“I’m afraid it really isn’t much of a clue,” Anne confessed, escorting her friend into the living room. “Just before Father died he tried to tell where he had hidden the formula but it was hard for him to speak. The nurse handed him paper and pencil and he managed to write a few words. He wasn’t able to finish the message.”
Anne moved over to the desk and took a scrap of paper from a pigeon hole. She handed it to Madge, watching her face closely as she scrutinized the cramped writing.
“Why, this doesn’t make sense!” Madge protested. “It just says, ‘written in secret—’ Is this all of it?”
Anne nodded.
“Only three words. I’ve puzzled over it until my head whirls. I’ve finally figured out that he was trying to tell me the formula had been written in some secret code.”
“Why would he have done that? To protect it?”
“Yes, Father was obsessed with the idea that someone wanted to steal the formula, particularly after his trouble with Clyde. At the very last—” Anne’s voice broke. “—he wasn’t quite himself. He kept calling for some one. ‘Kim’ he would say, ‘Kim’ and looked at me so strangely.”
“He knew some one by that name?”
“Not to my knowledge. He probably was delirious.”
It occurred to Madge that the entire idea of the formula might have been a delusion as her Aunt Maude had hinted. Tactfully, she broached the subject.