“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “What a piece of luck! What a piece of luck!”
He held the bullet in the palm of his left hand, turning it over and over with the penknife which he held in his right. He was so absorbed in his discovery, that he did not notice Crewe stoop and pick up some small object which lay in the grass a few yards from the tree.
CHAPTER XXII
Crewe and Marsland sat at a table in Sir George Granville’s library with the cryptogram before them. The detective was absorbed in examining it through a magnifying glass, but Marsland kept glancing from the paper to his companion’s face, as though he expected to see there some indication of an immediate solution. Finally he remarked in a tone which suggested he was unable to control his impatience any longer:
“Well, what do you make of it?”
“Not very much as yet,” replied Crewe, putting down the magnifying glass, “but there are one or two points of interest. In the first place, the paper has been cut with a pair of scissors from the fly leaf or title page of an old book—an expensive book of its period, of the late fifties, I should say—but the writing is of much later date. These facts are obvious, and do not help us much towards a solution of the contents.”
“They may be obvious to you, but they are not so obvious to me,” said Marsland, taking the paper into his hands and looking at it thoughtfully. “I suppose you judge the sheet to have been taken from an old book, because it is yellow with age, but why an expensive one of the fifties? And how do you know it was cut out with a pair of scissors? Again, how do you know the writing is of a much later date than the book? The ink is completely faded.”
“The smooth yellow, and glossy surface of the blank side of the paper indicates conclusively that it is the title-page or fly-leaf of a good class book of the fifties. You will not find that peculiar yellow colour—which is not the effect of age—and velvety ‘feel’ in books of a much later date. The unevenness of the cut proves that the sheet was taken from the book with a pair of scissors; haven’t you ever noticed that nobody—except, perhaps, a paperhanger—can cut straight with a pair of scissors? If it had been cut with a knife it might have slanted a little, but it would have been straighter: a knife cut is always straighter than the wavering cut of a pair of scissors directed by the eye. The faded ink proves nothing: inferior ink such as is sold in small village shops—from where the ink at Cliff Farm was probably procured—will fade in a few days; it is only the best ink that retains its original colour for any length of time. But the character of this writing indicates to me that it was written with a particular kind of fine nib, which was not invented till after 1900.”
“Can you make anything of the figures and letters on the paper?” asked Marsland.