From where I was sitting, at a small brasserie on the opposite side of the Boulevard, I watched him narrowly. He glanced up and down as though in constant expectation of meeting someone, and looked at his watch impatiently. He tossed off his liqueur at a single gulp, but his coffee remained untasted, for it was evident that he was in a state of deep agitation. He had feared arrest for the murder of Reginald Thorne, and had taken refuge secretly on the Vispera. Were not his own words sufficient to convince me of his guilt?
As I looked I saw him, while in the act of pretending to sip his coffee, bend down close to the marble table, which, after making certain that he was not observed, he scrutinised carefully. Twice he bent to look at it closely. Surely, I thought, there must be something of interest marked on that slab. Then he glanced at his watch again, paid, and strolled off down the Boulevard.
Whether to follow or whether to investigate that table, I was for the moment undecided; but I resolved upon the latter course. I crossed the road, made straight for the seat he had occupied, and as soon as I had ordered a dubonnet, proceeded to examine the table. Very quickly I discovered what had interested him. Scrawled in pencil upon the marble were some letters quite unintelligible, but evidently a cipher message. It was no more than this:
J. TABAC. 22.
Another inscription had been written there, but it had been lately erased by some previous customer, who had apparently dipped his finger in the drippings of beer or coffee, and smeared it across. The writing was not very easy to discern in the half-light, for the table was so placed as to be in the deep shadows. Was it possible that the person who had erased the first message had written the second? Could it be that this person was the man whom I had been watching?
I had seen him bend over that table mysteriously, first glancing round to make certain that no one was watching. Why had he thus betrayed fear, if that message was not one of importance? Goron, the great chef of the Paris sûreté, had told me, when I met him at dinner once in London, how the criminals of Paris were fond of making the tops of the café tables the means of communication, and how many a crime had been discovered by the police with the aid of the keys they possessed to certain secret codes.
I looked again at the initial, the word "tabac," and the number 22 scrawled on the marble before me, and was puzzled to know what they could convey. Had Ernest really written them? The letters were printed, in order, no doubt, to prevent any recognition of the handwriting. I remembered that he had sat with his hand upon the table, as though toying idly with the matches; and further, I noticed that the liquid with which the erasure had been made was not yet entirely dry. I touched it with my gloved finger and placed it to my nose. There was an odour of coffee.
Now, if Ernest had really written that cipher message, he had substituted his for the one he had found standing there. With what purpose? To whom was this unintelligible word addressed? Having regard to the fact that the tables of cafés are usually washed down by the waiters every morning, it seemed plain that the person to whom he intended to convey the message would come there that night. Indeed, he had constantly looked at his watch, as though in expectation of the arrival of someone.
I paid the garçon and left, returning some few minutes later to my previous place in front of the brasserie opposite, determined to wait and watch. The attendant brought me some illustrated papers, and while pretending to be absorbed in them, I kept my eye upon the table I had just vacated. A shabby, small, wizen-faced man in a silk hat, with a flat brim, passed and re-passed the spot where I was sitting, and, it seemed, eyed me rather suspiciously. But perhaps it was only my fancy, for when one is engaged in the work of bringing home to a criminal his crime, one is apt to look with undue suspicion upon all and sundry.
I think I must have been there nearly half an hour before a ragged, unkempt man, who had slunk past where I was seated and picked up several cigar-ends with a stick bearing a sharpened wire point, crossed over to the "Grand Café" and recommenced his search beneath the tables there. When he had secured some half-a-dozen cigar-ends, he moved quickly to the table in the shadow; and as he stooped, feigning to pick up a piece of unconsumed cigar, I saw that he glanced eagerly to see what message was written there.