From where I was sitting, at a small brasserie on the opposite side of the boulevard, I watched him narrowly. He glanced up and down, as though in constant expectation of meeting some one, and looked at his watch impatiently. He tossed off his liqueur at a single gulp, but his coffee remained untasted, for it was evident that he was in a state of the greatest agitation. He had feared arrest for the murder of Reginald Thorne, and had taken refuge secretly on the Vispera. Were not his own words sufficient to convince me of his guilt? As I looked I saw him, while in the act of pretending to sip his coffee, bend down close to the marble table, and after making certain that he was not observed, he scrutinized it carefully. Twice he bent to look at it closely. Surely, I thought, there must be something of interest there. Then he glanced at his watch again, paid, and strolled off down the boulevard. Whether to follow or whether to investigate that table I was for the moment undecided. But I resolved upon the latter course; therefore, crossing the road, I made straight for the seat he had occupied, and having ordered a sirop proceeded to examine the table. Very quickly I discovered what had interested him. Scrawled in pencil upon the marble were some letters quite unintelligible, but evidently a cipher message. It ran-- “J. TABAC. 22.” Another inscription had been written there, but it had been lately erased by some previous customer, who had apparently dipped his fingers in the drippings of beer or coffee and smeared it across. The writing was not very easy to discern in the half light, for the table was so placed as to be in deep shadow. Was it possible that the person who had erased the first message had written the second? Could it be that this person was the man whom I had been watching? I had seen him bend over the table mysteriously, first glancing round to make sure that no one was watching. Why had he thus betrayed fear if that message was not one of importance? Goron, the great chief of the Paris sureté, had told me, when I had met him at dinner once in New York, how the criminals of Paris were fond of making the tops of the café tables the means of secret communications, and how many a crime had been discovered by the police with the aid of the keys they possessed to certain secret codes. I looked again at the initial, the word “tobacco,” and the number twenty-two scrawled on the marble before me, and was puzzled to know what meaning they could convey. Had Ernest really written them? The letters were printed, in order, no doubt, to prevent any recognition of the handwriting. I remembered that he had sat with his hand upon the table as though toying idly with the matches, and further I noticed that the liquid with which the erasure had been made was not yet entirely dry. I touched it with my gloved finger and placed it to my nose. There was an odor of coffee.