“I have no doubt that that shoe of Miss Merrill’s made the mark you saw,” he observed. “At the same time I want definite evidence. It won’t take very long to run out to Wembley and try. Let us go now, and that will finish us for tonight.” They took a taxi and were soon at the place in question. The print was not so clear as when Cheyne had seen it first, but in spite of this French had no difficulty in satisfying himself. The shoe fitted it exactly. That night after supper, as French stretched himself in his easy-chair, he decided he would have a preliminary look at the tracing. He recognized that the mere fact that it had been handed to Cheyne by Dangle involved the probability that it was not the genuine document but a faked copy. At the same time he was bound to make what he could of it, and it was with very keen interest he unfolded and began to study it. It was neatly drawn, though evidently not by a professional draughtsman. The lettering of the words, “England expects every man to do his duty” was amateurish. He wondered what the phrase could mean. It did not seem to ring quite true. In his mind the words ran “England expects that every man this day will do his duty,” but he rather thought this was the version in the song, and if so, the wording might have been altered from the original for metrical reasons. He determined to look up the quotation on the first opportunity. On the other hand it might have been condensed into eight words in order to fit round the sheet. It was spaced in a large circle among the smaller circles like the figures of a clock. It conveyed to him no idea whatever, except the obvious suggestion of Nelson. Could Nelson, he wondered, or Trafalgar, be the key word in some form of cipher? As he studied the sheet he noted some points which Cheyne appeared to have missed, or which at all events he had not mentioned. While the circles were spaced without any apparent plan—absolutely irregularly, it seemed to French—there was some evidence of arrangement in their contents. Those nearer the edges of the tracing contained letters, while those more centrally situated bore numbers. There was no hard and fast line between the two, as letters and numbers appeared, so to speak, to overlap each other’s territory, but broadly speaking the arrangement held. He noticed also a few circles which contained neither numbers nor letters, but instead tiny irregular lines. There were only some half dozen of these, but all of them so far as he could see occurred on the neutral territory between the number zone and the letter zone. These irregular lines represented nothing that he could imagine, and no two appeared of the same shape.