As he spoke he pounced on the crumpled ball that Tom had tossed there the evening before, and hastily smoothed it out. Then he and Dick read the words written on it.
"That explains why he went," said Bert when they had mastered its contents. "But it doesn't explain where he went or why he didn't get back before this." They gazed at each other a few seconds, and each saw his own fears mirrored in the eyes of his friend.
"There's something wrong somewhere," declared Dick at length, "and it's up to us to find out what."
"It looks that way," said Bert. Then he continued, "this isn't a regular telegram, you see. It looks as though the person writing it had just scribbled the message on the handiest scrap of paper he could find, which happened to be this."
"It may give us a clue to the writer," said Dick, as a sudden thought flashed across his mind; "there are several telegraph offices in the town, and probably if we showed that slip in any of them we could learn what office it came from. There must be some identifying mark on it. Then the people in that office might be able to give us some clue as to who wrote it."
"It's worth trying, anyway," said Bert after a brief consideration. "And the sooner we start the better. I'm getting more worried every minute."
With all thoughts of breakfast forgotten, they hurried from the college, and were not long in reaching the railroad depot where the main telegraph office was located. They showed the slip to the operator, asking him if he could tell them from what station it had been taken.
"Sure," he said, looking at a figure in the upper left-hand corner, "that came from station 'D,' on the corner of Spruce and Elm Streets."
The boys thanked him and hurried out. The address the operator had given them was nearly a mile away, and they broke into a run. As they went along they noticed that the houses lining the streets began to wear a very tumble-down aspect, and to thin out more and more.
"This is a rotten neighborhood," panted Bert; "we must be getting pretty near the edge of the town."