Again, I turned up the king of spades and found on the reverse only fourteen letters:—
Q W F
T S W
T H U
O F E
Y E
“I wonder what it all means?” I exclaimed, carefully examining the written characters in the light. The letters were in capitals just as rudely and unevenly drawn as those upon the ace of hearts, evidently by an uneducated hand. Indeed the A’s betrayed a foreign form rather than English, and the fact that some of the cards were inscribed on the obverse and others on the reverse seemed to convey some hidden meaning. What it was, however, was both tantalising and puzzling.
“It certainly is very curious,” Mabel remarked after she had vainly striven to construct intelligible words from the columns of letters by the easy methods of calculation. “I had no idea that my father carried his secret concealed in this manner.”
“Yes,” I said, “it really is amazing. No doubt his secret is really written here, if we only knew the key. But in all probability his enemies are aware of its existence, or he would not have left it secreted here when he set forth on his journey to Manchester. That man Dawson may know it.”
“Most probably,” was her reply. “He was my father’s intimate acquaintance.”
“His friend—he says he was.”
“Friend!” she cried resentfully. “No, his enemy.”
“And therefore your father held him in fear? It was that reason which induced him to insert that very injudicious clause in his will.”
And then I described to her the visit of the man Dawson on the previous night, telling her what he had said, and his impudent, defiant attitude towards us.