two hands.

Then he said in a low voice--

"Can you play the piano?"

"Yes," said Syme in simple wonder, "I'm supposed to have a good touch."

Then, as the other did not speak, he added--

"I trust the great cloud is lifted."

After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous shadow of
his hands--

"It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter."

"Thank you," said Syme, "you flatter me."

"Listen to me," said the other, "and remember whom we have to see
tomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which is
very much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels out
of the Tower. We are trying to steal a secret from a very sharp, very
strong, and very wicked man. I believe there is no man, except the
President, of course, who is so seriously startling and formidable as
that little grinning fellow in goggles. He has not perhaps the white-hot
enthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for anarchy, which marks the
Secretary. But then that very fanaticism in the Secretary has a human
pathos, and is almost a redeeming trait. But the little Doctor has a
brutal sanity that is more shocking than the Secretary's disease. Don't
you notice his detestable virility and vitality. He bounces like an
india-rubber ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I wonder if he
ever sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in the
round, black head of Dr. Bull."

"And you think," said Syme, "that this unique monster will be soothed if
I play the piano to him?"

"Don't be an ass," said his mentor. "I mentioned the piano because it
gives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go through
this interview and come out sane or alive, we must have some code of
signals between us that this brute will not see. I have made a rough
alphabetical cypher corresponding to the five fingers--like this, see,"
and he rippled with his fingers on the wooden table--"B A D, bad, a word
we may frequently require."

Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study the
scheme. He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, and with his
hands at conjuring, and it did not take him long to learn how he might
convey simple messages by what would seem to be idle taps upon a table
or knee. But wine and companionship had always the effect of inspiring
him to a farcical ingenuity, and the Professor soon found himself
struggling with the too vast energy of the new