"Mr. James saw him come out, sir," said the sergeant. "He turned up
towards the Square."
"Did he seem to hurry?" asked the inspector.
"Rather," replied the reporter. "As soon as you were inside, he went off
like a lamplighter. You won't catch him now."
"We don't want to catch him," the detective rejoined gruffly; then,
backing out of earshot of the eager pressman, he said in a lower tone:
"That was Mr. Schoenberg, beyond a doubt, and it is clear that he has
some reason for making himself scarce; so I shall consider myself
justified in opening that note."
He suited the action to the word, and, having cut the envelope open with
official neatness, drew out the enclosure.
"My hat!" he exclaimed, as his eye fell upon the contents. "What in
creation is this? It isn't shorthand, but what the deuce is it?"
He handed the document to Thorndyke, who, having held it up to the light
and felt the paper critically, proceeded to examine it with keen
interest. It consisted of a single half-sheet of thin notepaper, both
sides of which were covered with strange, crabbed characters, written
with a brownish-black ink in continuous lines, without any spaces to
indicate the divisions into words; and, but for the modern material
which bore the writing, it might have been a portion of some ancient
manuscript or forgotten codex.
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