“Not at all. This is mud, not sand. And it’s ground or pressed in. Has any one tampered with these since they were found?”
“I went through the pockets.”
Average Jones frowned. “Find anything?”
“Nothing of importance. A handkerchief, some odds and ends of string—oh, and a paper with some gibberish on it.”
“What was the nature of this gibberish?”
“Why it might have been some sort of boyish secret code, though it was hardly decipherable enough to judge from. I remember some flamboyant adjectives referring to something three feet high. I threw the paper into the waste-basket.”
Turning that receptacle out on the table, Average Jones discovered in the debris a sheet of cheap, ruled paper, covered with penciled words in print characters. Most of these had been crossed out in favor of other words or sentences, which in turn had been “scratched.” Evidently the writer had been toilfully experimenting toward some elegance or emphasis of expression, which persistently eluded him. Amidst the wreck and ruin of rhetoric, however, one phrase stood out clear:
“Stupendous scientific sensation.”
Below this was a huddle and smudge of words, from which adjectives darted out like dim flame amidst smoke. “Gigantic” showed in its entirety followed by an unintelligible erasure. At the end this line was the legend “3 Feet High.” “Verita Visitor,” appeared below, and beyond it, what seemed to be the word “Void.” And near the foot of the sheet the student of all this chaos could make faintly but unmistakably, “Marvelous Man-l—” the rest of the word being cut off by a broad black smear. “Monster 3 Feet.” The remainder was wholly undecipherable.
Average Jones looked up from this curio, and there was a strange expression in the eyes which met the minister’s.