“Except what the thing means,” Angela pointed out.
“Well, obviously the time of a train can only suggest a word or a letter if you connect it with the name of the station it starts from. I assume you have to take a page of the timetable, and find a station from which the first train or the last train—the first train, I suppose, from the nature of the figures—starts at nine-twelve, then one from which the first train starts at three forty-six, and so on. It must be Great Western, because it’s the only railway in these parts. It must be a main line, or you wouldn’t get a train starting as early as three forty-six. Oh, have you got a timetable there, Mr. Quirk?”
Mr. Quirk had produced a local guide from somewhere, and was scanning its pages. “Here, you’d better do this,” he said. “I never was much good with Bradshaw.”
“Well, we’ll try, anyhow. Take down, please, Mrs. Bredon. London, Reading, Chippenham, Weymouth and Taunton; that sounds good enough. Dash, it’s not so easy after all. … Hullo, here’s a three forty-six in the morning starting from Oxford. Nine-twelve—that would be rather a one-horse sort of place; here you are, Hungerford. And Woodborough, wherever that is, leads off with an eight fifty-three.”
“Hungerford Oxford Woodborough. What a jolly message to get!” said Angela.
“Oh, why did they never teach you acrostics when you were young? Look at the initials—‘How’; what’s wrong with that?”
“Miles, you are a pet sometimes. This is fearfully inciting. None for the seven thirty-three.”
“Moderately important, but not very important. I think we read straight down the page as far as possible. Seven thirty-three; that’s Devizes. An arrival, really, but he wouldn’t notice that. And two o’clock must be some terrific big junction … no, it isn’t. … Good God, think of arriving at Ilfracombe at two in the morning!”
“Di, then the next one will be another d,” suggested Angela. “Try Didcot.”
“Didcot it is; and Did it is. Now, eight-twelve is a more local sort of time; Aldermaston will do. What happens, I wonder, when there aren’t enough stations to go round? Oh, I suppose you take the second earliest train.”
“Miles, this is too exciting; I can’t stand it. Let’s just take down the names, and read the initials afterwards.”
“All right. Here goes.” And it went, until the last group was registered, and Angela, who had been keeping her hand over the page, revealed the following names in column formation:
“Hungerford Oxford Woodborough Devizes Ilfracombe Didcot Aldermaston Lavington Midgham Athelney Chippenham Upwey Thatcham Upwey Paddington Dorchester Edington Reading Evershot Kintbury.”
“Yes,” said Bredon. “Not a bad stunt. He missed out Theale, which ought to come before Thatcham, otherwise he seems to have made no mistakes.”
“Miles, don’t be so provoking! Don’t you see that this message is most frightfully important?”
“Oh,” said Bredon. “You think it is?”
XVII
Mr. Quirk Disappears
There are few more humiliating sensations than that of the man who comes into a room bursting with stale news. When Leyland returned he was plainly full of important secrets. He did not even hesitate at seeing Mr. Quirk in the room. “Derek Burtell’s alive!” he announced. “I must have a pint of bitter.”
“Alive?” queried Bredon.
“Well, he’s putting his signature to cipher messages, anyhow.” Something in Angela’s face checked him; he was conscious of a repression. “Good Lord!” he said, “don’t say you’ve been and read the cipher, Bredon!”
“I’m afraid he has,” Angela apologized. “If he wasn’t so loathsomely idle he’d have read it three hours ago, and saved you that long, silly journey to White Bracton.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t have wanted to be saved that,” said Leyland. “That was all right—I found out more than the meaning of the cipher, you know.”
“This is very interesting,” put in Mr. Quirk. “You mean, I guess, that we’ve all got something to learn not only from the cipher itself, but from the way you found it?”
“Oh, this morning’s been full of adventures. For one thing, I called at the lock above Millington Bridge, and was told that the punt had been found. Nothing desperately mysterious about it, either. It was tucked away in a curious, purposeless kind of stone quay there is, hidden behind rushes, at the opposite side of the river just close to the Blue Cow. Of course, it’s pretty evident that there was something fishy about Mr. Wallace, or he wouldn’t have hidden the punt away like that. I suppose he made for the railway—it’s not far from the river there.”
“Not so very fishy either, if you come to think of it,” said Bredon. “If he was making for the railway, he had to cross the river, and there’s no regular ferry at the Blue Cow; besides, he wanted to go downstream a bit. Naturally he took his punt with him; naturally, if he wanted to go overland, he stowed it away in a place where the casual passerby wouldn’t find it. You can explain his movements by haste, without suspecting secrecy.”
“Anyhow, there the punt is, with some remains of the man’s stores in it, but no clue to his identity or his destination. However, that isn’t all.”
“You were going to tell us,” Mr. Quirk pointed out, “what it was you found at White Bracton.”
“Yes, I was. There are several pubs at White Bracton, but only one that looks as if it wanted you to stay at it. The White Hart, its name is. But when I went in I found it was the sort of place where nobody pays any attention to you; you rap on the floor with your stick, and nothing happens, except that a dog barks somewhere in the distance; you could run off with the stuffed trout, and no one the wiser. Just opposite me was one of those letter-racks they have at all these inns; and on the rack
