“What did they look like? Describe them.”
“Why,” Jane faltered, “I did not really notice. I was not looking for girls. I was watching to see that no other men entered the store.”
Carter shook his head.
“You ought to have spotted them, too. You never can tell who the Germans will employ. They have women spies, too,—clever ones.”
“I never thought of their using girls,” protested Jane.
“Humph,” snapped Carter, “ain’t we using you? Ain’t one of our best little operatives right this minute working in a nursegirl’s garb pulling a baby carriage with a baby in it up and down Riverside Drive? Well, it can’t be helped. You’d better beat it down-town to the Chief right away.”
“I’ll take a subway express,” said Jane, feeling somewhat crestfallen at his implied suggestion of failure.
Twenty-five minutes later found her once more in Mr. Fleck’s office. Thrilling with the excitement of it all she told him in detail how she had followed old Hoff and of his peculiar actions in the bookstore.
“And here,” she said, presenting the postcard, “is an exact copy of the cipher message he left there. I copied every figure, in the columns, just as they were set down. I don’t suppose though you’ll be able to make head or tail out of it. I know I can’t.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” smiled Chief Fleck, as he took the card. “When you get used to codes, most of them identify themselves at the first glance—at least they tell what kind of a code it is. That’s one thing about the Germans that makes their spy work clumsy at times. They are so methodical that they commit everything to writing. Now the most important things I know are right in here”—he tapped his head. “Every once in a while they ransack my rooms, but they never find anything worth while. Now this code”—he was studying the card intently—“seems to be one of a sort that our friends from Wilhelmstrasse are ridiculously fond of using. It is manifestly a book code.”