DECIPHERING.
Many weeks passed away before Gualtier had another opportunity of
having a confidential conversation with Miss Krieff. Zillah seemed to
be perverse. She was as capricious as ever as to her music: some days
attending to it for five minutes, other days half an hour; but now
she did not choose to leave the room. She would quit the piano, and,
flinging herself into a chair, declare that she wanted to see how
Hilda stood it. As Hilda seated herself and wrought out elaborate
combinations from the instrument, she would listen attentively, and
when it was over she would give expression to some despairing words
as to her own stupidity.
Yet Gualtier had opportunities, and he was not slow to avail himself
of them. Confidential intercourse had arisen between himself and Miss
Krieff, and he was determined to avail himself of the great advantage
which this gave him. They had a secret in common--she had admitted
him to her intimacy. There was an understanding between them. Each
felt an interest in the other. Gualtier knew that he was more than an
ordinary music-teacher to her.
During those days when Zillah persistently staid in the room he made
opportunities for himself. Standing behind her at the piano he had
chances of speaking words which Zillah could not hear.
Thus: "Your fingering there is not correct, Miss Krieff," he would
say in a low tone. "You must put the second finger on G. I have not
yet deciphered it."
"But the book indicates the third finger on G. Have you tried?"
"It is a blunder of the printer. Yes, every day--almost every hour of
every day."
"Yet it seems to me to be natural to put the third finger there. Are
you discouraged?"
"Try the second finger once or twice, this way;" and he played a few
notes. "Discouraged? no; I am willing to keep at it for an indefinite
period."
"Yes, I see that it is better. You must succeed. I was three months
at it before I discovered any thing."
"That passage is _allegro_, and you played it _andante_. I wish you
would give me a faint hint as to the way in which you deciphered it."
"I did not notice the directions," responded Miss Krieff, playing the
passage over again.
"Will that do? No, I will give no hint. You would only imitate me
then, and I wish you to find out for yourself on your own principle."
"Yes, that is much better. But I have no principle to start on, and
have not yet found out even how to begin."
"I must pay more attention to 'expression,' I see. You say my 'time'
is correct enough. If you are not discouraged, you will find it out
yet."
"Your 'time' is perfect. If it is possible, I will find it out. I am
not discouraged."
"Well, I will hope for something better the next time, and now don't
speak about it any more. The 'brat' is listening."
"_Allegro_, _allegro_; remember, Miss Krieff. You always confound
_andante_ with _allegro_."
"So I do. They have the same initials."
Such was the nature of Gualtier's musical instructions. These
communications, however, were brief and hurried, and only served to
deepen the intimacy between them. They had now mutually recognized
themselves as two conspirators, and had thus become already
indispensable to one another.
They waited patiently, however, and at length their patient waiting
was rewarded. One day Gualtier came and found that Zillah was unwell,
and confined to her room. It was the slightest thing in the world,
but the General was anxious and fidgety, and was staying in the room
with her trying to amuse her. This Miss Krieff told him with her
usual bitterness.
"And now," said she, "we will have an hour. I want to know what you
have done."
"Done! Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No, nothing. My genius does not lie in that direction. You might as
well have expected me to decipher a Ninevite inscription. I can do
nothing."
"Have you tried?"
"Tried! I assure you that for the last month the only thing that I
have thought of has been this. Many reasons have urged me to decipher
it, but the chief motive was the hope of bringing to you a complete
explanation."
"Have you not made out at least a part of it?"
"Not a part--not a single word--if there are words in it--which I
very much doubt."
"Why should you doubt it?"
"It seems to me that it must consist of hieroglyphics. You yourself
say that you have only made out a part of it, and that you doubt
whether it is a valid interpretation. After all, then, your
interpretation is only partial--only a conjecture. Now I have not
begun to make even a conjecture. For see--what is this?" and Gualtier
drew the well-thumbed paper from his pocket. "I have counted up all
the different characters here, and find that they are forty in
number. They are composed chiefly of astronomical signs; but sixteen
of them are the ordinary punctuation marks, such as one sees every
day. If it were merely a secret alphabet, there would be twenty-six
signs only, not forty. What can one do with forty signs?
"I have examined different grammars of foreign languages to see if
any of them had forty letters, but among the few books at my command
I can find none; and even if it were so, what then? What would be the
use of trying to decipher an inscription in Arabic? I thought at one
time that perhaps the writer might have adopted the short-hand
alphabet, but changed the signs. Yet even when I go from this
principle I can do nothing."
"Then you give it up altogether?"
"Yes, altogether and utterly, so far as I am concerned; but I still
am anxious to know what you have deciphered, and how you have
deciphered it. I have a hope that I may gain some light from your
discovery, and thus be able to do something myself."
"Well," said Miss Krieff, "I will tell you, since you have failed so
completely. My principle is a simple one; and my deciphering, though
only partial, seems to me to be so true, as far as it goes, that I
can not imagine how any other result can be found.
"I am aware," she continued, "that there are forty different
characters in the inscription. I counted them all out, and wrote them
out most carefully. I went on the simple principle that the writer
had written in English, and that the number of the letters might be
disregarded on a first examination.
"Then I examined the number of times in which each letter occurred. I
found that the sign [Aries image] occurred most frequently. Next was
[Gemini image]; next [Taurus image]; and then [Cancer image], and
[Leo image], and [Libra image], and [Sagittarius image], and [Mars
image]." Miss Krieff marked these signs down as she spoke.
Gualtier nodded.
"There was this peculiarity about these signs," said Miss Krieff,
"that they occurred all through the writing, while the others
occurred some in the first half and some in the second. For this
inscription is very peculiar in this respect. It is only in the
second half that the signs of punctuation occur. The signs of the
first half are all astronomical.
"You must remember," continued Miss Krieff, "that I did not think of
any other language than the English. The idea of its being any
dialect of the Hindustani never entered my head. So I went on this
foundation, and naturally the first thought that came to me was, what
letters are there in English which occur most frequently? It seemed
to me if I could find this out I might obtain some key, partially, at
any rate, to the letters which occurred so frequently in this
writing.
"I had plenty of time and unlimited patience. I took a large number
of different books, written by standard authors, and counted the
letters on several pages of each as they occurred. I think I counted
more than two hundred pages in this way. I began with the vowels, and
counted up the number of times each one occurred. Then I counted the
consonants."
"That never occurred to me," said Gualtier. "Why did you not tell
me?"
"Because I wanted you to decipher it yourself on your own principle.
Of what use would it be if you only followed over my track? You would
then have come only to my result. But I must tell you the result of
my examination. After counting up the recurrence of all the letters
on more than two hundred pages of standard authors, I made out an
average of the times of their recurrence, and I have the paper here
on which I wrote the average down."
And Miss Krieff drew from her pocket a paper which she unfolded and
showed to Gualtier. On it was the following:
AVERAGE OF LETTERS.
E.....222 times per page. N.....90 times per page.
T.....162 times per page. L.....62 times per page.
A.....120 times per page. D.....46 times per page.
H.....110 times per page. C.....42 times per page.
I..J..109 times per page. U..V..36 times per page.
S.....104 times per page. B.....36 times per page.
O.....100 times per page. W.....30 times per page.
R.....100 times per page. G.....30 times per page.
"The rest," said Miss Krieff, "occur on the average less than thirty
times on a page, and so I did not mark them. 'F,' 'P,' and 'K' may be
supposed to occur more frequently than some others; but they do not.
"'E,' then," she continued, "is the letter of first importance in the
English language. 'A,' and 'T,' and 'H,' are the next ones. Now there
are some little words which include these letters, such as 'the.'
'And' is another word which may be discovered and deciphered, it is
of such frequent occurrence. If these words only can be found, it is
a sign at least that one is on the right track. There are also
terminations which seem to me peculiar to the English language; such
as 'ng,' 'ing,' 'ed,' 'ly,' and so on. At any rate, from my studies
of the Italian, French, and German, and from my knowledge of
Hindustani, I know that there are no such terminations in any of the
words of those languages. So you see," concluded Miss Krieff, with a
quiet smile, "the simple principle on which I acted."
"Your genius is marvelously acute!" exclaimed Gualtier, in
undisguised admiration. "You speak of your principle as a _simple_
one, but it is more than I have been able to arrive at."
"Men," said Miss Krieff, "reason too much. You have been imagining
all sorts of languages in which this may have been written. Now,
women go by intuitions. I acted in that way."
"Intuitions!" exclaimed Gualtier. "You have reasoned out this thing
in a way which might have done honor to Bacon. You have laid down a
great principle as a foundation, and have gone earnestly to work
building up your theory. Champollion himself did not surpass you."
Gualtier's tone expressed profound admiration. It was not idle
compliment. It was sincere. He looked upon her at that moment as a
superior genius. His intellect bowed before hers. Miss Krieff saw the
ascendency which she had gained over him; and his expressions of
admiration were not unwelcome. Admiration! Rare, indeed, was it that
she had heard any expressions of that kind, and when they came they
were as welcome as is the water to the parched and thirsty ground.
Her whole manner softened toward him, and her eyes, which were
usually so bright and hard, now grew softer, though none the less
bright.
"You overestimate what I have done," said she, "and you forget that
it is only partially effected."
"Whether partially or not," replied Gualtier, "I have the most
intense curiosity to see what you have done. Have you any objections
to show it to me? Now that I have failed by myself, the only hope
that I have is to be able to succeed through your assistance. You can
show your superiority to me here; perhaps, in other things, I may be
of service to you."
"I have no objections," said Miss Krieff. "Indeed I would rather show
you my results than not, so as to hear what you have to say about
them. I am not at all satisfied, for it is only partial. I know what
you will say. You will see several reasons, all of which are very
good, for doubting my interpretation of this writing."
"I can assure you that I shall doubt nothing. After my own
disgraceful failure any interpretation will seem to me to be a work
of genius. Believe me any interpretation of yours will only fill me
with a sense of my own weakness."
"Well," said Miss Krieff, after a pause, "I will show you what I have
done. My papers are in my room. Go and play on the piano till I come
back."
Saying this she departed, and was absent for about a quarter of an
hour or twenty minutes, and then returned.
"How is Miss Pomeroy?" asked Gualtier, turning round on the
piano-stool and rising.
"About the same," said Miss Krieff. "The General is reading Puss in
Boots to her, I believe. Perhaps it is Jack and the Bean Stalk, or
Beauty and the Beast. It is one of them, however. I am not certain
which."
She walked up to a centre-table and opened a paper which she held in
her hand. Gualtier followed her, and took a seat by her side.
"You must remember," said Miss Krieff, "that this interpretation of
mine is only a partial one, and may be altogether wrong. Yet the
revelations which it seemed to convey were so startling that they
have produced a very deep impression on my mind. I hoped that you
would have done something. If you had arrived at a solution similar
to mine, even if it had been a partial one, I should have been
satisfied that I had arrived at a part of the truth at least. As you
have not done so, nothing remains but to show you what I have done."
Saying this, she opened the paper which she held and displayed it to
Gualtier:
[Illustration.]
"In that writing," said she, "there are twenty lines. I have been
able to do any thing with ten of them only, and that partially. The
rest is beyond my conjecture."
The paper was written so as to show under each character the
corresponding letter, or what Miss Krieff supposed to be the
corresponding letter, to each sign.
"This," said Miss Krieff, "is about half of the signs. You see if my
key is applied it makes intelligible English out of most of the signs
in this first half. There seems to me to be a block of letters set
into a mass of characters. Those triangular portions of signs at each
end, and all the lower part, seem to me to be merely a mass of
characters that mean nothing, but added to conceal and distract."
"It is possible," said Gualtier, carefully examining the paper.
"It must mean something," said Miss Krieff, "and it can mean nothing
else than what I have written. That is what it was intended to
express. Those letters could not have tumbled into that position by
accident, so as to make up these words. See," she continued, "here
are these sentences written out separately, and you can read them
more conveniently."
She handed Gualtier a piece of paper, on which was the following:
_Oh may God have mercy on my wretched soul Amen
O Pomeroy forged a hundred thousand dollars
O N Pomeroy eloped with poor Lady Chetwynde
She acted out of a mad impulse in flying
She listened to me and ran off with me
She was piqued at her husband's act
Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynd
Expelled the army for gaming
N Pomeroy of Pomeroy Berks
O I am a miserable villain_
Gualtier read it long and thoughtfully. "What are the initials 'O.
N.?'"
"Otto Neville. It is the General's name."
Silence followed. "Here he is called O Pomeroy, O N Pomeroy, and N
Pomeroy."
"Yes; the name by which he is called is Neville."
"Your idea is that it is a confession of guilt, written by this O. N.
Pomeroy himself?"
"It reads so."
"I don't want to inquire into the probability of the General's
writing out this and leaving it in his drawer, even in cipher, but I
look only at the paper itself."
"What do you think of it?"
"In the first place your interpretation is very ingenious."
"But--?"
"But it seems partial."
"So it does to me. That is the reason why I want your help. You see
that there are several things about it which give it an incomplete
character. First, the mixture of initials; then, the interchange of
the first and third persons. At one moment the writer speaking of
Pomeroy as a third person, running off with Lady Chetwynde, and again
saying he himself fell in with her. Then there are incomplete
sentences, such as, 'Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynde--'"
"I know all that, but I have two ways of accounting for it."
"What?"
"First, that the writer became confused in writing the cipher
characters and made mistakes."
"That is probable," said Gualtier. "What is another way?"
"That he wrote it this way on purpose to baffle."
"I think the first idea is the best: if he had wished to baffle he
never would have written it at all."
"No; but somebody else might have written it in his name thus
secretly and guardedly. Some one who wished for vengeance, and tried
this way."
Gualtier said nothing in reply, but looked earnestly at Miss Krieff.
[Illustration.]