Sighing, Dr. Fell came to the centre table, where he lighted another lamp and spread the paper out before him. The pipe smoke slowed down to thin, steady puffs between clenched teeth.
"H'm." he said. There was another silence.
"Wait a bit." urged Sir Beniamin, holding up his hand as the doctor seemed about to speak. "Don't begin talking like a damned dictionary, now. But do you see any lead there?"
"I was about to ask you," replied the other, mildly, "to pour me out another bottle of beer. However, since you mention it… the old-timers were children to, our modern cryptographers; the war proved that. And this one, which was written in the late eighteenth or early
nineteenth century, shouldn't be so difficult. The rebus was a favorite form then; it isn't that, I know. But it's a bit more difficult than the ordinary substitution cipher Poe was so fond of. It's something like a rebus, only…"
They had gathered round his chair and were bending over the paper. Again they all read the words:
How called the dwellers of Lyn-dun;
Great Homer's tale of Troy?
Or country of the midnight sun
What doth all men destroy?