ld only see two noughts among the numbers, so plainly it was a longer
message than the one then deciphered--one of sixty-two letters, in fact.
I turned the figures into the letters corresponding in the alphabet, _a_
for 1, _b_ for 2, and so on, as Hewitt had done, and I arranged these
letters in the squares of a roughly drawn chessboard, so that they stood
thus:--

w s o a i n i b
t h a t n n t h
n e l d i g e n
c h r w o n a h
v i f a r c e a
s n o u i o t l
r l u a f w t l
i r o e r m l t

The letters thus set out, to read off the message was a simple task
enough, in view of the key Hewitt had given me. I began, as in the case
of the Lever Key message, at the right-hand top corner, and taking the
knight's move from _b_ to _e_ in the last square but one of the third
line, thence to _a_ at the end of the fifth line, and so to _t_ in the
seventh line, and from that to _r_ (fifth square in bottom line), _u_ in
seventh line and so on, in the order shown by the Lever Key message, a
copy of which I kept as a curiosity in my pocket-book. So I read the
message through, and I set it down thus:--

/#
_Be at ruin Channel Marsh to-night twelve; wait in hall for
instruc. Word final._
#/

The general meaning of this seemed clear enough. The man whom the
policeman had recognised as Broady Sims was to be at some spot--a ruined
building, it would seem--in a place called Channel Marsh, at midnight,
there to wait in the hall for instructions; no doubt for instructions
where to take the hundred pounds he was to have got from the bank. "Word
final" was not so clear, though I judged--and I think rightly--that it
meant that the word "final" was to be used as a password by which the
two messengers should know each other.

I was almost at my destination, and was cogitating the message and its
meaning, when the cab checked at some traffic in Barbican, just by the
"Compasses" public-house, and Mr. Victor Peytral hailed me and climbed
on the step of the cab.

"I was just going to see if Mr. Hewitt was at the place," he said, "and
if so to ask him for news. But I am rather in a hurry, and perhaps you
can tell me?"

"We are on the track, I think," I answered, "and I have just come across
this, which I am taking to Hewitt," and with that I showed him my
translation of the cypher, and gave him its history in