"Dear Blanche Paglar:
"I read in the New York Courier this morning of your search for Spike Talley. Perhaps I can give you a clue. I cannot hold out any hope to you that he is still alive, but anyway I suppose it would be a relief to you to learn the truth. But I don't want to deceive you. I am sure of nothing yet. I have only a suspicion. I thought if we could put what little I know with what you know we might clear up the whole thing."
Having written this much Pen paused and reread it with a frown. It sounded too cut and dried. She wished to win this unknown girl's heart. It was nothing to Pen at that moment that Blanche had loved a gangster and was perhaps herself a criminal. All Pen considered was that Blanche had lost her lover, and that Pen's own lover was in terrible danger. That made them sisters. She continued, from the heart:
"I am a girl like yourself. I understand much that was not written in the paper. Like yourself I love somebody who is threatened by a worse fate than that which I suppose may have overtaken your friend. And at the hands of the same man. We ought to be friends. We ought to help one another."
Pen's eyelids prickled as she wrote this. She forced down the emotion, and continued more soberly:
"I dare not write all I suspect to one who is still a stranger to me. Will you meet me in Baltimore on Tuesday at noon? I shall be waiting for you in front of the notion counter in Douglas' department store. Anybody will direct you to it. I don't know what you look like of course, but you may recognize me by a blue silk turban stitched with red. My hair and eyes are dark. You may take a good look at me before you make yourself known, and decide if I look like a person who can be trusted. Don't speak to me if I am not alone. Even if I am alone I may be watched, and it would be better for you to greet me like an old friend. I will enclose a post-office order for fifteen dollars to pay your fare to Baltimore and back."
Pen was afraid to put her name to this. She hated anonymity, and realized that it would raise a justifiable suspicion in the other girl's breast, but within the past few days the newspapers had made the name of Pendleton Broome almost as famous as that of Donald Counsell. How could she take the risk? Suppose her letter ended in the newspapers? She turned hot and cold at the thought. Even the post-mark Absolom's Island would give too much away. But she had to take that chance. She couldn't put down a false name either. She finally signed her letter: "Your Would-be Friend."
When she finally held her letter enclosed, and addressed in her hand, her heart failed her for a moment. "It will only arouse her suspicions," she thought. "She'll never come!" Pen steeled her resolution. "In that case I'll go to her!"
Pen got a blank check from one of the clerks, filled it out and cashed it. There went her chance of the new hat she needed so badly. Leaving her purchases in the store for the moment she went on up the road to the post-office. The store looked out over the waters of Back Creek. You went up a little rise and found yourself looking out over the river from the other side of the Island. The post-office stood on the corner where the road turned up-stream. It was only a couple of hundred yards from the store but outside the range of Riever's vision from the tender.
The mail bus had just arrived and a certain proportion of the Islanders were hanging about outside the little building, waiting for the distribution. During this interval the door was always locked but Pen enjoyed privileges there. She knocked, and the post-master, Sammy Cupples, seeing who it was, made haste to open.