copy, but I lingered a moment as John King, my classmate at Columbia and my good friend, stepped forward to bid Ordway good-bye. As I watched his deeply lined, melancholy face and his emaciated form, I wondered if wealth had not come to him too late.
“Good-bye, Ordway,” said John. “This is the last you’ll see of me. I’m through with the daily grind at six o’clock to-night.”
“I’m sorry to hear that in one way, King,” said Ordway gravely. “I felt last year when you went abroad that you were running down hill and I expected, when I heard you had come into your uncle’s money, that you would pull out. What are you going to do?”
“Oh! I shall travel again for a bit,” replied John. “There are some things I want to do before I get through with this old earth, if I am to get through.”
“You’ll be all right,” answered Ordway. “I only wish I had your chance. There’s my bell now. You see how it is—tied like a slave to the wheels of the chariot, etc. But good luck, anyway, and good-bye.”
He gave John a friendly grasp, and as he turned away, threw the massive folded sheet, which he still held, into the waste basket. “I guess we won’t file that with the state documents,” he said laughing. “Good-bye, and good luck once more.”