With the stealth of a Blackfoot brave, Peter Pape approached the powder cart in temporary use as a rostrum. Jane he had left where her safety no longer troubled him. His entire attention reached forward. Having gained the cover of a venerable cottonwood whose drooping catkins fringed the shafts of the lowering sun he stopped and deliberately listened, excused by the necessity of discovering just what was underway. The slow, accented perusal of the apple-cheeked little big man of law was holding the attention of his assortment of thugs to a degree favorable for a surprise assault. “Eighteen and twelve will show The spot. Begin below. Above the crock A block will rock, As rocks wrong’s overthrow.” To the last word the verse carried to Pape’s ears, metered to match the two lines recited to him by Jane from her memory of the mysterious, stolen cryptogram. There seemed no reason to doubt that Allen was reading the rhymed instructions of the late Lauderdale eccentric. Swinton Welch was first to offer thin-voiced complaint against the poem’s ambiguity. “That third verse strikes me as the hardest yet, judge. What do you reckon them figures mean? I don’t see as there’s any way to decide whether they stand for rods or yards or feet. Eighteen from what? Twelve to which? Or do you suppose, now, it means that the spot is eighteen-by-twelve?” With a wave of one chubby hand the lawyer dismissed these demands. “When quite a young man I knew the writer of this rhyme. It is characteristic that he should have put everything as vaguely as possible. He’d have made a wonderful detective, he was such a genius at involving instead of solving things. I’m relying quite a bit on my own gumption in the selection of this place. But I feel sure that I am right at last. We’re on a height, surrounded by the requisite number of poplars, aren’t we? The noises we hear from the city, spread about on every hand, might be called by poetic license any kind of a roar. And the whole place is shelved with rock. Since we can’t seem to solve those figures, let’s blow off the entire top if necessary and trust to the integrity of the ‘crock.’ You arranged for the acetylene lights, Duffy?” “They’ll be here before dusk.” Pape could not see the speaker from his cover point, but recognized the voice of him of the vegetable ears recently bested in combat. “Have you thought about the crowd the flare’s going to attract, Mr. Allen?” the pugilist wanted to know. “I’ve arranged for the police to stand guard over us.” The complacency with which the lawyer made this assertion had a nerving effect upon Pape. His frame straightened with a jerk. His muscles tightened. His thoughts sped up. If the police were enlisted with the enemy through political “pull” of the ex-judge, it behooved him to decide at once upon the exact nature of such changes as he, personally, might be able to effect in the afternoon’s program. Perhaps too close upon decision, he acted.