"Looky here, Swift," Dr. De Breen buttonholed me, grabbing at his glasses, "what's in this case, anyhow? Have you got the man? 'T isn't a woman, is it?" He cocked his head on one side, and favored me with a squinting regard.
"No, I have n't," I emphatically returned. "And what's more, I don't think you 're going to hit upon him to-day. It is n't a woman, either."
"Don't say! But what have you?"
I displayed the cipher, at which he scowled ferociously for a second.
"It's a combination," he announced decisively; "bet the cigars it's a combination—or direction of some sort."
"Sure thing. Perhaps, too, you 'll tell me where I can try it out."
Holding his glasses with one hand, he stared through them at the bit of paper.
"What are those fluted affairs at each end with figure '10's' in 'em?"
I shook my head. "You can search me. I thought you might tell me something; I can ask more questions about it myself right now than I can answer."
But I added my conviction that they were facsimiles of some detail of ornamentation I had seen in the house. I also told him where the cipher had been discovered—but not who had discovered it—and, in short, gave him a summary of the entire case. Before I was through he was grinning at me in a very superior and knowing way.