I noticed that the sentence exactly fitted a line of the same length as the strip of paper with the holes in it; and when I laid the first line of holes on the top of the words the meaning was clear.
All the letters were covered by it except the following:
RETURN AT ONCE
“Return at once.”
A simple direction to send the letter back; and 134 was probably the number by which the man was known to his companions. I had had my trouble for nothing—or next to nothing; for the cipher key did not cover the figures at the end of the message.
Then a thought struck me. The numerals might stand for letters: 134 would be “A. C. D.;” or 13 and 4, “M.D.”
“M.D.!” I uttered the letters aloud in my surprise. They were Miralda’s initials. “Miralda Dominguez.”
The coincidence mazed me; but a moment’s reflection made the inference appear grotesque, preposterous, idiotic; and I laughed at it.
But my nerves were out of balance. The ordeal of the last few hours, following so close upon the tense interview with Miralda on the Stella, had tried me severely. Everybody appeared to be playing at make-believe to cause me to misread everything I saw and heard.
Even as I laughed at the thought that Miralda could have had even the remotest connexion with the cipher message, the disconcerting possibility suggested by the coincidence would not be shaken off.