hem, as he had not taken the trouble to destroy them!'

'That's a singular point of view.'

'So was Mr. Feist's, as it turned out. I found enough to convince me
that he is the writer of all those articles about Van Torp, including
the ones in which you are mentioned. The odd thing about it is that I
found a very friendly invitation from Van Torp himself, begging Mr.
Feist to go down to Derbyshire and stop a week with him.'

Margaret leaned back in her chair and looked at her guest in quiet
surprise.

'What does that mean?' she asked. 'Is it possible that Mr. Van Torp
has got up this campaign against himself in order to play some trick
on the Stock Exchange?'

Logotheti smiled and shook his head.

'That's not the way such things are usually managed,' he answered. 'A
hundred years ago a publisher paid a critic to attack a book in order
to make it succeed, but in finance abuse doesn't contribute to our
success, which is always a question of credit. All these scurrilous
articles have set the public very much against Van Torp, from Paris
to San Francisco, and this man Feist is responsible for them. He is
either insane, or he has some grudge against Van Torp, or else he has
been somebody's instrument, which looks the most probable.'

'What did you find amongst his papers?' Margaret asked, quite
forgetting her vicarious scruples about reading a sick man's letters.

'A complete set of the articles that have appeared, all neatly filed,
and a great many notes for more, besides a lot of stuff written in
cypher. It must be a diary, for the days are written out in full and
give the days of the week.'

'I wonder whether there was anything about the explosion,' said
Margaret thoughtfully. 'He said he was there, did he not?'

'Yes. Do you remember the day?'

'It was a Wednesday, I'm sure, and it was after the middle of March.
My maid can tell us, for she writes down the date and the opera in a
little book each time I sing. It's sometimes very convenient. But it's
too late now, of course, and, besides, you could not have read the
cypher.'

'That's an easy matter,' Logotheti answered. 'All cyphers can be read
by experts, if there is no hurry, except the mechanical ones that are
written through holes in a square plate which you turn round till the
sheet is full. Hardly any one uses those now, because when the square
is raised the letters don't form words, and the cable companies will
only transmit real words in some known l