etending the role of a
good American, he certainly was a wonderful actor. As her admiration for
him increased and her interest in him grew she found that almost her
only antidote was to try to keep thinking of his face as she had seen it
the night that K-19--the other K-19--had been so mysteriously murdered.
She kept wondering if Chief Fleck had made any further discoveries about
the murder and resolved to ask him about it at the first opportunity.
She therefore was delighted when on Tuesday, as she made her regular
report by telephone, he asked if she could come to his office that
afternoon with Dean to discuss some matters of importance. They found
Carter already with the chief when they arrived.

"Thanks to your work, Miss Strong, and to Dean's dictograph," said the
chief, "we have made considerable progress. We have learned a lot more
about the cipher messages."

"You have learned it through me," cried Jane in amazement.

"Yes," said the chief, smiling, "from that list of names you reported."

"What were they, a cipher, a code?" questioned the girl breathlessly.

"No, nothing like that. They are merely the names of various innocent
and unsuspecting booksellers in various parts of the city."

"How did you discover that?"

"In the simplest and easiest way possible. I listed all the names you
reported and studied them carefully, trying to find their common
denominator. They were not in the same neighborhood, so it was not
locality. They were not all German, so it was not racial. I looked them
up in the telephone directory, checking up the numbers of the telephones
of the Jones, the Simpsons, but that gave no clue. Then, as I looked
through the telephone lists, I discovered that there was a bookstore
kept by a man of each name. Then I understood. It is a simple plan for
throwing off shadowers."

"You mean that Mr. Hoff goes to a different bookstore each day to leave
a code message?"

"That's it. The spy who gets the messages each morning calls him up by
'phone, mentioning just the one word. From that Mr. Hoff knows just
where to go, concealing the message in a book before agreed upon."

"The fifth book," interrupted Dean.

"Not always," explained Fleck. "It depends on whether there are five
letters in the name telephoned. I have located and copied several more
of the messages."

"But who gets the messages he leaves? Who takes them away from the
bookshops?" asked Jane, mindful of her own failure in that res