Yet I had an ugly feeling at the back of my head that it had been all too easy, and that Ivery was not the man to be duped in this way for long.

That set me thinking about the queer talk on the crevice.

The poetry stuff I dismissed as the ordinary password, probably changed every time.

But who were Chelius and Bommaerts, and what in the name of goodness were the Wild Birds and the Cage Birds?
Twice in the past three years I had had two such riddles to solve--Scudder's scribble in his pocket-book, and Harry Bullivant's three words.

I remembered how it had only been by constant chewing at them that I had got a sort of meaning, and I wondered if fate would some day expound this puzzle also.
Meantime I had to get back to London as inconspicuously as I had come.
It might take some doing, for the police who had been active in Morvern might be still on the track, and it was essential that I should keep out of trouble and give no hint to Gresson and his friends that I had been so far north.