Part 26 (2/2)

Suddenly, however, the night before they were due to reach Southampton, Jack was sitting staring at the message when, without warning, as such things sometimes will, the real sense of the message leaped at him from the page.

”Meet me at _three_ on the paving _stones_, the weather is _fine_ but got no _specimens_, there is no _suspicion_ as you have _directed_ but I'm afraid _wrong_.”

Taking every fourth word from the dispatch then, it read as follows:

”Three stones. Fine specimens. Suspicion directed wrong.”

Jack sat staring like one bewitched as the amazingly simple cipher revealed itself in a flash after his hours of study. Granted he had struck the right solution, the message was illuminating enough.

Professor Dusenberry was a dangerous crook, instead of the harmless old ”crank” the pa.s.sengers had taken him for, and his cipher message was to a confederate.

But on second thought Jack was inclined to believe that it was merely a coincidence that placing together every fourth word of the jumbled message made a dispatch having a perfectly understandable bearing on the jewel theft. It was impossible to believe that Professor Dusenberry, mild and self-effacing, could have had a hand in the attack on the diamond merchant. Jack was sorely perplexed.

He was still puzzling over the matter when the object of his thoughts appeared in his usual timid manner. He wished to send another dispatch, he said. While he wrote it out Jack studied the mild, almost benevolent features of the man known as Prof. Dusenberry.

”But there's one test,” he thought to himself. ”If the 'fourth word'

test applies to this dispatch also, the Professor is a criminal, of a dangerous type, in disguise. But he contrived to glance carelessly over the dispatch when the professor handed it to him and fumbled in his pocket for a wallet with which to pay for it. Not till the seemingly mild old man had shuffled out did Jack apply his test to it. The message read as follows:

”_Columbia_ fast as motor-boat, watch her in Southampton. Am well and will no more time throw away on fake life-preserver.”

F.

With fingers that actually trembled, Jack wrote down every fourth word.

Here is the result he obtained:

”Motorboat Southampton. Will throw life-preserver.”

”By the great horn-spoon,” exclaimed Jack to himself, ”it worked out like a charm. But still, what am I going to do? I can't go to the captain with no more evidence than this. He would not order the man detained. I have it!” he cried, after a moment of deep reflection. ”The Southampton detectives have been already wirelessed about the crime and are going to board the s.h.i.+p. I'll flash them another message, telling them of the plan to drop the jewels overboard in a life-preserver so that they will float till the motor-boat picks them up.”

Jack first, however, sent the supposed Prof. Dusenberry's message through to London, with which he was now in touch. He noted it was to the same address as before, that of a Mr. Jeremy Pottler, 38 South Totting Road, W. Then he summoned the Southampton station, and, before long, a messenger brought to the police authorities there a dispatch that caused a great deal of excitement. He had just finished doing this when Jack's attention was attracted by the re-entrance of the professor.

He wanted to look over the dispatch he had sent again, he said, but Jack noticed that his eyes, singularly keen behind his spectacles, swept the table swiftly as if in search of something. The abstract that Jack had made of the cipher dispatch lay in plain view. Jack hastily swept it out of sight by an apparently careless movement. But he felt the professor's eyes fixed on him keenly.

But if Prof. Dusenberry had observed anything he said nothing. He merely remarked that the dispatch appeared to be all right and walked out again in his peculiar shambling way.

”The old fox suspects something,” thought Jack. ”I wonder if he saw that little translation I took the liberty of making of his dispatch. If he did, he must have known that I smelled a rat.”

Just then Raynor dropped in on his way on watch.

”Well, we're in to-morrow, Jack,” he said, ”but I'm afraid the Britisher will beat us out.”

”I'm afraid so, too,” responded Jack. ”Their operator has been crowing over me all day. But at any rate it was in a good cause.”

”Yes, and they're taking up a subscription for the s.h.i.+pwrecked men at the concert to-night, I hear, so that they won't land dest.i.tute.”

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