Penny kept her back turned and walked even more slowly. The man overtook her, passed without so much as bestowing a glance upon her. He went to a door which bore the number 27 and, taking a key from his pocket, fitted it into the lock.
Penny would have thought nothing of his act, save that as he swung back the door, the strange sound which previously had drawn her attention, increased in volume. It died away again as the door closed behind Fergus.
Waiting a moment, Penny went on down the hall and paused near the room where the hotel man had entered. She looked quickly up and down the hall. No one was in sight.
Moving closer, she pressed her ear to the panel. There was no sound inside the room, but as she waited, the rhythmical chugging began again. And suddenly she knew what caused it—a teletype machine!
Often in her father’s newspaper office Penny had heard that same sound and had watched the printers recording news from all parts of the country. There was no mistaking it, for she could plainly distinguish the clicking of the type against the platen, the low hum of the machine itself, the quick clang of the little bell at the end of each line of copy.
“What would the hotel be doing with a teletype?” she mused. “They print no newspapers here.”
Into Penny’s mind leaped a startling thought. The coded message in upper case letters which Fergus had dropped in the snow! Might it not have been printed by a teletype machine?
“But what significance could it have?” she asked herself. “From what office are the messages being sent and for what purpose?”
It seemed to Penny that the answer to her many questions might lie, not in the Green Room as she had supposed, but close at hand in Number 27.
Her ear pressed to the panel, the girl made out a low rumble of voices above the clatter of the teletype. Ralph Fergus was talking with another man but she could not distinguish a word they were saying. So intent was she that she failed to hear a step behind her.