back view, head sunk forward, shoulders humped up, gave, I believe, a convincing picture of utter abasement as I slowly retraced my steps down the ravine. But the moment I was out of sight of that ill-favoured group about the rock, I darted into the thickest part of the jungle and, after dragging myself painfully through the undergrowth for about a hundred yards, sank down hot and breathless.
I did not care whether I was followed or not.
I wanted to be alone to compose my thoughts to think. My brain was still reeling beneath the shock of my stupendous good fortune. Five minutes since I would scarcely have given a sixpence for my chances of life. Yet here I had regained my freedom of action, had lulled old Clubfoot, by giving him an easy victory, into a false sense of security and, at the same time, had obtained the solution of the knottiest point of the whole cipher message. At the thought that it was Grundt himself who had given me the clue which, till then, I had vainly sought, I leant back and laughed.
“After the Somme and the Hindenburg Line,” he had said, “our brave 'eighty-fivers' dislike you British even as much as our sailormen do..
“Unsere braven Fünf-und-Achtziger!”... he had used the German phrase and in a flash brought back to my mind a bit of German naval slang which I had heard so long ago that I had for gotten it! “Die Fünf-und-Achtziger!” What memories of pre-war days the phrase awakened! Dinner at Kiel in the ward-room of the German flagship, the tables ablaze with blue and gold uniforms sparkling with decorations—guest night in the mess of the Kaiser Franz Hussars at Stettin—and always army and navy “shop” the staple theme of our table talk. To the Imperial Navy the German Army was (slightly superciliously, for the rivalry between the two was intense) “die Fünf-und-Achtziger” because the 85th Infantry Regiment composed the garrison of Kiel, Germany's premier war harbour.
The garrison of Kiel! Clubfoot, like all his master's entourage, was in closest touch with the Fleet, the Kaiser's own creation. That scrap of navy slang came naturally to his lips and, in uttering it, he had sent with a flash the cipher to my mind.
The garrison of Kiel represented the figure “85.” How, then, did the cipher run en clair?
Eighty-five, I realized at once, was the angle for the heliograph. The message, therefore, read:
“Turn the heliograph at an angle of 85 degrees [i.e., from the horizontal, since it had been wired so as only to be raised or lowered] on a compass bearing of 27 degrees...”
The weight of the little mirror in my jacket pocket heartened me immensely. Clubfoot, I knew, would see the figure “85” in the allusion to the Kiel garrison. But the mirror was the starting-point for the whole cipher. And he had never known that a mirror was on the grave! The mirror, fixed in position as I had found it, made the first half of the message as clear as day. Without this essential pointer the cipher itself would be useless to Clubfoot. Even if his remarkably astute brain should divine the allusion to a heliograph in that first line, he would not have the mirror...
In any case, his investigations would be delayed. And I was playing for time. Six days must elapse, I reflected, before the yacht could return. For how many of these should I continue to enjoy my liberty? For as soon as Clubfoot realized that he had been fooled, I knew that he would once again stretch out that long arm of his to seize me. I should have to find a secure hiding-place—I thought of the high ground of the island, somewhere among those lofty volcanic peaks, in this connection—but the present need was for action. In the light of the fresh clue I had obtained, I must push on with my investigations at the grave itself and that with out a moment's delay. For the rest of the cipher, notably those baffling bars of music, which were firmly fixed in my mind—well, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof!
I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven. “Mittag”—noon—the message was dated, clearly an indication of the time at which the experiment with the heliograph was to be made. If I were to act, I must act at once. Fortunately the grave could not be far from where I lay. But what of Clubfoot?
The sound of voices came as if in answer to my query:—of voices close at hand. Parting the foliage in front of me I saw a file of men winding their way through the forest not twenty paces away. They appeared to be following some kind of path; for they marched steadily, one behind the other.