The moon must be rising. Into the block-house was shed a weird, indirect light. Then more and more direct it grew until, over the top of one wall, appeared a large, round inverted bowl of a candle-power that dimmed the kilowatt signs along the Gay Way. Earlier in the evening, when he had spoken of waiting for darkness, under cover of which to attempt an escape afoot, Pape might have complained at the illumination of the sky. Now he beamed back at the moon. And his complacency waxed with her light, although he realized that bold young Dawn would be up to flirt with the pale night queen long before her departure; that any attempt to escape from the park would not be blanketed that night. Let Luna reach the steps of her throne, he bade himself in thought, that each corner of the old refuge house might be lighted. Let Jane have out her sleep—happy he to guard her gracious rest. Let the Nubian roar of power that was not leonine grow faint and die. Let the city and the city’s Finest go off guard. Time enough, then, to test application of the eccentric’s cryptogram, copper-plated line by line, to a locality unsuspected by their enemies and chosen by themselves quite through chance. Not a doubt shadowed his mind as he awaited the zero hour. The lines fitted, every one. “List’ to the Nubian roar”—to the night noises of the surrounding metropolitan monster, uncaged in Zoo, never-sleeping, ever-pacing. “And whisper of poplars four”—the branches of two staunch old rustlers among the pines made silver lace of the moonlight just outside the wall. Doubtless the two that had been sentenced to death had been very much alive at the time of the cryptogram’s composition. “’Tis on a height”—where was one so high to the hoary-headed veteran as this on which he delighted to raise his country’s flag? “Eighteen and twelve will show”—Jane had named these very figures as the date on the memorial tablet placed in the wall without. Not rods, not yards, not feet did they stand for, but a date. “Begin below”—and below was a block that rocked “as rocks wrong’s overthrow!” Not until the inverted bowl of the moon was a central ceiling light did Why Not Pape move to answer the queer questions in his mind. Gently he then lifted the coat-coverlet off the woman below; wrapped it into a roll; with it replaced the pillow of his knee. A low command he gave the police dog to lie still. Swiftly he crossed to the threshold stone, tilted it far enough to one side to assure himself it was a thin slab and muttered in a sort of ecstacy: “Count eighteen—twelve, Take heart and delve.”