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"Your loving uncle,

"O. TREVORS."

The doctor handed the letter back.

"A somewhat incoherent document," he said. "I see it was posted in Paris three months ago. What were Pollywogs? That he remembered your address is remarkable——"

"There is no such address, and I have no mother," interrupted the girl, and, rising, laid the letter on the table. "Pollywogs was a game of cipher writing I played with him when I was a child, and 2758 is the key. Here is the letter he sent."

She underlined certain words in the letter with a pencil taken from the doctor's table.

"The second, seventh, fifth and eighth words make the real message. The first word is I'm, and it reads:

"I'm kept locked prisoner house near railroad western. Tell Franklin stop payment notify police at once."

ssss1

Eversham frowned down at the letter, and in the intense silence which followed, the musical tick of the little French clock on the mantelpiece came distinctly to the girl's ears.

"Amazing!" he said at last. "Now what is the meaning of that? Have you seen the police?"