The Code Advertisement
On the following morning, Inspector Flamborough was summoned to the
Chief Constable's room and, on his arrival, was somewhat surprised to
find his superior poring over a copy of the _Westerhaven Courier_. It
was not Sir Clinton's habit to read newspapers during office hours;
and the Inspector's eyebrows lifted slightly at the unwonted
spectacle.
“Here's a little puzzle for you, Inspector,” Sir Clinton greeted him
as he came in. “Just have a look at it.”
He folded the newspaper to a convenient size and handed it over,
pointing as he did so to an advertisement to which attention had been
drawn by a couple of crosses in pen and ink. Flamborough took the
paper and scanned the advertisement:
DRIFFIELD. AAACC. CCCDE. EEEEF.
HHHHH. IIIIJ. NNNNO. OOOOO.
RRSSS. SSTTT. TTTTT. TTUUW. Y.
“It doesn't seem exactly lucid, sir,” he confessed, as he read it a
second time. “A lot of letters in alphabetical order and divided into
groups of five—bar the single letter at the end. I suppose it was your
name at the front that attracted your eye?”
“No,” Sir Clinton answered. “This copy of the paper came to me through
the post, marked as you see it. It came in by the second delivery.
Here's the wrapper. It'll probably suggest something to you.”
Flamborough looked at it carefully.
“Ordinary official stamped wrapper. There's no clue there, since you
can buy 'em by the hundred anywhere.”
Then a glance at the address enlightened him.
“Same old game, sir? Letters clipped from telegraph forms and gummed
on to the wrapper. It looks like Mr. Justice again.”
“The chances are in favour of it,” Sir Clinton agreed, with a faint
tinge of mockery in his voice at the Inspector's eager recognition of
the obvious. “Well, what about it?”
Flamborough scanned the advertisement once more, but no sign of
comprehension lightened his face.
“Let's clear up one point before we tackle the lettering,” Sir Clinton
suggested. “That's to-day's issue of the _Courier_; so this
advertisement was received at the newspaper office yesterday. Since
the thing reached me by the second post, this copy of the paper may
have been bought in the normal way—first thing in the morning—and
posted at once.”
“That's sound, sir. It's among the ordinary advertisements—not in the
‘Too Late For Classification’ section.”
“It may be a hoax, of course,” Sir Clinton mused, “but the
telegram-form business would hardly occur to a practical joker. I
think one can take it as a genuine contribution until it's proved to
be a fake. Now what do you make of it?”
The Inspector shook his head.
“Cyphers are not my long suit, sir. Frankly, it seems to me just a
jumble, and I don't think I'd make it anything else if I tried.”
Sir Clinton reflected for a minute or two in silence, his eyes fixed
on the advertisement.
“I've a notion that this is only Chapter I, Inspector. There's more to
come, in all probability. If it's Mr. Justice, he's not the man to
waste time. By the way, did you give the reporters the information you
were talking about yesterday?”
“Yes, sir. It was printed in last night's _Evening Herald_, and I
think both the _Courier_ and the _Gazette_ have got it this morning.”
Sir Clinton was still scrutinising the advertisement.
“I'm like you, Inspector—no great shakes on cyphers. But this affair
looks to me more like the letters of a plain message arranged in
ordinary alphabetical order. I think that most likely we shall get the
key from the writer in some form or other before long. In the
meantime, though, we might have a dash at interpreting the affair, if
we can.”
Flamborough's face showed that he thought very poorly of the chances
of success.
“Ever read Jules Verne or Poe?” Sir Clinton demanded. “No? Well, Poe
has an essay on cryptography in its earlier stages—nothing like the
stuff you'll find in Gross or Reiss, of course, and mere child's play
compared with the special manuals on the subject. But he pointed out
that in cypher-solving you have to pick the lock instead of using the
normal key. And Jules Verne puts his finger on the signature of a
cypher-communication as a weak point, if you've any idea who the
sender is. That's assuming, of course, that there is a signature at
all to the thing.”
The Inspector nodded his comprehension of this.
“You mean, sir, that ‘Justice’ would be the signature here, like in
the wire we got?”
“We can but try,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Not that I'm over-hopeful.
Still, it's worth a shot. Suppose we hook out the letters of ‘Justice’
and see what that leaves us. And we may as well disregard the groups
of five for the moment and simply collect the remaining letters under
A, B, C, etc.”
He tore a sheet of paper into small squares and inscribed one letter
of the message on each square.
“Now we take out ‘Justice,’” he said, suiting the action to the word,
“and simply leave the rest in alphabetical groups.”
The Inspector, following the operation, found himself faced with the
arrangement:
AAA CCCC D EEEE F HHHHH III NNNN
OOOOOO RR SSSS TTTTTTTTT U W Y
JUSTICE.
“It doesn't seem much clearer, sir,” Flamborough pointed out with a
certain tinge of enjoyment in his tone. It was not often that he had a
chance of crowing over his superior.
“Wait a moment, Inspector. Just let's reflect for a bit. At any rate,
the letters of ‘Justice’ are there; and that's always better than a
complete blank end. Now consider what Mr. Justice might be burning to
tell us about in his unobtrusive way. He had time to see the news
printed in last night's _Herald_ before he composed this little
affair. Let's suppose that he got some fresh ideas from that—since
this communication falls pat after the publication and he hasn't
bothered us for days before that. The crucial thing was the
identification of the hyoscine. We'll see if we can get the word out
here.”
He sifted out the letters rapidly; and the jumble then took the form:
HYOSCINE AAA CCC D EEE F HHHH II
NNN OOOOO RR SSS TTTTTTTTT U W
JUSTICE.
“It fits, so far,” Sir Clinton said, surveying his handiwork
doubtfully, “but we might have got a couple of words like that out of
a random jumble of fifty-six letters. It's encouraging, but far from
convincing, I admit.”
He glanced over the arrangement with knitted brows.
“There seem to be a devil of a lot of T's in the thing, if we're on
the right track. Now what do you associate with hyoscine in your mind,
Inspector? Quick, now! Don't stop to think.”
“The Croft-Thornton Institute,” said the inspector, promptly.
“Bull's eye, I believe,” the Chief Constable ejaculated. “You could
hardly jam more T's together in English than there are in these three
words. Let's sift 'em out.”
The Inspector bent eagerly forward to see if the necessary letters
could be found. Sir Clinton separated the ones which he required for
the three words, and the arrangement stood thus:
HYOSCINE THE CROFT-THORNTON
INSTITUTE AAA CC D E HH OO SS TT
W JUSTICE.
“I think this is getting outside the bounds of mere chance,” Sir
Clinton adjudged, with more optimism in his tone. “Now we might go a
step further without straining things, even if it's only a short pace.
Let's make a guess. Suppose that it's meant to read: “Hyoscine _at_
the Croft-Thornton Institute.” That leaves us with the jumble here:
AA CC D E HH OO SS T W
“What do you make of that, Inspector?”
“The start of it looks like ACCEDE—no, there's only one E,”
Flamborough began, only to correct himself.
“It's not ACCEDE, obviously, Let's try ACCESS and see if that's any
use.”
The Chief Constable shifted the letters while the Inspector, now
thoroughly interested, watched for the result.
“If it's ACCESS then it ought to be ACCESS TO,” Sir Clinton suggested.
“And that leaves A, D, HH, O, W.”
One glance at the six letters satisfied him.
“It's panned out correctly, Inspector. There isn't a letter over.
See!”
He rearranged the lettering, and the inspector read the complete
message:
WHO HAD ACCESS TO HYOSCINE AT THE CROFT-THORNTON INSTITUTE.
JUSTICE.
“The chances of an anagram working out so sensibly as that are pretty
small,” Sir Clinton said, with satisfaction. “It's a few million to
one that we've got the correct version. H'm! I don't know that Mr.
Justice has really given us much help this time, for the
Croft-Thornton was an obvious source of the drug. Still, he's doing
his best, evidently; and he doesn't mean to let us overlook even the
obvious, this time. I'm prepared to bet that we get the key to this
thing by the next post. Mr. Justice wouldn't leave the matter to the
mere chance of our working the thing out. Still it's some satisfaction
to feel that we've done without his assistance.”
Flamborough occupied himself with copying the cypher and its solution
into his notebook. When he had finished, Sir Clinton lit a cigarette
and handed his case to the Inspector.
“Let's put officialism aside for a few minutes,” the Chief Constable
proposed. “No notes, or anything of that sort. Now I don't mind
confessing, Inspector, that we aren't getting on with this business at
all well. Short of divination, there seems no way of discovering the
truth, so far as present information goes. And we simply can't afford
to let this affair go unsolved. Your Whalley person seems to be our
best hope.”
The Inspector evidently found a fresh train of thought started in his
mind by Sir Clinton's lament.
“I've been thinking over that set of alternatives you put down on
paper the other day, sir,” he explained. “I think they ought to be
reduced from nine to six. It's practically out of the question that
young Hassendean was shot twice over by pure accident; so it seems
reasonable enough to eliminate all that class from your table.”
He put his hand in his pocket and produced a sheet of paper which had
evidently been folded and unfolded fairly often since it had been
first written upon.
“If you reject accident as a possibility in Hassendean's case,” he
continued, “then you bring the thing within these limits here.”
He put his paper down on the table and Sir Clinton read the following:
Hassendean Mrs. Silverdale
A—Suicide ....... Suicide
B—Murder ........ Murder
C—Suicide ....... Accident
D—Murder ........ Accident
E—Suicide ....... Murder
F—Murder ........ Suicide
“Now I think it's possible to eliminate even further than that, sir,
for this reason. There's a third death—the maid's at
Heatherfield—which on the face of it is connected in some way with
these others. I don't see how you can cut the Heatherfield business
away from the other two.”
“I'm with you there, Inspector,” Sir Clinton assured him.
Flamborough, obviously relieved to find that he was not going to be
attacked in the flank, pursued his exposition with more confidence.
“Who killed the maid? That's an important point. It wasn't young
Hassendean, because the maid was seen alive by Dr. Ringwood
immediately after young Hassendean had died on his hands. It certainly
wasn't Mrs. Silverdale, because everything points to her having died
even before young Hassendean left the bungalow to go home and die at
Ivy Lodge. Therefore, there was somebody afoot in the business that
night who wouldn't stick at murder to gain his ends, whatever they
were.”
“Nobody's going to quarrel with that, Inspector.”
“Very good, sir,” Flamborough continued. “Now, with that factor at the
back of one's mind, one might review these six remaining cases in the
light of what we do know.”
“Go ahead,” Sir Clinton urged him, covertly amused to find the
Inspector so completely converted to the method which at first he had
decried.
“Case A, then,” Flamborough began. “A double suicide. Now I don't
cotton much to that notion, for this reason. If it was suicide, then
one or other of them must have had possession of hyoscine in quantity
sufficient to kill both of them. So I judge from the quantity found in
her body. Now no hyoscine was in young Hassendean's system. His eyes
were quite normal and there was no trace of the stuff in the stomach,
as they found when they sent to your London friend on the question.
From what I've seen of young Hassendean's diary, and from what we've
picked up about him from various sources, he wasn't the sort of person
to go in for needless pain. If he'd shot himself at all, it would have
been in the head. And if he'd had hyoscine at hand, he wouldn't have
shot himself at all. He'd have swallowed a dose of the poison instead,
and gone out painlessly.”
“Correct inference, I believe,” Sir Clinton confirmed. “I don't say
it's certain, of course.”
“Well, then, what holds in Case A, ought to hold also in the other two
cases—C and E—where it's also a question of young Hassendean's
suicide. So one can score them off as well.”
“Not so fast,” Sir Clinton interrupted. “I don't say you're wrong; but
your assumption doesn't cover the cases. In Case A you assumed that
Mrs. Silverdale committed suicide—ergo, she had hyoscine in her
possession. But in Case C, the assumption is that she died by
accidental poisoning; and before you can eliminate suicide on young
Hassendean's part, you've got to prove that he had the hyoscine in his
possession. I'm not saying that he hadn't. I'm merely keeping you
strictly to your logic.”
Flamborough considered this for a few moments.
“Strictly speaking, I suppose you're right, sir. And in Case E, I'd
have to prove that he poisoned her wilfully, in order to cover the
case of his having hyoscine in his possession. H'm!”
After a pause, he took up the table afresh.
“Let's go back to Case B, then: a double murder. That brings in this
third party—the person who did for the maid at Heatherfield, we'll
say; and the fellow who broke the window. There were signs of a
struggle in that room at the bungalow, you remember. Now it seems to
me that Case B piles things on too thick, if you understand what I
mean. It means that Mrs. Silverdale was murdered by poison and that
young Hassendean was shot to death. Why the two methods when plain
shooting would have been good enough in both cases? Take the obvious
case—it's been at the back of my mind, and I'm sure it's been at the
back of yours too, that Silverdale surprised the two of them at the
bungalow and killed them both. Where does the poison come in? To my
mind we ought to put a pencil through Case B. It's most improbable.”
Rather to his relief, Sir Clinton made no objection. The Inspector
drew his pencil through the first two lines of the table, then let it
hover over the last line.
“What about Case F, sir? She suicided and he was murdered. If she
suicided, it was a premeditated affair—otherwise they wouldn't have
had the hyoscine at hand. But if it was one of these lovers’
suicide-pacts, they'd have had a dose ready for him as well—and there
wasn't a trace of the stuff spilt on the floor or anywhere about the
bungalow. Score out Case F, sir?”
“I've no objections to your putting your pencil through it if you
like, Inspector, though my reasons are rather different from the ones
you give.”
Flamborough looked up suspiciously, but gathered from Sir Clinton's
face that there was nothing further to be expected.
“Well, at least that's narrowed down the possibilities a bit,” he said
with relief. “You started out with nine possible solutions to the
affair—covering every conceivable combination. Now we're down to
three.”
He picked up his paper and read out the residual scheme, putting fresh
identifying letters to the three cases:
Hassendean Mrs. Silverdale
X—Suicide ....... Accident
Y—Murder ........ Accident
Z—Suicide ....... Murder
“You agree to that, sir?” Flamborough demanded.
“Oh, yes!” Sir Clinton admitted, in a careless tone. “I think the
truth probably lies somewhere among those three solutions. The bother
will be to prove it.”
At this moment a constable entered the room, bringing some letters and
a newspaper in a postal wrapper.
“Come by the next post, as I expected,” the Chief Constable remarked,
picking up the packet and removing the wrapper with care. “The usual
method of addressing, you see: letters cut from telegraph forms and
gummed on to the official stamped wrapper. Well, let's have a look at
the news.”
He unfolded the sheet and glanced over the advertisement pages in
search of a marked paragraph.
“Ingenious devil, Inspector,” he went on. “The other advertisement was
in the _Courier_, this is a copy of to-day's _Gazette_. That makes
sure that no one reading down a column of advertisements would be
struck by a resemblance and start comparisons. I begin to like Mr.
Justice. He's thorough, anyhow. . . . Ah, here we are! Marked like the
other one. Listen, Inspector:
“CLINTON: Take the letters in the following order.
55. 16. 30. 17. 1. 9. 2. 4. 5. 10. 38. 39. 43. 31.
18. 56. 32. 40. 6. 21. 26. 11. 3. 44. 45. 19. 12. 7.
36. 33. 15. 46. 47. 20. 34. 37. 27. 48. 35. 28. 22.
29. 41. 49. 23. 50. 53. 51. 13. 25. 54. 42. 52.
24. 8. 14.
Now that was why he split up his letters into groups of five in the
first advertisement—to make it easy for us to count. I really like
this fellow more and more. A most thoughtful cove.”
He placed the two advertisements side by side on the table.
“Just run over this with me, Inspector. Call the first A number 1, the
second A number 2, and so on. There are fifty-six letters in all, so
number 55 is the W. Number 16 is the first letter in the fourth
quintette—H. Number 30 is the last letter in the sixth quintette—O. So
that spells WHO. Just go through the lot and check them please.”
Flamborough ploughed through the whole series and ended with the same
solution as Sir Clinton had obtained earlier in the morning: “WHO HAD
ACCESS TO HYOSCINE AT THE CROFT-THORNTON INSTITUTE?”
“Well, it's pleasant to hit the mark,” the Chief Constable confessed.
“By the way, you had better send someone down to the _Courier_ and
_Gazette_ Offices to pick up the originals of these advertisements.
But I'm sure it'll be just the same old telegram stunt; and the
address which has to be given as a guarantee of good faith will be a
fake one.”