"DROME" AGAIN
Scranton produced a clipping from a newspaper.
"This," he told us, "is from today's noon edition of The Herald. The account, you observe, is a short one; but it is my belief that it will prove to have been (at any rate, the pre-cursor of) the most extraordinary piece of news that this paper has ever printed."
He looked from one to the other of us as if challenging us to doubt it.
"What," asked Rhodes, "is it about?"
"The mysterious death (which the writer would have us believe was not mysterious at all) of Miss Rhoda Dillingham, daughter of the well-known landscape painter, on the Cowlitz Glacier, at the Tamahnowis Rocks, on the afternoon of Wednesday last."
"Mysterious?" queried Milton Rhodes. "I remember reading a short account of the girl's death. There was, however, nothing to indicate that there had been anything at all mysterious about the tragedy. Nor was there any mention of the Tamahnowis Rocks even. It said only that she had been killed, by a fall, on the Cowlitz Glacier."
"But there was something mysterious, Mr. Rhodes, how mysterious no one seems to even dream. For again we have it, that word which White heard the angel speak—that awful word Drome."
"Drome!" Milton Rhodes exclaimed. "That word again—after all these years?"
"Yes," said Scranton. "And you will understand the full and fearful meaning of what has just happened there on Mount Rainier when I tell you that knowledge of that mysterious word has always been held an utter secret by the Scrantons. No living man but myself knew it, and yet there it is again."