"
"I suspect," said Thorndyke, as we took our way homewards, "that Mr.
James has collected enough material for his purpose already. He must
have followed us from the hospital, and I have no doubt that he has his
report, with 'full details,' mentally arranged at this moment. And I am
not sure that he didn't get a peep at the mysterious paper, in spite of
the inspector's precautions."
"By the way," I said, "what do you make of the document?"
"A cipher, most probably," he replied. "It is written in the primitive
Semitic alphabet, which, as you know, is practically identical with
primitive Greek. It is written from right to left, like the Phoenician,
Hebrew, and Moabite, as well as the earliest Greek, inscriptions. The
paper is common cream-laid notepaper, and the ink is ordinary indelible
Chinese ink, such as is used by draughtsmen. Those are the facts, and
without further study of the document itself, they don't carry us very
far."
"Why do you think it is a cipher rather than a document in
straightforward Hebrew?"
"Because it is obviously a secret message of some kind. Now, every
educated Jew knows more or less Hebrew, and, although he is able to read
and write only the modern square Hebrew character, it is so easy to
transpose one alphabet into another that the mere language would afford
no security.
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