forgotten the old cipher, but I haven't. You
know yourself we invented it, Jimmy and me, and the police tried their
level best to get on to it, but failed."

"You can't address it in cipher, and if you're tailed you won't get a
chance to mail it, Wally. Better wait and try to see him without
writing."

For answer Pennold opened a drawer in the table, drew forth a grimy
sheet of paper and an envelope, and bent laboriously to his task. It
was long past dusk when he had finished, and tossed the paper across
the table for his wife's perusal. This is what she saw:

[Illustration: An image of a coded message is shown here in the text.]

When she had gazed long at the characters, she shook her head at him,
and a slow smile came over her face.

"You've forgotten a little yourself, Wally. You made a mistake in the
_k_."

He glanced half-incredulously at it, and then laid his huge, rough
hand on her thin hair in the first caress he had given her in years.

"By God, old girl, you're a smart one! You're right. Now listen.
You've got to do the rest for me, the hardest part. Mail it."

"How? If we're tailed--"

"There'll be only one on the job, if we are, and I'll keep him busy
to-morrow morning. You go to the market as usual, then go into that
big department store, Ahearn & McManus'. There's a mail chute there,
next the notion counter on the ground floor. Buy a spool of thread or
somethin', and while you're waitin' for change, drop the letter in the
box. You used to be pretty slick in department stores, Mame--"

"Smoothest shoplifter in New York until I got palsy!" she interrupted
proudly, an unaccustomed glow on her sallow face. "I'll do it, Wally;
I know I can!"

The next morning Alfred Hicks was a little late in getting to his work
at the bank--so late, in fact, that he had only time to wave a cordial
greeting to his new friends in their cages as he passed. He paused,
however, that evening, with a pot of flowering bloom for Mrs.
Pennold's dingy, not over-clean window-sill, and a packet of tobacco
which he shared generously with his host. He talked much, with the
garrulous self-confidence of youth, but did not mention the matter of
the securities, and left the crafty couple completely disarmed.

Neither on entering nor leaving did Hicks appear to notice a short,
swarthy figure loitering in the shadow of a dejected-looking ailanthus
tree near the corner. It would have appeared curious, therefore, that
the lurking fig