"
The speaker took a pad of paper and a pencil from his pocket. Across
the pad he drew three lines one under the other. Then with another
glance at the candle droppings upon the step, he made a copy of them
that looked like this:
[Illustration: sketch of clue]
Pendleton bent over the result under the flare of the gas light; and
as he looked his eyes widened.
"Why," cried he, "they look like a stenographer's word-signs."
"Good!" said Ashton-Kirk. "And that, my dear fellow, is exactly what
they are. There, scrawled erratically in dripping tallow, is a three
word sentence in Benn Pitman's phonetic characters. It is roughly
done, and may have occupied some minutes; but it is well done, and in
excellent German. I'll write it out for you."
Then he wrote on the pad in big, plain Roman letters:
HINTER
WAYNE'S
BILDNISSE
"There it is," said the investigator, "done into the German language,
line for line. Brush up your knowledge now; let me see you turn it
into English."
Pendleton, whose German was rusty from long disuse, pondered over the
three words. Suddenly a light shot across his face; then his eyes were
in a blaze.
"_Behind Wayne's Portrait!_"
He fairly shouted the words.
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