He read the letter. It gave a clear narrative of the events of which Juanita had told him—Don Fernan's making up of the accounts of the business, the journey from Barcelona to Saragossa, the ambush on the road, the suspected treachery of Miguel Priego. Then followed a declaration of the old merchant's intentions in regard to his property. In the last sentence he stated that the place where the treasure had been concealed was known only to his servant José, but that the secret was contained in a short postscript, which could only be read in the light of a private communication made to Jack himself in Salamanca.
Jack looked eagerly at the postscript. He uttered an exclamation of joy as he realized that Miguel must have found the letter useless to him. For the postscript consisted of a single line of sprawling uneven capital letters, set close together, not divided into words, and conveying to the uninitiated absolutely no meaning.
"What do you make of that?" said Jack, handing the letter to Dugdale.
"No good. Don't know a word of Spanish except pan, agua, cebolla, which I hear every day, and a few—interjections, I think they call 'em in grammar."
"I don't mean the letter, I mean the postscript."
"The postscript!" He held the paper at arm's-length, shut one eye, and frowned. "H'm! Looks like a cat's swearing, or Welsh. Too bad even for Spanish. Some infant set to practise his capitals, eh?"
Jack smiled.
"I'm as much in the dark as you are. Perhaps you wouldn't mind making a copy of the letters, in case the original goes astray?"
"Very well. Bet you I'll make a dozen mistakes. It dazzles my eyes. You'd better call 'em out one by one."
Accordingly Jack read the twenty-nine letters off separately, and Dugdale, whose inaptitude with the pencil was clearly shown by the frequency with which he licked his lips, made laborious strokes on a sheet of paper taken from Miguel's note-book.