“Yes, sir,” replied the girl, timidly, picking at her neat black skirt.
“Well, sir,” explained Jim, bearing out his part of lawyer’s clerk, “some time ago I explained to my young lady here, what we particularly wanted to know, and she’s kept both eyes and ears open. To-day she’s learned something, it seems.”
“What is it?” inquired old Erich, in a deep tone, with his strong German accent.
“Let the young lady explain herself,” urged the man introduced as “Murray,” and they all sat silent.
“Well, sir,” the girl faltered, a moment later. “You see it was like this. After luncheon to-day the Professor, who’d been very hard at work as usual all the morning, took Miss Gwen up to the study to speak to her privately; I listened, and I heard all their conversation. He told her how he’d solved the problem of the cipher.”
“Solved it!” ejaculated the old German, staring at her through his spectacles.
“Yes, sir,” the girl went on. “He told Miss Gwen that he’d tried and tried, but always failed. But he had taken the—well, sir, I think he called it the apoplectic number.”
The German laughed heartily.
“I know,” he said. “You mean the Apocalyptic Number, fräulein—the number 666.”
“That’s it, sir,” she said, a little flurried, while Jim exchanged significant glances with Challas. “He commences at the tenth chapter of Ezekiel, eighth verse, and—and—” Then she fumbled in her pocket, producing a piece of crumpled paper to which she referred. “He takes the first sign of 6,” she went on, “then the eleventh letter, the sixty-sixth letter, and the six hundred and sixty-sixth letter. After this, the fiftieth letter, the two-hundredth letter, the sixth letter, the fiftieth letter, the hundredth letter, the sixtieth letter, and the two-hundredth letter—making six hundred and sixty-six in all. He writes down each of the Hebrew letters, and then reads them off like a book.”