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Updated: May 26, 2025
Under the bell marked "Fourth Floor" was engraved Herman Lauffer's name. "You know," remonstrated Vaux, "we have no warrant for this sort of thing, and it means serious trouble if we're caught." "I know it. But what other way is there?" she inquired naively. "You allowed me only twenty-four hours, and I WON'T back out!"
Over the shop-window was a sign: "H. Lauffer, Frames and Gilding." The curtains of the shop-windows were lowered. No light burned inside. Over Lauffer's shop was the empty show-window of another shop on the second floor the sort of place that milliners and tea-shop keepers delight in but inside the blank show-window was pasted the sign "To Let."
"But we'd better try another word or two." "Try page 717, first column, ninth word." "The word is 'vital." "'Importance!" "It is the key! Here is what I have written: 'An American who for reasons, of the most vital importance! Quick. We don't want a Secret Service man to find us here, Mr. Vaux! He'd object to our removing this book from Lauffer's apartment. Put it into your pocket and run!"
"Did you notice Cassidy's grin of triumph?" "Poor Cassidy," she said. "I don't know. He butted in." "All the services are working at cross-purposes. It's a pity." "Well, Cassidy got his man. That's practically all he came for. Evidently he never heard of a code-book in connection with Lauffer's activities. That diagonal cipher caught him."
When the fire started there hundreds of bodies were burned. Many lookers-on up on the mountains, especially the women, fainted." Mr. Lauffer's brother, Harry, then told his part of the tale, which was not less interesting. He said: "We had the most narrow escapes of anybody, and I tell you we don't want to be around when anything of that kind occurs again.
"Lauffer's shop is just around the corner." She took his arm to steady herself on the icy sidewalk. He liked it. In the bitter darkness there was not a soul to be seen on the street; no tramcars were approaching on Madison Avenue, although far up on the crest of Lenox Hill the receding lights of one were just vanishing. "Do you see any policemen?" she asked in a low voice. "Not one.
"It's utterly impossible to solve that unless you have the book," he remarked; "therefore, why speculate, Miss Erith?" "I'm going to try to find the book." "How?" "By breaking into the shop of Herman Lauffer." "House-breaking? Robbery?" "Yes." Vaux smiled incredulously: "Granted that you get into Lauffer's shop without being arrested, what then?" "I shall have this cipher with me.
Lauffer's own fair hand. "Much obliged, Mr. Vaux," cooed Cassidy, in a voice so suave that Vaux noticed its unusual blandness and asked if that particular Service already had "anything on Lauffer." "Not soon but yet!" replied Mr. Cassidy facetiously, "thanks ENTIRELY to your kind tip, Mr. Vaux." And Vaux, suspicious of such urbane pleasantries, rang off and resumed his mutilated cigar.
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