"The code was the same as the first, and I deciphered it quite easily. Here it is," and he read from a bit of paper he held in his hand: "_Date is February 28. Shall stay at Mount Royal Hotel, Bedlington.—Dusky Fowl_." There was nothing more after that until February 12th, when the third advertisement appeared, same code,—here it is deciphered: "_Car will be at Clun Cross two day February 28.—Dusky Fowl_." "That 'Dusky Fowl' bothered me a lot. I couldn't think what it meant. Several times I had gone through the names of all the 'dusky birds' I could think of—blackbird, rook, crow, raven, and so on, but nothing struck me, nothing seemed to make sense. Then the next day—yesterday—an advertisement in the same code appeared which startled me a lot because your name and Mr. Osborne's were in it, and it didn't take me long then to get at the meaning of 'Dusky Fowl.' Here is the advertisement from yesterday's _Morning Post_, and directly I had read it I wrote that letter asking you to come to see me at once, or to let me come to you." He read out: "_Osborne and Berrington suspect. Take precautions. D.C. with me Hampstead.—Dusky Fowl_" "'Dusky Fowl' evidently stands for 'rook,' and 'rook' for 'Rook Hotel,' and 'Rook Hotel' for 'Mrs. Stapleton.' And that being the case, who else can 'D.C.' stand for but 'Dulcie Challoner'? It's as plain as a pike-staff." "By Jove, Dick," I said after a few moments' pause, "I believe you are right!" "I am sure I am," he answered with complete self-assurance. This clearly was a most important discovery. I decided to take the cuttings and their solutions to Osborne the moment I got back to town, and I intended to go back directly after delivering Dick safely back at his school. "Really," I exclaimed, feeling now almost as excited as the boy, "you are pretty clever, old chap, to have found out all that. I wonder, though, why Mrs. Stapleton doesn't telegraph or write to the man or people these messages are intended for. It would be much simpler." "It wouldn't be safe, Mike. I read in a book once that people of that sort, the kind of people Mr. Osborne always speaks of as 'scoundrels,' nearly always communicate in some sort of cypher, and generally by advertising, because letters are so dangerous—they may miscarry, or be stopped, or traced, and then they might get used as evidence against the people who wrote them. By communicating in cypher and through a newspaper of course no risk of any sort is run." "Except when the cyphers get deciphered," I said, "as you have deciphered these." "Oh, but then people seldom waste time the way I do, trying to find these things out; when they do it's generally a fluke if they come across the key. It took me hours to disentangle the first of those advertisements—the rest came easy enough."