“One thing I can do, though, and I will. I’ll learn if Parloti has a typewriter, and I’ll try to get a sample of the kind of work it does, for I suspect that he, or some of his tools, sent this. The chase is getting too hot for Mr. Parloti. He’s beginning to feel the pressure.
“I wonder, after all, if he’s the guilty one. His staying here, after all the hue and cry, shows that he has nerve, if nothing else. He wants me to stop hounding him, does he? Well, I’ll put the screws on all the harder, and I’ll have Nyler do the same thing.”
Larry put his resolution into effect the next day. He showed the threatening note to his detective friend, who agreed with him that it would hardly be worth while to look for the writer, unless the clews pointed strongly to Parloti.
Larry used the note as the basis for a story, reproducing it in big type in the Leader, and giving a humorous turn to it, so that his mother would not worry. In fact he laughed at the threat, and practically invited the kidnappers to come and get him.
“By Jove! Everything seems to come Larry’s way!” complained Peter Manton, when he saw the latest “scoop” his rival had secured, through the receipt of the note.
“Well, I wish something would come your way once in a while,” suggested the city editor of the Scorcher, who did not relish having his paper beaten so often. “Why can’t you write a note to yourself, drop it in the box, and play it up for a sensation?” he asked. “We might have a story then.”
“It wouldn’t do, after this one,” said Peter. “Everyone would guess that it was faked. Besides, I haven’t gotten after Parloti the way Larry has.”
“Well, why haven’t you?”
“Because I don’t believe he took the boy.”
“You don’t? Who do you think did?”