"Like? I dunno. Something like the governor, little and thin, except he's got a limp in the leg and a lot of greyish hair all stuck out. Besides, whoever changed them bottles, and put the poison in place of the bromide, was back in the doctor's house in Torquay. There's where you want to look, old cock."
"You little liar," said Mrs. Antrim.
It seemed doubtful whether I could spin out this questioning much longer, for they were both waiting for me to do something. Yet Bowers's dark hint about Dr. Keppel permitted me to do without suspicion exactly what I had been sent here to do: search the room, and particularly the desk, under pretext of looking for something missing. Though I searched with considerable thoroughness, there was nothing
at all in the room, either suspicious or otherwise. The desk itself was almost empty. The room was very neat except for a sprawled newspaper, evidently the paper Mrs. Antrim had used in her jugglery with the key to this room, lying beside the desk.
But there was something on the blotter. I picked up the string of cuff-links and put it to one side, to see whether there might be anything under the blotting-pad; and there were a few lines of very clear letters where something had been blotted on the white surface. There were other smudges and occasional letters criss-crossing, but these seemed to stand out. They appeared to be in English.
"Hold it up to a mirror!" said Bowers excitedly. "He was writing a letter this morning. I seen 'im at it."
"Writing a letter to whom?"
"I dunno. He posted it himself. But he wrote a lot of letters." Bowers pointed to the book of stamps. "Always at it. What's more, those words weren't on that blotter yesterday: I remember, becos I looked at the blotter to see whether it wanted changing. Hold it up to a mirror!"
I picked up the whole pad and went to the mirror over the fireplace. And, in small finicky handwriting, in English, and in as flat terms as could have been used, was the following barefaced message:
fast planes. I will make the attempt to-night, and I assure Your Excellency that I have every hope of success. The envelope is in the upper right-hand pigeon-hole of Keppel's desk at the Cabot Hotel, Bristol. Perhaps it would have been wiser, in view of Keppel's doubts, to have had two reliable men hero. But if I succeed in obtaining possession of the envelope we shall be in possession of knowledge which….’