三十九级台阶 03

3 The hotel-owner

It was fine May weather as I travelled north that day, and as I watched the fields and the trees and the flowers, I wondered why, when I had been a free man, I had stayed in London.

I bought some sandwiches at lunch time.

I also bought the morning newspaper and read a little about southeast Europe.

When I had finished, I got out Scudder's black book and studied it.

It was almost full of writing, mostly numbers, although sometimes there was a name.

For example, I found the words 'Hofgaard', 'Luneville', and 'Avocado' quite often.

The word I saw the most was'Pavia'.

I was certain that Scudder was using a code.

I have always been interested in codes; I enjoy games and numbers and things like that.