“Yes,” Poetry said, “but what about the envelope with the blank piece of typewriter paper in it?”
There wasn’t any sense in talking about that again, ’cause we’d already decided it had maybe been left there by the kidnapper who had planned to write a note on it and had gotten scared, and left it, planning to come back later, maybe, or something. Anyway, anything we’d said about it didn’t make sense, so why bring it up again? I thought.
“That’s OUT,” I said. “I’m keeping it for a souvenir.” I had it in my shirt pocket and for fun pulled it out and opened it and turned it over and over in my hands to show them that it was as white as a Sugar Creek pasture field after a heavy snowfall.
But say, all of a sudden as I spread it out, Poetry let out an excited gasp, and exclaimed, “Hey! Look! There’s something written on it!”
I could hardly believe my eyes, but there it was as plain as day, something that looked like writing—scratches and longish straight and crooked lines, and down at the bottom a crazy drawing of some kind.
5
YOU can imagine how we felt when we looked at that crazy, almost illegible drawing on that paper, which, when we’d found it, had been without even one pencil mark on it, and now as plain as day there was something on it—only it wasn’t drawn with a pencil or ink or crayon but looked kinda like what is called a “water mark” which you can see on different kinds of expensive writing paper.
All of us leaned closer, and I held it as close to the smoking and flickering candle as I could, so we could see it better, when Poetry gasped again and said, “Hey! It’s getting plainer. Look!”
And Poetry was right. Right in front of our eyes as I held the crazy looking lines close to the candle, the different lines began to be clearer, although they still looked like water marks.