what was in store for us. The doctor had departed to his
patients, and only the inspector and myself remained.

"I think that I can help you to pass an hour in an interesting and
profitable manner," said Holmes, drawing his chair up to the table,
and spreading out in front of him the various papers upon which were
recorded the antics of the dancing men. "As to you, friend Watson, I owe
you every atonement for having allowed your natural curiosity to remain
so long unsatisfied. To you, Inspector, the whole incident may appeal
as a remarkable professional study. I must tell you, first of all, the
interesting circumstances connected with the previous consultations
which Mr. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in Baker Street." He then
shortly recapitulated the facts which have already been recorded. "I
have here in front of me these singular productions, at which one
might smile, had they not proved themselves to be the forerunners of
so terrible a tragedy. I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret
writings, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the
subject, in which I analyze one hundred and sixty separate ciphers,
but I confess that this is entirely new to me. The object of those who
invented the system has apparently been to conceal that these characters
convey a message, and to give the idea that they are the mere random
sketches of children.

"Having once recognized, however, that the symbols stood for letters,
and having applied the rules which guide us in all forms of secret
writings, the solution was easy enough. The first message submitted to
me was so short that it was impossible for me to do more than to say,
with some confidence, that the symbol XXX stood for E. As you are aware,
E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it predominates
to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect
to find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message, four
were the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is true
that in some cases the figure was bearing a flag, and in some cases not,
but it was probable, from the way in which the flags were distributed,
that they were used to break the sentence up into words. I accepted this
as a hypothesis, and noted that E was represented by XXX.

"But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of
the English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any
preponderance which may be shown in an