I was glad now that I had taken all the trouble and I took some more. I made an exact copy of the letter, laying a sheet of very thin paper over it and using the utmost pains to space every word and letter exactly as it was written. Then I fastened it up and made up another packet and returned to Burroughs. “I am still undecided what to do,” I said to him. “If this man’s tale is true, I shan’t punish him. But he must stop here for the present, of course. Have him locked in a room and let a couple of men be with him.” Then I made another exchange of the packets and said to Henriques. “You can’t have your weapons, but you can keep this.” And I gave it him. Burroughs took him out of the room and was back again in a minute or two, his face one staring note of interrogation. “What the devil does it all mean?” he cried. “He’s an honest fellow that, Jack. He’s been led into trouble by evil companions and----” “Oh, rats!” he broke in. “What were you writing there? You had me guessing all the time?” “I was only writing this;” and I showed him the copy of the letter. He read it and scratched his head. “What is it? A prize puzzle?” “It’s a copy of the letter I took from our friend’s pocket.” “But you wrapped it up in the parcel.” “You wouldn’t have me rob a gentleman of his belongings?” “But the blessed thing was on the table all the time.” “Do you mean this?” and I produced the dummy. “It’s on me,” he said with a laugh. He was very American at times in his idioms. “I’m either a big stupid ass and have taken a lot of trouble for nothing, or I’ve made a useful discovery. I shall soon know which,” I said explaining how I had changed the packets. Then I fetched the cipher key which I had hidden in another room and returned to find him puffing at his pipe and puzzling over the copy of the letter. I told him then about the discovery of the cipher, and laid the key over the lines getting more nonsense words from the first two or three. Then I read the letter again and a thought struck me. Dagara spoke of ten problems. There were ten lines in the letter. “The fifth and sixth will interest you,” ran the phrase. I laid the punctured slip over these in turn. The fifth gave me this result. I will put the indicated letters in capitals. “I hoPe that All our Playing mEmbeRS will find oR make.” “P A P E R S R,” was shown up. I laid the same row of holes over the next line, with no results that were intelligible. The second row was no more fruitful, but the third gave this result. “an EArly opportunity of stuDying them thoroughlY.” Put together the two lines of indicated letters read-- “PAPERS READY”--easy enough for Macaulay’s schoolboy to understand. “Papers Ready.” “I’m not a stupid ass after all,” I exclaimed, triumphantly. “Now we want our considering caps. This means that some important information which the writer of this letter has obtained is waiting to be delivered, and what we have to do is to get hold of them.”