I reminded myself that a
week ago I had been finding the world dull.
CHAPTER THREE
The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper
I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May
weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I asked
myself why, when I was still a free man, I had stayed on in London
and not got the good of this heavenly country. I didn't dare face
the restaurant car, but I got a luncheon-basket at Leeds and shared
it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning's papers, with news
about starters for the Derby and the beginning of the cricket season,
and some paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were settling down
and a British squadron was going to Kiel.
When I had done with them I got out Scudder's little black
pocket-book and studied it. It was pretty well filled with jottings,
chiefly figures, though now and then a name was printed in. For
example, I found the words 'Hofgaard', 'Luneville', and 'Avocado'
pretty often, and especially the word 'Pavia'.
Now I was certain that Scudder never did anything without a
reason, and I was pretty sure that there was a cypher in all this.
That is a subject which has always interested me, and I did a bit
at it myself once as intelligence officer at Delagoa Bay during the
Boer War. I have a head for things like chess and puzzles, and I
used to reckon myself pretty good at finding out cyphers.
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