"He didn't say
anything to you about going anywhere, did he?"

"Not a word," said Dick, "and I think if he had expected to be away any
length of time he would have told one of us about it."

"Something might have come up unexpectedly," said Bert; "but then he'd
have left a note for us. I--but what's that over in the corner!" he
suddenly exclaimed, "looks as though it might be a telegram."

As he spoke he pounced on the crumpled ball that Tom had tossed there
the evening before, and hastily smoothed it out. Then he and Dick read
the words written on it.

"That explains why he went," said Bert when they had mastered its
contents. "But it doesn't explain where he went or why he didn't get
back before this." They gazed at each other a few seconds, and each saw
his own fears mirrored in the eyes of his friend.

"There's something wrong somewhere," declared Dick at length, "and it's
up to us to find out what."

"It looks that way," said Bert. Then he continued, "this isn't a regular
telegram, you see. It looks as though the person writing it had just
scribbled the message on the handiest scrap of paper he could find,
which happened to be this."

"It may give us a clue to the writer," said Dick, as a sudden thought
flashed across his mind; "there are several telegraph offices in the
town, and probably if we showed that slip in any of them we could learn
what office it came from. There must be some identifying mark on it.
Then the people in that office might be able to give us some clue as to
who wrote it."

"It's worth trying, anyway," said Bert after a brief consideration. "And
the sooner we start the better. I'm getting more worried every minute."

With all thoughts of breakfast forgotten, they hurried from the college,
and were not long in reaching the railroad depot where the main
telegraph office was located. They showed the slip to the operator,
asking him if he could tell them from what station it had been taken.

"Sure," he said, looking at a figure in the upper left-hand corner,
"that came from station 'D,' on the corner of Spruce and Elm Streets."

The boys thanked him and hurried out. The address the operator had given
them was nearly a mile away, and they broke into a run. As they went
along they noticed that the houses lining the streets began to wear a
very tumble-down aspect, and to thin out more and more.

"This is a rotten neighborhood," panted Bert; "we must be getting pretty
near the edge of t