Darke Darrell, the Boy Detective — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

66 DARKE DARRELL, He took out his pencil and postin a figure under each letter on the card, as follows: R.G.VANDERB IL T. 1—2_3_4_5 6-78 910 1112 SoH Ue Mew in 2 OR Rea an. 13—14—15—16—17—18—19—20—21—22—23 Of course, that enabled him to read the mysterious chalk marks. He had simply to substitute for each figure on the door the letter which stood directly over the same-figure on the card. The substitution of the letters for the figures gave him the following : UNDER THE THIRD STEP. PRECARDO. The next thing was to discover what that meant. «Under the third step,” Darke kept repeating. ‘‘ Does it mean that the key is secreted there? There are five steps. Does it mean the third step from the top, or from the bot- tom? Il look under both of them.” | He mounted the steps, and felt in under them. He was about to give up in despair, when his hand suddenly touched some metallic substance. Drawing it out, he discovered, to his great joy, that it was a key, and one glance at it as- sured him that it would open the door at the head of the — steps. «* Will I merely find myself in another room, aaa meet with like obstacles?” was his mental query. ‘* What does — ‘Precardo’ mean? Is it some kind of a password? [’'ll fix — it wellin my memory. This may lead directly to the den — of counterfeiters.” | He thrust the key into the lock; he turned it, but not EComicbooks.com