lordship. It was
perfectly clear to every one there, if your lordship will excuse my
saying so, that both the coroner and the police seemed to have made up
their minds that it was a case of suicide."

Nigel nodded.

"I had the same idea with reference to the coroner, at any rate,
Brookes," he said. "So long as the verdict was returned in the form it
was, I am not sure that it was not better so."

He dismissed the man with a little nod and sat turning over the code
books which still stood upon the table.

"You and I, at any rate, Maggie, know the truth," he said, "and so long
as we can get no help from the proper quarters, I think that we should
do better to let the matter remain as it is. We don't want to direct
people's attention to us. We want to lull suspicion so far as we can, to
be free to watch the three."

The telephone bell rang, and as Nigel moved his arm to take off the
receiver, he knocked over one of the black, morocco-bound code books, A
sheet of paper with a few words upon it came fluttering to the ground.
Maggie picked it up, glanced at it carelessly at first and then with
interest.

"Nigel," she exclaimed, "you see whose handwriting this is? Could it be
part of the decoded dispatch?"

The telephone enquiry had been unimportant. Nigel pushed the instrument
away. They both looked eagerly at the page of manuscript paper. It was
numbered "8" at the top, and the few words written upon it in Lord
Dorminster's writing were obviously the continuation of a paragraph:

The name of the middle one, then, of the three secret cities, into
which at all costs some one must find his way, is Kroten, and the
telephone number which is all the clue I have been able to get, up
to the present, to the London end of the affair, is Mayfair 146.

"This is just where he got to in the decoding!" Nigel declared. "I
wonder whether it's any use looking for the rest."

They searched through every page of the heavy code books in vain. Then
they returned to their study of the single page. Nigel dragged down an
atlas and studied it.

"Kroten," he muttered. "Here it is,--a small place about six hundred
miles from Petrograd, apparently the centre of a barren, swampy
district, population thirty thousand, birth rate declining, industries
nil. Cheerful sort of spot it seems!"

"I have more luck than you!" Maggie cried, her finger tracing out a
line in the open telephone book. "Look!"

Nigel glanced over her