Gone was French’s despondency and the weariness caused by his heavy day, and instead he was once more the embodiment of enthusiasm and cheery optimism. He had it now! At last the secret was within his grasp! Of his ability to read the message, now that he was sure he had the genuine one, he had no doubt. He had always liked working out ciphers, and since he had succeeded in extracting the hidden meaning from the stock and share list which had been sent to the elusive Mrs. X in the Gething murder case, his belief in his own powers had become almost an obsession. He could hardly restrain his eagerness to get to grips with this new problem until the negatives should be dry and prints made. The photographer was able to promise these for the following day, and till then French had to possess his soul in patience. But on his return from lunch he found on his desk three excellent prints of the document. They were only half-plate size, or about one-third that of the tracing which had been given to Cheyne. He therefore instructed the photographer to prepare enlargements which would bring the document up to more nearly the size of the original. These were ready before it was time for him to leave for home, and he sat down with ill-controlled excitement to compare them with the document at which he had already spent so much time. And then he suddenly experienced one of the most bitter disappointments of his life. To all intents and purposes the two were the same! There were the same circles, the same numbers, letters, and signs enclosed therein, the same phrase, “England expects every man to do his duty,” spaced round in the same way! The tracing had not been very accurately done, as some of the circles seemed slightly out of place, but the discrepancies were trifling, and seemed obviously due to careless copying. He gave vent to a single bitter oath, then sat motionless, wrapped in the most profound gloom. He took tracing and photographs home with him, and spent the greater part of the evening making a minute comparison between the two. The enlargement unfortunately was not exactly the same size as the tracing, and he therefore began his work by covering the surfaces of both with proportionate squares. Taking the tracing first he drew parallel lines one inch apart both up and down it and across, thus covering its whole surface with inch squares. Then he divided the prints into the same number of equal parts both vertically and horizontally and ruled them up in squares also. These squares were slightly smaller than the others—about seven-eighths of an inch only—but relatively the lines fell on each in the same positions. A comparison according to the squares thus showed at a glance similarity or otherwise between the two documents.