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figures were faint but freshly written, without blurring. They bore no resemblance to a laundry mark. They suggested to me a message.

Their interpretation, at that moment, was wholly puzzling, but their purpose seemed to me, clearly, to convey some information of special and highly personal significance. A girl had pencilled them, I thought. They were large and flourishy figures with feminine twists; and, as I looked at them, I thought of not Helen Lacey but Sally Gessler.

Of course I examined everything else on the tray and the tray itself; but nothing explained them. There they were by themselves, in their pencilled flourishes; and they had been sent to me to tell me, what?

They might be intelligence of the strength of airplane squadrons; they might refer to distances; they might apply to—anything. But whatever their interpretation, already