"Nigel," she exclaimed, "you see whose handwriting this is? Could it be part of the decoded dispatch?"
The telephone enquiry had been unimportant. Nigel pushed the instrument away. They both looked eagerly at the page of manuscript paper. It was numbered "8" at the top, and the few words written upon it in Lord Dorminster's writing were obviously the continuation of a paragraph:
The name of the middle one, then, of the three secret cities, into which at all costs some one must find his way, is Kroten, and the telephone number which is all the clue I have been able to get, up to the present, to the London end of the affair, is Mayfair 146.
"This is just where he got to in the decoding!" Nigel declared. "I wonder whether it's any use looking for the rest."
They searched through every page of the heavy code books in vain. Then they returned to their study of the single page. Nigel dragged down an atlas and studied it.
"Kroten," he muttered. "Here it is,—a small place about six hundred miles from Petrograd, apparently the centre of a barren, swampy district, population thirty thousand, birth rate declining, industries nil. Cheerful sort of spot it seems!"
"I have more luck than you!" Maggie cried, her finger tracing out a line in the open telephone book. "Look!"
Nigel glanced over her shoulder and read the entry to which she was pointing:
"Immelan Oscar, 13 Clarges Street, W. Mayfair 146."