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Doyle, Arthur Conan

"The Return Of Sherlock Holmes"

I therefore waited
for fresh material. In my second interview with Mr. Hilton
Cubitt he was able to give me two other short sentences and one
message, which appeared -- since there was no flag -- to be a
single word. Here are the symbols. Now, in the single word I
have already got the two E's coming second and fourth in a word
of five letters. It might be 'sever.' or 'lever,' or 'never.' There
can be no question that the latter as a reply to an appeal is far the
most probable, and the circumstances pointed to its being a reply
written by the lady. Accepting it as correct, we are now able to say
that the symbols ~~~ stand respectively for N, V, and R.
"Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy
thought put me in possession of several other letters. It occurred
to me that if these appeals came, as I expected, from someone
who had been intimate with the lady in her early life, a combina-
tion which contained two E's with three letters between might
very well stand for the name 'ELSIE.' On examination I found
that such a combination formed the termination of the message
which was three times repeated.


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