Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/300

274 and yet it had been broken into half a dozen pieces, and hurled into the basket.

Whistling softly to himself, Godfrey surveyed it for a moment; then he bent over the basket and examined the remainder of its contents, piece by piece. There were scraps of letters, a torn envelope, a crumpled sheet of paper…

He sprang to his feet with a cry of triumph and waved it in the air.

“I’ve found it!” he cried, his face beaming. “I’ve found it, Lester!”

“Found what?” I questioned, more and more astonished, for Godfrey was usually master of his emotions.

“Ah, Lester,” he continued more calmly, as he smoothed it out carefully on the table, “this takes a lot of conceit out of me. Had I been really clever, I’d have deduced the existence of this message long before I entered the room. As it is, it’s luck—pure luck! I’m glad to win on any terms, but I’d rather win by scientific deduction. C. Auguste Dupin would have come straight upstairs, walked straight to that basket, and selected unerringly this sheet of paper—he would have known that it was there; while I—well, one can only do one’s best, and this point was a little too fine for me. Take a look at it.”

It was a sheet of the ordinary Edgemere note paper. Across it, two lines were written:

“Well,” I faltered; “well”