'it is all pure
Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.'

'You believe me,' I said gratefully.

'Of course I do,' and he held out his hand. 'I believe everything out
of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.'

He was very young, but he was the man for my money.

'I think they're off my track for the moment, but I must lie close for
a couple of days. Can you take me in?'

He caught my elbow in his eagerness and drew me towards the house.
'You can lie as snug here as if you were in a moss-hole. I'll see that
nobody blabs, either. And you'll give me some more material about your
adventures?'

As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat of an engine.
There silhouetted against the dusky West was my friend, the monoplane.

He gave me a room at the back of the house, with a fine outlook over
the plateau, and he made me free of his own study, which was stacked
with cheap editions of his favourite authors. I never saw the
grandmother, so I guessed she was bedridden. An old woman called
Margit brought me my meals, and the innkeeper was around me at all
hours. I wanted some time to myself, so I invented a job for him. He
had a motor-bicycle, and I sent him off next morning for the daily
paper, which usually arrived with the post in the late afternoon. I
told him to keep his eyes skinned, and make note of any strange figures
he saw, keeping a special sharp look-out for motors and aeroplanes.
Then I sat down in real earnest to Scudder's note-book.

He came back at midday with the SCOTSMAN. There was nothing in it,
except some further evidence of Paddock and the milkman, and a
repetition of yesterday's statement that the murderer had gone North.
But there was a long article, reprinted from THE TIMES, about Karolides
and the state of affairs in the Balkans, though there was no mention of
any visit to England. I got rid of the innkeeper for the afternoon,
for I was getting very warm in my search for the cypher.

As I told you, it was a numerical cypher, and by an elaborate system of
experiments I had pretty well discovered what were the nulls and stops.
The trouble was the key word, and when I thought of the odd million
words he might have used I felt pretty hopeless. But about three
o'clock I had a sudden inspiration.

The name Julia Czechenyi flashed across my memory. Scudder had said it
was the key to the Karolides business, and it occurred to me to try it
on his cypher.

It worked. Th