"Gur-r-r!" said Jack, frowning heavily. "Sort of sequel to 'The Bloodstained Putty-knife, or the Bricklayer's Revenge.'"
Septimus smiled as one who indulges the caprices of a child. "Comrade, you will never make a detective," he said. "I've got the book here, with the yarns in it, if you'd care to read them. Meanwhile—"
"Look here," interrupted Billy Faraday, a shade impatiently. "There's not much time before morning-school, and I'd like to hide the Star before we go any further. Of course, I might stick it in the pouch of my belt and carry it about with me, but don't you think that's just the scheme that'd strike Lazare and his crowd as being most natural. I might be knocked down and searched; anything might happen."
"One of the boards in this floor is loose," said Jack thoughtfully. "How would it be to prise it up and drop the Star down there? We could replace the carpet, and nobody would be any the wiser."
But Septimus Patch had what he considered a better idea. "We were just now talking," he observed, "of Dupin, the first scientific detective in fiction. There is a story about him, called 'The Purloined Letter.' The strength of it is that a fellow is known to have a letter which he has stolen, but it baffles the detectives to find it. They go all over his room, rip up the boards, sound the cabinets for secret drawers, take accurate measurements of the tables, probe everything, but the merry old letter is still missing, although they know for a fact that it's somewhere about the fellow's house. They call old Dupin in, and he finds it right away."
"How?"
"By using his brains, comrade; by simple reasoning. Here, hand me that book of Poe's, and I'll read some of his reasoning."
A day or two before, Jack and Billy would have laughed at Patch's request, and refused his help; but they had to admit that he had used his brains in regard to the footprint clue, and they were willing to give him a chance to safeguard the Black Star on the strength of that first triumph.
"Here you are," said Billy a little sceptically, throwing over the desired volume. "Show us what you can do."
Patch whipped over the pages with accustomed fingers, and began to read. "Says Dupin, 'There is a game of puzzles which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to find a given word—the name of a town, river, State, or empire—any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious."