"Shall we try it first, Mr. Carpenter?"
"By all means," said Carpenter. "Shall I set it down, or will you?"
One would never have imagined from his expression or his intonation that
he had already tried _a l'aube du jour_ for the key-word and failed;
nor that why he had failed he now knew. The book was right as to the
word, and the slip that Harleston had taken from Crenshaw's pocket-book
confirmed it. _A l'aube du jour_ was not the key-word but the key-word
was constructed from it by some arbitrary rule; and that rule was
susceptible of solution. After he was free of this fellow Marston, he
would solve the problem quickly enough. It was as sure as tomorrow. The
prescience was come.
"About twenty letters should be enough for experiment?" he suggested,
taking up a test card.
When he had written the key-word and the letters under it, he, scarcely
without reference to the Blocked-Out Square, wrote the translation.
Marston did the same, very much slower.
"It doesn't fit!" Marston announced. "You can't make anything out of
AGELUMTONZN, and so forth."
"I can't!" Carpenter smiled--and waited. Would Marston suggest the
transposed or elided word?
"I'm disappointed," Marston confessed, "I thought sure we had it.
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