CONFIDENCES AND SECRET WRITING
The shore was a miracle of wild water and white foam. When the wind
blows into Cruden Bay there is no end or limit to the violence of waves,
which seem to gather strength as they rush over the flat expanse of
shore. The tide was now only half in, and ordinarily there would have
been a great stretch of bare sand between the dunes and the sea.
To-night, however, the piling up of the waters sent in an unnatural tide
which swept across the flat shore with exceeding violence. The roaring
was interminable, and as we stood down on the beach we were enveloped
in sheets of flying foam. The fierce blasts came at moments with such
strength that it was physically impossible for us to face them. After a
little we took shelter behind one of the wooden bathing-boxes fastened
down under the sandhills. Here, protected from the direct violence
of the storm, the shelter seemed like a calm from which we heard the
roaring of wind and wave as from far off. There was a sense of cosiness
in the shelter which made us instinctively draw close together. I could
have remained happy in such proximity forever, but I feared that it
would end at any moment. It was therefore, with delight that I heard the
voice of Miss Anita, raised to suit the requirements of the occasion:
"Now that we are alone, won't you tell me about Gormala and the strange
occurrences?" I tried to speak, but the storm was too great for the
purposes of narrative. So I suggested that we should come behind the
sandhill. We went accordingly, and made a nest in a deep hollow behind
the outer range of hillocks. Here crouched among the tall bent, which
flew like whip lashes when the wilder bursts of the storm came, and amid
a never-ending scourge of fine sand swept from the top of the sandhills,
I told her of all my experiences of Gormala and Second Sight.
She listened with a rapt attention. At times I could not see her face,
for the evening was closing in and the driving clouds overhead, which
kept piling up in great masses along the western horizon, shut out the
remnants of the day. When, however, in the pauses of drifting sand and
flying foam I could see her properly, I found her face positively alight
with eager intelligence. Throughout, she was moved at times, and now and
again crept a little closer to me; as for instance when I told her of
the dead child and of Lauchlane Macleod's terrible struggle for life
in the race of the tide amongst the Skares. Her questions were quite
illuminating to me at moments, for her quick woman's intuition grasped
possibilities at which my mere logical faculties had shied. Beyond all
else, she was interested in the procession of ghosts on Lammas Eve. Only
once during my narrative of this episode she interrupted me; not an
intentional interruption but a passing comment of her own, candidly
expressed. This was where the body of armed men came along; at which she
said with a deep hissing intake of her breath through her teeth:
"Spaniards! I knew it! They were from some lost ship of the Armada!"
When I spoke of the one who turned and looked at me with eyes that
seemed of the quick, she straightened her back and squared her
shoulders, and looking all round her alertly as though for some hidden
enemy, clenched her hands and shut her lips tightly. Her great dark eyes
seemed to blaze; then she grew calm again in a moment.
When I had finished she sat silent for a while, her eyes fixed in front
of her as with one whose mind is occupied with introspection. Suddenly
she said:
"That man had some secret, and he feared you would discover it. I can
see it all! He, coming from his grave, could see with his dead eyes what
you could see with your living ones. Nay, more; he could, perhaps, see
not only that you saw, and what you saw, but where the knowledge would
lead you. That certainly is a grand idea of Gormala's, that of winning
the Secret of the Sea!" After a pause of a few moments she went on,
standing up as she did so and walking restlessly to and fro with
clenched hands and flashing eyes:
"And if there be any Secrets of the Sea why not win them? If they be of
Spain and the Spaniard, why not, a thousand times more, win them. If the
Spaniard had a secret, be sure it was of no good to our Race. Why--" she
moved excitedly as she went on: "Why this is growing interesting beyond
belief. If his dead eyes could for an instant become quick, why should
not the change last longer? He might materialise altogether." She
stopped suddenly and said: "There! I am getting flighty as usual. I
must think it all over. It is all too wonderful and too exciting for
anything. You will let me ask you more about it, won't you, when we meet
again?"
When we meet again! Then we would meet again: The thought was a delight
to me; and it was only after several rapturous seconds that I answered
her:
"I shall tell you all I know; everything. You will be able to help me in
discovering the Mystery; perhaps working together we can win the Secret
of the Sea."
"That would be too enchanting!" she said impulsively, and then stopped
suddenly as if remembering herself. After a pause she said sedately:
"I'm afraid we must be going back now. We have a long way to drive; and
it will be quite late enough anyhow."
As we moved off I asked her if I might not see her and Mrs. Jack safely
home. I could get a horse at the hotel and drive with them. She laughed
lightly as she answered:
"You are very kind indeed. But surely we shall not need any one! I
am a good driver; the horse is perfect and the lamps are bright. You
haven't any 'hold-ups' here as we have Out West; and as I am not within
Gormala's sphere of influence, I don't think there is anything to
dread!" Then after a pause she added:
"By the way have you ever seen Gormala since?" It was with a queer
feeling which I could not then analyse, but which I found afterwards
contained a certain proportion of exultation I answered:
"Oh yes! I saw her only two days ago--" Here I stopped for I was struck
with a new sense of the connection of things. Miss Anita saw the wonder
in my face and drawing close to me said:
"Tell me all about it!" So I told her of the auction at Peterhead and of
the chest and the papers with the mysterious marks, and of how I thought
it might be some sort of account--"or," I added as a new idea struck
me--"secret writing." When I had got thus far she said with decision:
"I am quite sure it is. You must try to find it out. Oh, you must, you
must!"
"I shall," said I, "if you desire it." She said nothing, but a blush
spread over her face. Then she resumed her movement towards the hotel.
We walked in silence; or rather we ran and stumbled, for the fierce
wind behind us drove us along. The ups and downs of the surface were
veiled with the mist of flying sand swept from amongst the bent-grass
on the tops of the sandhills. I would have liked to help her, but a
judicious dread of seeming officious--and so losing a step in her good
graces--held me back. I felt that I was paying a price of abstinence for
that kiss. As we went, the silence between us seemed to be ridiculous;
so to get over it I said, after searching in my mind for a topic which
would not close up her sympathies with me:
"You don't seem to like Spaniards?"
"No," she answered quickly, "I hate them! Nasty, cruel, treacherous
wretches! Look at the way they are treating Cuba! Look at the _Maine_!"
Then she added suddenly:
"But how on earth did you know I dislike them." I answered:
"Your voice told me when you spoke to yourself whilst I was telling you
about the ghosts and the man with the eyes."
"True," she said reflectively. "So I did. I must keep more guard on
myself and not let my feelings run away with me. I give myself away so
awfully." I could have made a reply to this, but I was afraid. That kiss
seemed like an embodied spirit of warning, holding a sword over my head
by a hair.
It was not long before I found the value of my silence. The lady's
confidence in my discretion was restored, and she began, of her own
initiative, to talk. She spoke of the procession of ghosts; suddenly
stopping, however, as if she had remembered something, she said to me:
"But why were you so anxious that Gormala should not have seen you
saving us from the rock?"
"Because," I answered, "I did not want her to have anything to do with
this."
"What do you mean by 'this'?" There was something in the tone of her
query which set me on guard. It was not sincere; it had not that natural
intonation, even, all through, which marks a question put in simple
faith. Rather was it in the tone of one who asks, knowing well the
answer which will or may be given. As I have said, I did not know much
about women, but the tone of coquetry, no matter how sweet, no matter
how ingenuous, no matter how lovable, cannot be mistaken by any man with
red blood in his veins! Secretly I exulted, for I felt instinctively
that there rested some advantage with me in the struggle of sex. The
knowledge gave me coolness, and brought my brain to the aid of my heart.
Nothing would have delighted me more at the moment than to fling myself,
actually as well as metaphorically, at the girl's feet. My mind was made
up to try to win her; my only thought now was the best means to that
end. I felt that I was a little sententious as I replied to her
question:
"By 'this' I mean the whole episode of my meeting with you."
"And Mrs. Jack," she added, interrupting me.
"And Mrs. Jack, of course," I went on, feeling rejoiced that she had
given me an opportunity of saying something which I would not otherwise
have dared to say. "Or rather I should perhaps say, my meeting with Mrs.
Jack and her friend. It was to me a most delightful thing to meet with
Mrs. Jack; and I can honestly say this day has been the happiest of my
life."
"Don't you think we had better be getting on? Mrs. Jack will be waiting
for us!" she said, but without any kind of reproach in her manner.
"All right," I answered, as I ran up a steep sandhill and held out my
hand to help her. I did not let her hand go till we had run down the
other side, and up and down another hillock and came out upon the flat
waste of sand which lay between us and the road, and over which a sort
of ghostly cloud of sand drifted.
Before we left the sand, I said earnestly:
"Gormala's presence seems always to mean gloom and sorrow, weeping and
mourning, fear and death. I would not have any of them come near you or
yours. This is why I thanked God then, and thank Him now, that in our
meeting Gormala had no part!"
She gave me her hand impulsively. As for an instant her soft palm lay
in my palm and her strong fingers clasped mine, I felt that there was a
bond between us which might some day enable me to shield her from harm.
When Mrs. Jack, and 'her friend', were leaving the hotel, I came to
the door to see them off. She said to me, in a low voice, as I bade
farewell:
"We shall, I daresay, see you before long. I know that Mrs. Jack intends
to drive over here again. Thank you for all your kindness. Good night!"
There was a shake of the reins, a clatter of feet on the hard road, a
sweeping round of the rays of light from the lamp as the cart swayed at
the start under the leap forward of the high-bred horse and swung up the
steep inland roadway. The last thing I saw was a dark, muffled figure,
topped by a tam-o'-shanter cap, projected against the mist of moving
light from the lamp.
Next morning I was somewhat _distrait_. Half the night I had lain awake
thinking; the other half I had dreamt. Both sleeping and waking dreams
were mixed, ranging from all the brightness of hope to the harrowing
possibilities of vague, undefined fear.
Sleeping dreams have this difference over day dreams, that the
possibilities become for the time actualities, and thus for good and
ill, pleasure or pain, multiply the joys or sufferings. Through all,
however, there remained one fixed hope always verging toward belief, I
should see Miss Anita--Marjory--again.
Late in the afternoon I got a letter directed in a strange hand, fine
and firm, with marked characteristics and well formed letters, and just
enough of unevenness to set me at ease. I am never quite happy with the
writer whose hand is exact, letter by letter, and word by word, and line
by line. So much can be told by handwriting, I thought, as I looked at
the letter lying beside my plate. A hand that has no characteristics is
that of a person insipid; a hand that is too marked and too various is
disconcerting and undependable. Here my philosophising came to an end,
for I had opened the envelope, and not knowing the writing, had looked
at the signature, "Marjory Anita."
I hoped that no one at the table d'hote breakfast noticed me, for I felt
that I was red and pale by turns. I laid the letter down, taking care
that the blank back page was uppermost; with what nonchalance I could I
went on with my smoked haddie. Then I put the letter in my pocket and
waited till I was in my own room, secure from interruption, before I
read it.
That one should kiss a letter before reading it, is conceivable,
especially when it is the first which one has received from the girl he
loves.
It was not dated nor addressed. A swift intuition told me that she had
not given the date because she did not wish to give the address; the
absence of both was less marked than the presence of the one alone. It
addressed me as "Dear Mr. Hunter." She knew my name, of course, for I
had told it to her; it was on the envelope. The body of the letter said
that she was asked by Mrs. Jack to convey her warm thanks for the great
service rendered; to which she ventured to add the expression of her own
gratitude. That in the hurry and confusion of mind, consequent on their
unexpected position, they had both quite forgotten about the boat which
they had hired and which had been lost. That the owner of it would no
doubt be uneasy about it, and that they would both be grateful if I
would see him--he lived in one of the cottages close to the harbour of
Port Erroll--and find out from him the value of the boat so that Mrs.
Jack might pay it to him, as well as a reasonable sum for the loss of
its use until he should have been able to procure another. That Mrs.
Jack ventured to give him so much trouble, as Mr. Hunter had been
already so kind that she felt emboldened to trespass upon his goodness.
And was "yours faithfully, 'Marjory Anita.'" Of course there was a
postscript--it was a woman's letter! It ran as follows:
"Have you deciphered those papers? I have been thinking over them as
well as other things, and I am convinced they contain some secret.
You must tell me all about them when I see you on Tuesday.
M."
I fear that logic, as understood in books, had little to do with my kiss
on reading this; the reasoning belonged to that higher plane of thought
on which rests the happiness of men and women in this world and the
next. There was not a thought in the postscript which did not give me
joy--utter and unspeakable joy; and the more I thought of it and the
oftener I read it the more it seemed to satisfy some aching void in my
heart, "Have you deciphered the papers"--the papers whose existence was
only known to her and me! It was delightful that we should know so much
of a secret in common. She had been 'thinking over them'--and other
things! 'Other things!'--I had been thinking of other things; thinking
of them so often that every detail of their being or happening was
photographed not only on my memory but seemingly on my very soul. And
of all these 'other things' there was one!!...
To see her again; to hear her voice; to look in her eyes; to see her
lips move and watch each varying expression which might pass across that
lovely face, evoked by thoughts which we should hold in common; to touch
her hand....
I sat for a while like one in a rapturous dream, where one sees all the
hopes of the heart fulfilled in completeness and endlessly. And this was
all to be on Tuesday next--Only six days off!...
I started impulsively and went to the oak chest which stood in the
corner of my room and took out the papers.
After looking over them carefully I settled quietly down to a minute
examination of them. I felt instinctively that my mandate or commission
was to see if they contained any secret writing. The letters I placed
aside, for the present at any rate. They were transparently simple
and written in a flowing hand which made anything like the necessary
elaboration impossible. I knew something of secret writing, for such had
in my boyhood been a favourite amusement with me. At one time I had been
an invalid for a considerable period and had taken from my father's
library a book by Bishop Wilkins, the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell,
called "Mercury: or the Secret and Swift Messenger." Herein were given
accounts of many of the old methods of secret communication, ciphers,
string writing, hidden meanings, and many of the mechanical devices
employed in an age when the correspondence of ambassadors, spies and
secret agents was mainly conducted by such means. This experience had
set my mind somewhat on secret writing, and ever after when in the
course of miscellaneous reading I came across anything relating to the
subject I made a note of it. I now looked over the papers to see if I
could find traces of any of the methods with which I was acquainted;
before long I had an idea.
It was only a rudimentary idea, a surmise, a possibility; but still it
was worth going into. It was not any cause of undue pride to me, for it
came as a corollary to an established conclusion, rather than as a fine
piece of reasoning from acute observation. The dates of the letters gave
the period as the end of the sixteenth century, when one of the best
ciphers of that time had been conceived, the "Biliteral Cipher" of
Francis Bacon. To this my attention had been directed by the work
of John Wilkins and I had followed it out with great care. As I was
familiar with the principle and method of this cipher I was able to
detect signs of its existence; and this being so, I had at once strong
hopes of being able to find the key to it. The Biliteral cipher has as
its great advantage, that it can be used in any ordinary writing, and
that its forms and methods are simply endless. All that it requires in
the first instance is that there be some method arranged on between the
writer and the reader of distinguishing between different forms of the
same letter. In my desk I had a typewritten copy of a monograph on the
subject of the Biliteral cipher, in which I half suggested that possibly
Bacon's idea might be worked out more fully so that a fewer number of
symbols than his five would be sufficient. Leaving my present occupation
for a moment I went and got it; for by reading it over I might get some
clue to aid me. Some thought which had already come to me, or some
conclusion at which I had already arrived might guide me in this new
labyrinth of figures, words and symbols.[1]
[1] See Appendix A.
When I had carefully read the paper, occasionally referring to the
documents before me, I sat down and wrote a letter to Miss Anita
telling her that I had undertaken the task at once on her suggestion and
that I surmised that the method of secret writing adopted if any, was
probably a variant of the Biliteral cipher. I therefore sent her my own
monograph on the subject so that if she chose she might study it and be
prepared to go into the matter when we met. I studiously avoided saying
anything which might frighten her or make any barrier between us;
matters were shaping themselves too clearly for me to allow myself to
fall into the folly of over-precipitation. It was only when I had
placed the letter with its enclosure in the envelope and written
Marjory's--Miss Anita's--name that I remembered that I had not got her
address. I put it in my pocket to keep for her till we should meet on
Tuesday.
When I resumed my work I began on the two remaining exhibits. The first
was a sheaf of some thirty pages torn out of some black-letter law-book.
The only remarkable thing about it was that every page seemed covered
with dots--hundreds, perhaps thousands on each page. The second was
quite different: a narrow slip of paper somewhat longer than a half
sheet of modern note paper, covered with an endless array of figures in
even lines, written small and with exquisite care. The paper was just
such a size as might be put as marker in an ordinary quarto; that it had
been so used was manifest by the discolouration of a portion of it that
had evidently stuck out at the top of the volume. Fortunately, in its
long dusty rest in the bookshelf the side written on had been downward
so that the figures, though obscured by dust and faded by light and
exposure to the air, were still decipherable. This paper I examined most
carefully with a microscope; but could see in it no signs of secret
writing beyond what might be contained in the disposition of the numbers
themselves. I got a sheet of foolscap and made an enlarged copy, taking
care to leave fair space between the rows of figures and between the
figures themselves.
Then I placed the copy of figures and the first of the dotted pages side
by side before me and began to study them.
I confined my attention at first chiefly to the paper of figures, for it
struck me that it would of necessity be the simpler of the two systems
to read, inasmuch as the symbols should be self-contained. In the dotted
letters it was possible that more than one element existed, for the
disposition of significants appeared to be of endless variety, and
the very novelty of the method--it being one to which the eyes and the
senses were not accustomed--made it a difficult one to follow at first.
I had little doubt, however, that I should ultimately find the dot
cipher the more simple of the two, when I should have learned its secret
and become accustomed to its form. Its mere bulk made the supposition
likely that it was in reality simple; for it would be indeed an endless
task, to work out in this laborious form two whole sheets of a
complicated cipher.
Over and over and over again I read the script of numbers. Forward and
backward; vertically; up and down, for the lines both horizontal and
vertical were complete and exact, I read it. But nothing struck me of
sufficient importance to commence with as a beginning.
Of course there were here and there repetitions of the same combination
of figures, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four together; but
of the larger combinations the instances were rare and did not afford me
any suggestion of a clue!
So I became practical, and spent the remainder of my work-time that day
in making by aid of my microscope an exact but enlarged copy, but in
Roman letters, of the first of the printed pages.
Then I reproduced the dots as exactly as I could. This was a laborious
task indeed. When the page was finished, half-blinded, I took my hat and
went out along the shore towards Whinnyfold. I wanted to go to the Sand
Craigs; but even to myself I said 'Whinnyfold' which lay farther on.
"Men are deceivers ever," sang Balthazar in the play: they deceive
even themselves at times. Or they pretend they do--which is a new and
advanced form of the same deceit.