Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/264

billiard-room, and got his confederate to hide him somewhere in the servants' quarters. It was when news was brought to him that the police were investigating the cellar entrance that he really took alarm, and decided to bolt for it. Even then he kept his head, and if Reeves had been a little less close on his trail he would have come back quietly to Paston Whitchurch on that slow train, and it would have been very difficult to incriminate him. As it was, it was only a stiff door-handle that gave him away.

It was Miss Rendall-Smith who explained to me the mysterious writing on the back of the cipher. The words were, of course, explained by what was written on the other half-sheet before the sheet was torn in two. Miss Rendall-Smith showed me the full text of the thing, and I confess that at first it meant nothing to me; you, no doubt, would have taken the point with more readiness. Here it is, anyhow.

It appears that this forms an acrostic, and is connected with some kind of competition in the weekly papers. The two first words have not been success-