say.

It came from the window and conveyed nothing. Would I do so and so? I
forget what her requests were, only that they necessitated my leaving
the room. There seemed no alternative but to obey, yet I felt loath to
leave her and was hesitating near the doorway when a new interruption
occurred. Nixon brought in a telegram, and, as Mrs. Packard advanced
to take it, she threw on the table the slip of paper which she had been
poring over behind the curtains.

As I stepped back at Nixon's entrance I was near the table and the
single glance I gave this paper as it fell showed me that it was covered
with the same Hebrew-like characters of which I already possessed more
than one example. The surprise was acute, but the opportunity which came
with it was one I could not let slip. Meeting her eye as the door closed
on Nixon, I pointed at the scrawl she had thrown down, and wonderingly
asked her if that was what Letty had found pinned to the baby's coat.

With a surprised start, she paused in her act of opening the telegram
and made a motion as if to repossess herself of this, but seeming to
think better of it she confined herself to giving me a sharp look.

"Yes," was her curt assent.

I summoned up all my courage, possibly all my powers of acting.

"Why, what is there in unreadable characters like these to alarm you?"

She forgot her telegram, she forgot everything but that here was a
question she must answer in a way to disarm all suspicion.

"The fact," she accentuated gravely, "that they are unreadable. What
menace may they not contain? I am afraid of them, as I am of all obscure
and mystifying things."

In a flash, at the utterance of these words, I saw, my way to the
fulfillment of the wish which had actuated me from the instant my eyes
had fallen on this paper.

"Do you think it a cipher?" I asked.

"A cipher?"

"I have always been good at puzzles. I wish you would let me see what
I can make out of these rows of broken squares and topsy-turvy angles.
Perhaps I can prove to you that they contain nothing to alarm you."

The gleam of something almost ferocious sprang into this gentle woman's
eyes. Her lips moved and I expected an angry denial, but fear kept her
back. She did not dare to appear to understand this paper any better
than I did. Besides, she was doubtless conscious that its secret was not
one to yield to any mere puzzle-reader. She could safely trust it to my
curiosity. All this I detected in her