“Don’t see how you are going to make it. Handicap too heavy. Doubt whether I myself could overcome the obstacles--leg irons, officers on the watch, posses on the trail, three hundred miles to go-- Bill, old fellow, if you make it you’ll prove yourself a man worth helping! You won’t get half the distance--but if you do, you may have my next-best boots and welcome!” Abington turned the case over, held it closer to the light, frowned and gave a faint whistle at what he saw. He had supposed that the message had been repeated here as a precaution against his failure to notice the barely discernible markings in the leather on the other side. But as he peered sharply at the fine indentations his eyes brightened with interest. For although the river and the stopping-place symbols were repeated, and the string of tiny circles which signified the number of days’ journeying, the plural sign was there just below them. At the end of the journey, mountains--but they were indicated by the conventional, premodified Manchurian symbol and, close by, the sign of a mummy. “What the deuce!” breathed Abington, pulling black eyebrows together. “He’s blundered there--maybe means he’ll leave my camp only in custody. No, by Jove! That can’t be it, either.” For a long time he sat motionless except when he turned the cigarette case for a renewed scrutiny of the other side. The message that had seemed so simple presented an unexpected little twist of mystery. Bill Jonathan, pursued by the chain of evil, meant to journey for perhaps a month and arrive at John Abington’s camp in the mountains that bordered the river. That much seemed fairly plain, and one would logically expect no further information at present. But there was more to it, apparently. Bill had not sat in that roadster idly scratching hieroglyphics on the cigarette case of an archaeologist just to pass the time away. Meaning to escape in the car, uncertain too of the number of minutes at his disposal, he must have grudged every second of delay while he worked out his message. Abington permitted his cigarette to go out while he brooded over those crude lines. His thoughts harked back to the time, four months before, when Bill Jonathan had come limping into camp, crippled with stone bruises from traveling the rough granite hills in thin-soled shoes worn to tattered leather. He had been hungry, too, by the manner in which he wolfed his first meal whenever he thought Abington was not looking his way. He had not told his name, and Abington had taken the hint and asked no questions. Bill had called himself a prospector, said he had an outfit back in the hills and had come down to Abington’s camp to see if he could rustle a pair of boots and a little tobacco. A likable fellow, Abington had found him; one of those rare individuals who can display an intelligent interest in the other fellow’s subject.