his
arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingbridge? Then I
remembered that Fordingbridge 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 the letter be trivial and
grotesque, as described 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 grey 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 daresay my face looked as bewildered as yours did just now when first
I read this message. Then I re-read it very carefully. It was evidently
as I had thought, and some second 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
in any way. And yet I was loth to believe that this was the case, and
the presence of the word 'Hudson' seemed to show that the subject of the
message was as I had guessed, and that it was from Beddoes rather than
the sailor. I tried it backwards, but the combination, 'Life pheasant's
hen,' was not encouraging. Then I tried alternate words, but neither
'The of for' nor 'supply game London' promised to throw any light upon
it. And then in an instant the key of the riddle was in my hands, and I
saw that every third word beginning with the first would give a message
which might well drive old Trevor to despair.

[Illu