"
"What were they, a cipher, a code?" questioned the girl breathlessly.
"No, nothing like that. They are merely the names of various innocent
and unsuspecting booksellers in various parts of the city."
"How did you discover that?"
"In the simplest and easiest way possible. I listed all the names you
reported and studied them carefully, trying to find their common
denominator. They were not in the same neighborhood, so it was not
locality. They were not all German, so it was not racial. I looked them
up in the telephone directory, checking up the numbers of the telephones
of the Jones, the Simpsons, but that gave no clue. Then, as I looked
through the telephone lists, I discovered that there was a bookstore
kept by a man of each name. Then I understood. It is a simple plan for
throwing off shadowers."
"You mean that Mr. Hoff goes to a different bookstore each day to leave
a code message?"
"That's it. The spy who gets the messages each morning calls him up by
'phone, mentioning just the one word. From that Mr. Hoff knows just
where to go, concealing the message in a book before agreed upon."
"The fifth book," interrupted Dean.
"Not always," explained Fleck. "It depends on whether there are five
letters in the name telephoned. I have located and copied several more
of the messages.
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