M PLATZOFF'S SECRET--CAPTAIN DUCIE'S TRANSLATION
OF M. PAUL PLATZOFF'S MS.
"You will have gathered from the foregoing note, my dear Carlo, that I
have something of importance to relate to you; something that I am
desirous of keeping a secret from every one but yourself. From the
same source you will have learned where to find the key by which alone
the lock of my secret can be opened.
"I was induced by two reasons to make use of 'The Confessions of
Parthenio the Mystic' as the basis of my cryptographic communication.
In the first place, each of us has in his possession a copy of the
same edition of that rare book, viz. the Amsterdam edition of 1698. In
the second place, there are not more thou half a dozen copies of the
same work in England; so that if this document were by mischance to
fall into the hands of some person other than him for whom it is
intended, such person, even if sufficiently acute to guess at the
means by which alone the cryptogram can be read, would still find it a
matter of some difficulty to obtain possession of the requisite key.
"I address these lines to you, my dear Lampini, not because you and I
have been friends from youth, not because we have shared many dangers
and hardship together, not because we have both kept the same great
object in view throughout life; in fine, I do not address them to you
as a private individual, but in your official capacity as Secretary of
the Secret Society of San Marco.
"You know how deeply I have had the objects of the Society at heart
ever since, twenty-five years ago, I was deemed worthy of being made
one of the initiated. You know how earnestly I have striven to forward
its views both in England and abroad; that through my connexion with
it I am _suspect_ at nearly every capital on the Continent--that I
could not enter some of them except at the risk of my life; that
health, time, money--all have been ungrudgingly given for the
furtherance of the same great end.
"Heaven knows, I am not penning these lines in any self-gratulatory
frame of mind--I who write from this happy haven among the hills.
Self-gratulation would ill become such as me. Where I have given gold,
others have given their blood. Where I have given time and labour,
others have undergone long and cruel imprisonments, have been
separated from all they loved on earth, and have seen the best years
of their life fade hopelessly out between the four walls of a living
tomb. What are my petty sacrifices to such as these?
"But not to every one is granted the happiness of cementing a great
cause with his heart's blood. We must each work in the appointed
way--some of us in the full light of day; others in obscure corners,
at work that can never be seen, putting in the stones of the
foundation painfully one by one, but never destined to share in the
glory of building the roof of the edifice.
"Sometimes, in your letters to me, especially when those letters
contained any disheartening news, I have detected a tone of
despondency, a latent doubt as to whether the cause, to which both of
us are so firmly bound, was really progressing; whether it was not
fighting against hope to continue the battle any longer; whether it
would not be wiser to retreat to the few caves and fastnesses that
were left us, and leaving Liberty still languishing in chains, and
Tyranny still rampant in the high places of the world, to wage no
longer a useless war against the irresistible Fates. Happily, with you
such moods were of the rarest: you would have been more than mortal
had not your soul at times sat in sackcloth and ashes.
"Such seasons of doubt and gloom have come to me also; but I know
that in our secret hearts we both of us have felt that there was a
self-sustaining power, a latent vitality in our cause that nothing
could crush out utterly; that the more it was trampled on the more
dangerous it would become, and the faster it would spread. Certain
great events that have happened during the last twelve months have
done more towards the propagation of the ideas we have so much at
heart than in our wildest dreams we dare have hoped only three short
years ago. Gravely considering these things, it seems to me that the
time cannot be far distant when the contingent plan of operations as
agreed upon by the Central Committee two years ago, to which I gave in
my adhesion on the occasion of your last visit to Bon Repos, will have
to replace the scheme at present in operation, and will become the
great lever in carrying out the Society's policy in time to come.
"When the time shall be ripe, but one difficulty will stand in the way
of carrying out the proposed contingent plan. That difficulty will
arise from the fact that the Society's present expenses will then be
trebled or quadrupled, and that a vast accession to the funds at
command of the Committee for the time being will thus be imperatively
necessitated. As a step, as a something towards obviating whatever
difficulty may arise from lack of funds, I have devised to you, as
Secretary of the Society, the whole of my personal estate, amounting
in the aggregate to close upon fifteen thousand pounds. This property
will not accrue to you till my decease; but that event will happen no
very long time hence. My will, duly signed and witnessed, will be
found in the hands of my lawyer.
"But it was not merely to advise you of this bequest that I have
sought such a roundabout mode of communication. I have a greater and a
much more important bequest to make to the Society, through you, its
accredited agent. I have in my possession a green DIAMOND, the
estimated value of which is a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. This
precious gem I shall leave to you, by you to be sold after my death,
the proceeds of the sale to be added to the other funded property of
the Society of San Marco.
"The Diamond in question became mine during my travels in India many
years ago. I believe my estimate of its value to be a correct one.
Except my confidential servant, Cleon (whom you will remember), no one
is aware that I have in my possession a stone of such immense value. I
have never trusted it out of my own keeping, but have always retained
it by me, in a safe place, where I could lay my hands upon it at a
moment's notice. But not even to Cleon have I entrusted the secret of
the hiding-place, incorruptibly faithful as I believe him to be. It is
a secret locked in my own bosom alone.
"You will now understand why I have resorted to cryptography in
bringing these facts under your notice. It is intended that these
lines shall not be read by you till after my decease. Had I adopted
the ordinary mode of communicating with you, it seemed to me not
impossible that some other eye than the one for which it was intended
might peruse this statement before it reached you, and that through
some foul play or underhand deed the Diamond might never come into
your possession.
"It only remains for me now to point out where and by what means the
Diamond may be found. It is hidden away in----"
Here the MS., never completed, ended abruptly.