Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/513



young switch-tower man had lost all interest in the fire now. He stood thinking deeply, and felt quite depressed.

He was very certain that the papers Mrs. Davis had placed in the tin box in some way referred to her interest in the twenty thousand dollars' worth of railroad bonds, to which she had so frequently and significantly alluded.

She had told his mother that she was going to get something from a friend to show her and Ralph. Was it not these very same papers?

It was very possible, Ralph reflected further, that in some way Mrs. Davis' kidnappers had got a clew to the hiding place of these self-same documents.

"One word, please," spoke up Ralph, as the young man started to wheel his mother away from the scene of the fire. "Someone certainly forced a way to your attic and rifled that trunk."

"Who could it be—how could they know?" queried the distressed invalid. Rh