o, he has inverted one sentence in
his haste and said 'read through it,' instead, of 'read it through.'
Otherwise, it's ordinary enough."

"It must be vanity that keeps you from eyeglasses, Bert," Average Jones
observed with a sigh. "Well, I'm afraid I set you on the wrong track,
myself!"

Bertram lifted an eyebrow with an effort. "Meaning, I suppose, that
you're on the tight and have solved the cipher."

"Cipher be jiggered. You were right in your opening remark. There isn't
any cipher. If you read Mr. Robinson's note correctly, and if you'd had
the advantage of working on the original of the advertisement as I have,
you'd undoubtedly have noticed at once--"

"Thank you," murmured Bertram.

"--that fully one-third of the pin-pricks don't touch any letters at
all."

"Then we should have taken the letters which lie between the holes?"

"No. The letters don't count. It's the punctures. Force your eyes to
consider those alone, and you will see that the holes themselves form
letters and words. Read through it carefully, as Robins directed."

He held the paper up to the light. Bertram made out in straggling
characters, formed in skeleton the perforations, this legend:

ALL POINTS TO YOU TAKE THE SHORT CUT DEATH IS EASIER THAN SOME THINGS.

"Whew! That's a cheery little greeting," remarked Bertram. "But why
didn't friend Robinson point it out definitely in his letter?"

"Wanted to test my capacity perhaps. Or, it may have been simply that he
was too frightened and rattled to know just what he was writing."

"Know anything of him?"

"Only what the directory tells, and directories don't deal in really
intimate details of biography, you know. There's quite an assortment of
William H. Robinsons, but the one who lives at the Caronia appears to be
a commission merchant on Pearl Street. As the Caronia is one of the
most elegant and quite the most enormous of those small cities within
themselves which we call apartment houses, I take it that Mr. Robinson
is well-to-do, and probably married. You can ask him, yourself, if you
like. He's due any moment, now."

Promptly, as befitted a business man, Mr. William H. Robinson arrived
on the stroke of twelve. He was a well-made, well-dressed citizen
of forty-five, who would have been wholly ordinary save for one
peculiarity. In a room more than temperately cool he was sweating
profusely, and that, despite the fact that his light overcoat was on
his arm. Not polite perspiratio