“What do you make of it, Doctor?” inquired the inspector anxiously, after a pause, during which Thorndyke had scrutinized the strange writing with knitted brows.

“Not a great deal,” replied Thorndyke.  “The character is the Moabite or Phoenician—­primitive Semitic, in fact—­and reads from right to left.  The language I take to be Hebrew.  At any rate, I can find no Greek words, and I see here a group of letters which may form one of the few Hebrew words that I know—­the word badim, ‘lies.’  But you had better get it deciphered by an expert.”

“If it is Hebrew,” said Badger, “we can manage it all right.  There are plenty of Jews at our disposal.”

“You had much better take the paper to the British Museum,” said Thorndyke, “and submit it to the keeper of the Phoenician antiquities for decipherment.”

Inspector Badger smiled a foxy smile as he deposited the paper in his pocket-book.  “We’ll see what we can make of it ourselves first,” he said; “but many thanks for your advice, all the same, Doctor.  No, Mr. James, I can’t give you any information just at present; you had better apply at the hospital.”

“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.  Therefore, I expect that, when the experts translate this document, the translation or transliteration will be a mere farrago of unintelligible nonsense.  But we shall see, and meanwhile the facts that we have offer several interesting suggestions which are well worth consideration.”

“As, for instance—?”

“Now, my dear Jervis,” said Thorndyke, shaking an admonitory forefinger at me, “don’t, I pray you, give way to mental indolence.  You have these few facts that I have mentioned.  Consider them separately and collectively, and in their relation to the circumstances.  Don’t attempt to suck my brain when you have an excellent brain of your own to suck.”