“It wouldn’t be a hanging matter, anyhow,” he said. “There’s a lot against him, but hardly a jury in the country would hang a man for something he did, if he could prove he was delirious the next day.” She paled at this dubious comfort, but it struck her sense of humor, too, for she threw me a fleeting smile. “I was to ask you to do something,” she said. “None of us can, for we are being watched. I was probably followed here. The Ella is still in the river, with only a watchman on board. We want you to go there to-night, if you can.” “To the Ella?” She was feeling in her pocketbook, and now she held out to me an envelope addressed in a sprawling hand to Mr. Turner at his hotel. “Am I to open it?” “Please.” I unfolded a sheet of ruled note-paper of the most ordinary variety. It had been opened and laid flat, and on it, in black ink, was a crude drawing of the deck of the Ella, as one would look down on it from aloft. Here and there were small crosses in red ink, and, overlying it all from bow to stern, a red axe. Around the border, not written, but printed in childish letters, were the words: “NOT YET. HA, HA.” In a corner was a drawing of a gallows, or what passes in the everyday mind for a gallows, and in the opposite corner an open book. “You see,” she said, “it was mailed downtown late this afternoon. The hotel got it at seven o’clock. Marshall wanted to get a detective, but I thought of you. I knew—you knew the boat, and then—you had said—” “Anything in all the world that I can do to help you, I will do,” I said, looking at her. And the thing that I could not keep out of my eyes made her drop hers. “Sweet little document!” said McWhirter, looking over my shoulder. “Sent by some one with a nice disposition. What do the crosses mark?” “The location of the bodies when found,” I explained—“these three. This looks like the place where Burns lay unconscious. That one near the rail I don’t know about, nor this by the mainmast.” “We thought they might mark places, clues, perhaps, that had been overlooked. The whole—the whole document is a taunt, isn’t it? The scaffold, and the axe, and ‘not yet’; a piece of bravado!” “Right you are,” said McWhirter admiringly. “A little escape of glee from somebody who’s laughing too soon. One-thirty—it will soon be the proper hour for something to happen on the Ella, won’t it? If that was sent by some member of the crew—and it looks like it; they are loose to-day—the quicker we follow it up, the better, if there’s anything to follow.” “We thought if you would go early in the morning, before any of them make an excuse to go back on board—” “We will go right away; but, please—don’t build too much on this. It’s a good possibility, that’s all. Will the watchman let us on board?” “We thought of that. Here is a note to him from Marshall, and—will you do us one more kindness?” “I will.” “Then—if you should find anything, bring it to us; to the police, later, if you must, but to us first.” “When?”