when at her first mention of Valerian Urth I obtained from Meyan this startling and remarkable record,” he pointed to a place where the line suddenly had grown almost straight and flat, “that I realized that if the man before me was not himself Urth, he at least had some close and, under the circumstances, oppressive connection with him.

“Eva Silber still had the note that had been sent to summon her father on the errand of mercy which had caused his imprisonment. She gave it to me before you entered the room. I was certain that of all men in the world there was but one who could recognize or feel any emotion at sight of that yellowed and time-worn paper; and that man was Valerian Urth, who had used it to betray Herman Silber.

“I showed it to Meyan, and obtained this really amazing reaction which ends his record.” The psychologist pointed to the record. “It assured me that Meyan and Urth were one.”

“This is amazing, Mr. Trant,” Cuthbert Edwards said. “But you have left unexplained the most perplexing feature of all—the hammering!”

“To communicate with one another from their solitary cells, Russian prisoners long ago devised a code of spelling letters by knocking upon the wall—a code widely spread and known by every revolutionist. It is extremely simple; the letters of the alphabet”—Trant took from his pocket a slip of paper—“are arranged in this manner.”

He set down rapidly the alphabet, omitting two letters, arranged in four lines, thus:

“A letter is made,” the psychologist explained, “but giving first the proper number of knocks for the line, a short pause, then knocks for the number of the letter in the line. For instance, e is one knock and then five; y is four knocks and then five.

“By means of this code I translated the figures in the advertisement and obtained Meyan’s name and address. I suppose he used it not only in the advertisement, but at the office, because his long experience had taught him that Herman Silber, as many another man condemned to the horrors of a Russian prison for a term of years, had probably lost the power of speech, and continued to communicate, in freedom, by the means he had used for so many years in prison.”

“Wonderful, Mr. Trant, wonderful!” exclaimed Cuthbert Edwards. “I only regret that we can do nothing to Meyan; for there is no law, I think, by which he can be punished.”

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