This discovery gave me a horrid shock. I was brought down with a crash from my high sentiment to something earthly and devilish. I was fairly well used to Boche filthiness, but this seemed too grim a piece of the utterly damnable. I wanted to have Ivery by the throat and force the stuff into his body, and watch him decay slowly into the horror he had contrived for honest men.
“Let’s get out of this infernal place,” I said.
But Mary was not listening. She had picked up one of the newspapers and was gloating over it. I looked and saw that it was open at an advertisement of Weissmann’s “Deep-breathing” system.
“Oh, look, Dick,” she cried breathlessly.
The column of type had little dots made by a red pencil below certain words.
“It’s it,” she whispered, “it’s the cipher—I’m almost sure it’s the cipher!”
“Well, he’d be likely to know it if anyone did.”
“But don’t you see it’s the cipher which Chelius uses—the man in Switzerland? Oh, I can’t explain now, for it’s very long, but I think—I think—I have found out what we have all been wanting. Chelius....”
“Whisht!” I said. “What’s that?”
There was a queer sound from the out-of-doors as if a sudden wind had risen in the still night.