Roger said he still thought it a sound idea.
“I don’t, now,” Tip had declared. “They may not go in at the temple to see about us for days, and what difference would it make whether the lower end is blocked if they did come down that way? They’d go back, mad as hornets, and we would be in for it!”
If they had left everything as before, Potts had insisted, anyone using the lower entrance would suspect nothing, and might not even know they had come out that way.
“I’m going back and fix it the way we found it,” he had said.
Loyal, honest, faithful Tip! Why, Roger wondered, did his mind persist in telling him that Potts had stayed away from camp a long time and why did he associate that with the present threat?
Truly enough, he had actually seen—helped replace—that gem. With equal sureness, the note said that the gem was gone. It was no trick of deduction to assume that the note had been prepared by the lamas, soon after he had escaped. They had shown how clever they were at pretending to be able to read his mind, telling about the lab.
He recalled that he had kept a record in a booklet, of radio conversations from his portable set in the lamasery to the camp set.
They had specimens of his handwriting. A clever man, forging for the purpose of conveying a threat, perhaps planning some harm to Roger on the trip home, had certainly, to all appearances, made the note.
Well, his mind ran on, if they had been so sure that the gem was gone, and if they had supposed that in vanishing he and Potts had taken it, the note would be their natural Tibetan way to account to Grover for anything that might have happened to Roger later.
Nothing had; but the note had been despatched, with the probable knowledge that the letter, by mail, might get a faster trip, a more direct route than the travelers might use. It had been so.