"What's that?"
"He's in love with her. He's making love to her now. He couldn't do that if he had robbed her."
"I don't know," I said grimly. "If he could rob her, I suspect he could make love to her."
That night at the theatre I devoted my attention pretty exclusively to Quarles. God knows I was not anxious to ruin the young fellow, but Sadie's communication taken in connection with the cryptogram and that mysterious cash deposit was beginning to look like pretty strong evidence. This being my first case, I attached more importance to "evidence" than I would now.
I was in his dressing-room when he left to go on for the third act. He had only a short scene at the beginning, and as he went out, he asked me to wait till he came off.
I watched him go with a sinking heart for I hated to do what I had to do. He was so handsome, so graceful, and with that burden on his breast, so invariably kind to me, I felt like a wretch. Nevertheless, I told myself for the sake of all of us I had to discover the painful secret he was hiding.
I knew exactly how long I had before he would return. I swung the door almost shut, as if the wind had blown it, and made a rapid, thorough search. There was a pile of letters on his dressing-table as yet unopened. Nothing suspicious there. Nothing in the drawers of his dressing-table. There was no trunk in the room. His street coat was on a form hanging from a hook. I frisked the pockets. There was a handful of letters, papers in the breast pocket. Shuffling them over I came upon a sheet of "dimity" note-paper without an envelope. Opening it I beheld a communication in cryptogram exactly like the other.
I could hear the voices on the stage. Roland was about to come off. I hastily returned all the papers to his pocket as I had found them,—except the cryptogram. That I put in my own pocket.
When he came in we picked up our conversation where we had dropped it.
As soon as I got home I made haste to translate my find. I had saved the numerical key I used before. I instantly found that it fitted this communication also. This is what I got: