“If it’s what it may be,” says Mark, “it would take work to f-figger sense out of it. Can I keep it?”
“Yes,” says Rock. “Do you think it really is anything?”
“Lemme study it first. Let’s see, it says, ‘Where pussy looks she walks. Thirty and twenty and ten and forty-six. Stop ninety degrees in the shade. In. Down. Across. What color is a brick? Investigate. Believe what tells the truth.’ Some muddle, hain’t it?”
“Clean out of his head when he wrote it,” says I.
“Suppose,” says Mark, “you knew you was d-dyin’, and there was a m-message you wanted to l-leave, and you knew the only man around was ag’in’ you, and you dassent trust him, and you was sick and a leetle queer. Suppose you just had to leave a m-message that nobody could see sense to, but that had sense in it if it was studied out. Then what? Eh? Maybe,” says Mark, waggling his head—“maybe you’d think up a p-p-puzzle like this.”
“Do you think it’s a—what d’you call ’em-a cryptogram?”
“I think,” says Mark, “that there’s a chance of it.”
“What’s a cryptogram?” says I.
“A cipher message,” says Mark.
“Oh,” says I. “Like havin’ each letter in the alphabet a number or some kind of a mark?”