"I am going with you to see if we can find anything in the waste-paper basket at No. 219. Bell tells me that your servants have instructions to touch no papers, and I know that the back sitting-room of your house is used as a kind of office. I want, if possible, to find the paper that Henson tried to hide on the day you bought the cigar-case."
The basket proved to be a large one, and was partially filled with letters that had never been opened—begging-letters, Ruth said. For half an hour David was engaged in smoothing out crumpled sheets of paper, until at length his search was rewarded. He held a packet of note-paper, the usual six sheets, one inside the other, that generally go to correspondence sheets of good quality. It was crushed up, but Steel flattened it out and held it up for Ruth's inspection.
"Now, here is a find!" he cried. "Look at the address in green at the top: '15, Downend Terrace.' Five sheets of my own best notepaper, printed especially for myself, in this basket! Originally this was a block of six sheets, but the one has been written upon and the others crushed up like this. Beyond doubt the paper was stolen from my study. And—what's this?"
He held up the thick paper to the light. At the foot of the top sheet was plainly indented in outline the initials "D. S."
"My own cipher," David went on. "Scrawled in so boldly as to mark on the under sheet of paper. Almost invariably I use initials instead of my full name unless it is quite formal business."
"And what is to be done now?" Ruth asked.
"Find the letter forged over what looks like a genuine cipher," David said, grimly.
CHAPTER XXII
"THE LIGHT THAT FAILED"
Bell followed Dr. Cross into the hospital with a sense of familiar pleasure. The cool, sweet smell of the place, the decorous silence, the order of it all appealed to him strongly. It was as the old war-horse who sniffs the battle from afar. And the battle with death was ever a joy to Bell.