“Okay. We’ll do some sleuthing.”
The two boys, carrying flashlights, headed into the forest without telling anyone where they were going. The jungle lay shrouded in silence, broken occasionally by the eerie calls of night birds in the faint glow of moonlight.
Bud halted about a hundred yards from the digging site. “This is it,” he said, focusing the beam of his flashlight on a crumbled slab of stone.
Tom lifted the stone a few inches and pulled out a bulky Manila envelope. He held it close to the light.
“There’s nothing on it,” Bud muttered.
“Wait a minute!” Tom scrutinized the envelope closely and rubbed it gently with his finger tips.
172
ELECTRONIC RETROSCOPE
“Bud, I believe there are traces of chemicals on this. It might be invisible writing.”
Bud whistled. “That does make it suspicious.”
“Maybe we can bring the writing out,” Tom replied. “I brought some chemicals from the Sky Queen to use in cleaning up those Mayan relics. They’re still in the jeep.”
“Okay, let’s get ‘em!” Bud urged.
The jeep was parked on the outskirts of the village, so the boys were able to secure the chemicals without being noticed. Tom hastily mixed a solution in a test tube. Then he moistened a wad of cotton and rubbed it over the envelope.
A STARTLING CONFESSION
173
The boys were thunderstruck as a series of words slowly appeared: drawings of tom swift jr.‘s parachute plane by wilson hutchcraft “Stolen plans!” Bud gasped. “So that’s what the sneaking rat’s been up to!”
Angrily Tom opened the envelope and pulled out a sheaf of large, folded papers. All seven were blank. Bud looked at his friend questioningly.
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