23, 19, 15, 1, 9, 14, 9, 2; 20, 8, 1, 20, 14, 14, 20, 8; 14, 5, 12, 4, 9, 7, 5, 14; 3, 8, 18, 23, 0, 14, 1, 8; 22, 9, 6, 1, 18, 3, 5, 1; 19, 14, 15, 21, 9, 0, 20, 12; 18, 12, 21, 1, 6, 23, 20, 12; 9, 18, 15, 5, 18, 13, 12, 20. It struck me to ask the manager if the cheque just presented were one of those procured from Mr. Trenaman the night before, and I found that it was. Then I left the policemen with their prisoner and made for the nearest cab-rank. This cypher message, no doubt conveying Mayes's instructions to the man just captured, was probably of the utmost importance, and Hewitt must see it at once; and as the cab ambled along towards Barbican I busied myself in deciphering the figures according to the plan of the knight's move in chess, as Hewitt had explained to me. I could only see two noughts among the numbers, so plainly it was a longer message than the one then deciphered--one of sixty-two letters, in fact. I turned the figures into the letters corresponding in the alphabet, _a_ for 1, _b_ for 2, and so on, as Hewitt had done, and I arranged these letters in the squares of a roughly drawn chessboard, so that they stood thus:-- w s o a i n i b t h a t n n t h n e l d i g e n c h r w 0 n a h v i f a r c e a s n o u i 0 t l r l u a f w t l i r o e r m l t The letters thus set out, to read off the message was a simple task enough, in view of the key Hewitt had given me. I began, as in the case of the Lever Key message, at the right-hand top corner, and taking the knight's move from _b_ to _e_ in the last square but one of the third line, thence to _a_ at the end of the fifth line, and so to _t_ in the seventh line, and from that to _r_ (fifth square in bottom line), _u_ in seventh line and so on, in the order shown by the Lever Key message, a copy of which I kept as a curiosity in my pocket-book. So I read the message through, and I set it down thus:-- /# _Be at ruin Channel Marsh to-night twelve; wait in hall for instruc. Word final._ #/ The general meaning of this seemed clear enough. The man whom the policeman had recognised as Broady Sims was to be at some spot--a ruined building, it would seem--in a place called Channel Marsh, at midnight, there to wait in the hall for instructions; no doubt for instructions where to take the hundred pounds he was to have got from the bank. "Word final" was not so clear, though I judged--and I think rightly--that it meant that the word "final" was to be used as a password by which the two messengers should know each other. I was almost at my destination, and was cogitating the message and its meaning, when the cab checked at some traffic in Barbican, just by the "Compasses" public-house, and Mr. Victor Peytral hailed me and climbed on the step of the cab.