Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/297

Rh mere” embossed in blue at the top. There were also on the table pens, an inkstand, and two or three blotters. He turned the blotters over, but only one of them showed any sign of having been used, and the marks on it were very faint—yet they seemed to interest Godfrey. He bent over them with puzzled face; then he got out a little magnifying glass and studied them again.

“Lester,” he said, at last, “I wish you’d take a look at this,” and he pushed the blotter and glass toward me. “What do you make of it?”

I gazed through the glass at the marks, but for a moment could make nothing of them. Then they resolved themselves into a string of letters marching backward, fairly distinct at one end but fading away to nothingness at the other, thus—



“Somebody seems to have been scribbling a lot of disconnected letters on a piece of paper,” I said, at last. “I can’t make out any words. The letters seem to be mostly B’s and G’s—yes, and here’s an I.”

“Thomas,” said Godfrey, “will you go down and ask Mr. Delroy if he has a sample of Mr. Tremaine’s handwriting, and, if so, if he will let us see it for a moment?”

Thomas went out instantly and I looked at Godfrey in surprise.

“You think those marks have some value?” I asked.

Godfrey drummed absently on the table and stared out of the window.