"Meet me at three on the paving stones, the weather is fine but got no specimens, there is no suspicion as you have directed but I'm afraid wrong."
Taking every fourth word from the dispatch then, it read as follows:
"Three stones. Fine specimens. Suspicion directed wrong."
Jack sat staring like one bewitched as the amazingly simple cipher revealed itself in a flash after his hours of study. Granted he had struck the right solution, the message was illuminating enough. Professor Dusenberry was a dangerous crook, instead of the harmless old "crank" the passengers had taken him for, and his cipher message was to a confederate.
But on second thought Jack was inclined to believe that it was merely a coincidence that placing together every fourth word of the jumbled message made a dispatch having a perfectly understandable bearing on the jewel theft. It was impossible to believe that Professor Dusenberry, mild and self-effacing, could have had a hand in the attack on the diamond merchant. Jack was sorely perplexed.
He was still puzzling over the matter when the object of his thoughts appeared in his usual timid manner. He wished to send another dispatch, he said. While he wrote it out Jack studied the mild, almost benevolent features of the man known as Prof. Dusenberry.
"But there's one test," he thought to himself. "If the 'fourth word' test applies to this dispatch also, the Professor is a criminal, of a dangerous type, in disguise. But he contrived to glance carelessly over the dispatch when the professor handed it to him and fumbled in his pocket for a wallet with which to pay for it. Not till the seemingly mild old man had shuffled out did Jack apply his test to it. The message read as follows:
"Columbia fast as motor-boat, watch her in Southampton. Am well and will no more time throw away on fake life-preserver."
F.
With fingers that actually trembled, Jack wrote down every fourth word. Here is the result he obtained: