Then, when she had slipped in her sheets of paper, and sat ready at her typewriter, he swung around so as to face Schilder, and crisply dictated: “Please come at once, on receipt of this, to the office of the Dolliver Foundry, as I desire to confer with you on a matter of the greatest importance.” His eyes never for a moment left Schilder’s face while the message was being transcribed, but if he had expected to see anything there, he was doomed to disappointment. The countenance of the manager remained as expressionless as a mask. “What do you think of that?” Grail finally asked him. “Well”--the other man was lighting a cigar--“it certainly seems urgent enough.” “Yes,” said Grail dryly; “except for the address and signature, it is, word for word, the same as the note received by Colonel Vedant. “Ah, thank you, Miss Griffin,” he added, as he took the two sheets of paper which she handed him, and, signing the original, slipped it into an envelope. “I’m going to ask you, too, if you don’t mind, to stop at the A. D. T. office on your way to the car, and have them rush this right out to the fort.” After this, nothing more was said until the girl had donned her hat and jacket and taken her departure. Grail thoughtfully folded up and put into his pocket the carbon copy, which he had been studying meanwhile under the light at the desk. “I observe, Mr. Schilder,” he said, “that the capital D on your typewriter blurs badly, and that the m is slightly chipped on one side. It will be interesting to compare this copy with the note received by the colonel, to see if both show the same defects.” The manager, however, merely shrugged his shoulders. “You still cling to the idea that the note must have come from here, eh? Well, you’re on the wrong scent, captain--entirely on the wrong scent. A sheet of our letter paper would be no very difficult thing to get hold of, and when you come to look into the matter I think you’ll find that the original note was written at post headquarters.” “At post headquarters! What do you mean by that?” demanded Grail. “My dear captain,” Schilder answered, “hasn’t it struck you yet that the most likely person in the world to write that note to Colonel Vedant was--Colonel Vedant himself? Between ourselves, now--you are better acquainted with conditions than I--isn’t there something which might have induced the old fellow to drop quietly out of sight?” “Ah!” Grail spoke slowly. “So that is your solution, is it?” “A more plausible one, at any rate, than to imagine he was kidnaped, or something of that sort,” Schilder contended. “It wouldn’t have been much of a trick for him to have slipped off his coat so as to look like one of the workmen, and then to have dodged through the gate when old Dennis wasn’t looking. Men have done such things before, captain.”