Trevor.

"'Almost immediately after you left.'

"'Did he recover consciousness?'

"'For an instant before the end.'

"'Any message for me.'

"'Only that the papers were in the back drawer of the Japanese cabinet.'

"My friend ascended with the doctor to the chamber of death, while I
remained in the study, turning the whole matter over and over in my
head, and feeling as sombre as ever I had done in my life. What was the
past of this Trevor, pugilist, traveler, and gold-digger, and how had he
placed himself in the power of this acid-faced seaman? Why, too, should
he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and
die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingham? Then I remembered
that Fordingham was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the
seaman had gone to visit and presumably to blackmail, had also been
mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come
from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret
which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old
confederate that such a betrayal was imminent. So far it seemed clear
enough. But then how could this letter be trivial and grotesque, as
describe by the son? He must have misread it. If so, it must have been
one of those ingenious secret codes which mean one thing while they seem
to mean another. I must see this letter. If there were a hidden meaning
in it, I was confident that I could pluck it forth. For an hour I sat
pondering over it in the gloom, until at last a weeping maid brought in
a lamp, and close at her heels came my friend Trevor, pale but composed,
with these very papers which lie upon my knee held in his grasp. He sat
down opposite to me, drew the lamp to the edge of the table, and handed
me a short note scribbled, as you see, upon a single sheet of gray
paper. 'The supply of game for London is going steadily up,' it ran.
'Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders
for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant's life.'

"I dare say my face looked as bewildered as yours did just now when
first I read this message. Then I reread it very carefully. It was
evidently as I had thought, and some secret meaning must lie buried
in this strange combination of words. Or could it be that there was
a prearranged significance to such phrases as 'fly-paper' and
'hen-pheasant'? Such a meaning would be arbitrary and could not be
deduced