It was a substitution cipher with a twist.

The four kinds of arrows which were r

ight-angle bends are not letters, but are control codes. Starting at the top lef
t-hand corner of the puzzle, with the paper held right-side-up, start reading fr
om left to right. When you hit the first right-angle bend, turn the entire page
sideways and keep reading. The arrows snake through the entire message, turning
it this way and that, until you reach the square box in the bottom line. Not onl
y are the letter codes not in standard left-to-right order, they change dependin
g on the orientation of the paper, meaning that the same symbol could stand for
up to four different letters, depending on the direction the paper had been turn
ed.
If you follow the arrows and copy out the message in a straight line, it then be
comes a standard substitution cipher. The boxes are periods, and the vertical li
nes are spaces. The final message is:
OUR MASTER HAS LEARNED OF AN INVESTIGATION OF OUR WORK IN FOREST SHADOW CITY. DE
FEND OUR AGENT BY KILLING THE MAGISTRATE AND GIVING THE APPEARANCE OF SUICIDE.