but by men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in resource, in strength
and unity of purpose; men laughing to scorn the flimsy prophylactics of
society, separated by an infinity of self-confidence and spiritual
integrity from the ordinary easily-crushed criminal of our days.

'This much at least I was able to discover from the first; and
immediately I set myself to the detection of motive by a careful study
of each case. This, too, in due time, became clear to me,--but to
motive it may perhaps be more convenient to refer later on. What next
engaged my attention was the figures on the papyrus, and devoutly did I
hope that by their solution I might be able to arrive at some more
exact knowledge of the mystery.

'The figures round the border first attracted me, and the mere
_reading_ of them gave me very little trouble. But I was convinced that
behind their meaning thus read lay some deep esoteric significance; and
this, almost to the last, I was utterly unable to fathom. You perceive
that these border figures consist of waved lines of two different
lengths, drawings of snakes, triangles looking like the Greek delta,
and a heart-shaped object with a dot following it. These succeed one
another in a certain definite order on all the slips. What, I asked
myself, were these drawings meant to represent,--letters, numbers,
things, or abstractions? This I was the more readily able to determine
because I have often, in thinking over the shape of the Roman letter S,
wondered whether it did not owe its convolute form to an attempt on the
part of its inventor to make a picture of the _serpent;_ S being the
sibilant or hissing letter, and the serpent the hissing animal. This
view, I fancy (though I am not sure), has escaped the philologists, but
of course you know that all letters were originally _pictures of
things,_ and of what was S a picture, if not of the serpent? I