“Somedimes,” said the retainer, “dey keep it in der little room behind der library room.”

“Can you find it?” asked the m. e. eagerly.  “Do you know where it is?”

“Mein Gott!” said Heffelbauer.  “How long you dink a code live?  Der reborters call him a maskeet.  But von day he butt mit his head der editor, und—­”

“Oh, he’s talking about a goat,” said Boyd.  “Get out, Heffelbauer.”

Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the Enterprise huddled around Calloway’s puzzle, considering its mysterious words in vain.

Then Vesey came in.

Vesey was the youngest reporter.  He had a thirty-two-inch chest and wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him presence and conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts.  He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head.  He was never without an immense, knotted, hard-wood cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle.  Vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office.  Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey.  Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men.  Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.

Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer’s “code” would have done, and asked what was up.  Some one explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him.  Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the m. e.’s hand.  Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming, off unscathed.

“It’s a code,” said Vesey.  “Anybody got the key?”

“The office has no code,” said Boyd, reaching for the message.  Vesey held to it.

“Then old Calloway expects us to read it, anyhow,” said he.  “He’s up a tree, or something, and he’s made this up so as to get it by the censor.  It’s up to us.  Gee!  I wish they had sent me, too.  Say—­we can’t afford to fall down on our end of it.  ’Foregone, preconcerted rash, witching’—­h’m.”

Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whistle softly, frowning at the cablegram.

“Let’s have it, please,” said the m. e.  “We’ve got to get to work on it.”

“I believe I’ve got a line on it,” said Vesey.  “Give me ten minutes.”

He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a waste-basket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going.  The wit and wisdom of the Enterprise remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey.  Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.