Page:Ralph Paine--The Steam-Shovel Man.djvu/198

 laughing at each other for borrowing so much trouble."

It therefore happened that before noon of the following day there was delivered to the surgeon of the accident ward a message, which read thus:

The surgeon sighed as if here was a hard nut to crack. This was only the day after Walter Goodwin had vanished from the hospital, to the consternation of his friends, Devlin and Alfaro. They had hurried into Panama in search of him and no word had come back to the surgeon.

"I have no idea where Goodwin is," he said to a friend of the hospital staff. "He failed to turn up here last night, and I guess his friends couldn't find him. They were afraid he was in trouble."

"What will you do with the cablegram?"

"I think I had better hold it for two or three days before I try to answer it myself. Devlin