Two days later came a reply, locating the lost craft at Bayonne. Average Jones went thither and identified it. Within its single room was uttermost confusion, testifying to the simplest kind of housekeeping sharply terminated. Attempt had been made to burn the boat before it was given to wind and current, but certain evidences of charred wood, and the fact of a succession of furious thunder-showers in the week past, suggested the reason for failure. In a heap of rubbish, where the fire had apparently started, Average Jones found, first, a Washington newspaper, which he pocketed; next, with a swelling heart, the wreck of the pasteboard cabinet, but no sign of the strange valise which had held it. The “Mercy” sign was gone from the cabinet, its place being supplied by a placard, larger, in a different handwriting, and startlingly more specific:
“DANGER! IF FOUND DESTROY AT ONCE.
Do Not Touch With Bare Hands.”
There was nothing else. Gingerly, Average Jones detached the sign. The cabinet proved to be empty. He pushed a rock into it, lifted it on the end of a stick and dropped it overboard. One after another eight little fishes glinted up through the water, turned their white bellies to the sunlight and bobbed, motionless. The investigator hastily threw away the label and cast his gloves after it. But on his return to the city he was able to give a reproduction of the writing to Professor Gehren which convinced that anxious scholar that Harvey Craig had been alive and able to write not long before the time when the houseboat was set adrift.
CHAPTER V. THE MERCY SIGN—TWO
Some days after the recovery of the houseboat, Average Jones sat at breakfast, according to his custom, in the café of the Hotel Palatia. Several matters were troubling his normally serene mind. First of these was the loss of the trail which should have led to Harvey Craig. Second, as a minor issue, the Oriental papers found in the deserted Bellair Street apartment had been proved, by translation, to consist mainly of revolutionary sound and fury, signifying, to the person most concerned, nothing. As for the issue of the Washington daily, culled from the houseboat, there was, amidst the usual mélange of social, diplomatic, political and city news, no marked passage to show any reason for its having been in the possession of “Smith.” Average Jones had studied and restudied the columns, both reading matter and advertising, until he knew them almost by heart. During the period of waiting for his order to be brought he was brooding over the problem, when he felt a hand-pressure on his shoulder and turned to confront Mr. Thomas Colvin McIntyre, solemn of countenance and groomed with a supernal modesty of elegance, as befitted a rising young diplomat, already Fifth Assistant Secretary of State of the United States of America.
“Hello, Tommy,” said the breakfaster. “What’ll you have to drink? An entente cordiale?”
“Don’t joke,” said the other. “I’m in a pale pink funk. I’m afraid to look into the morning papers.”
“Hello! What have you been up to that’s scandalous?”
“It isn’t me,” replied the diplomat ungrammatically. “It’s Telfik Bey.”
“Telfik Bey? Wait a minute. Let me think.” The name had struck a response from some thought wire within Average Jones’ perturbed brain. Presently it came to him as visualized print in small head-lines, reproduced to the mind’s eye from the Washington newspaper which he had so exhaustively studied.