PICKING LOCKS AND DECIPHERING.
Interview with Vidocq — Remarkable Power of altering his Height — A
Bungler in picking Locks — Mr. Hobbs’s Lock and the Duke of Wellington
— Strong belief that certain Ciphers are inscrutable — Davies
Gilbert’s Cipher — The Author’s Cipher both deciphered — Classified
Dictionaries of the English Language — Anagrams — Squaring Words —
Bishop not easily squared — Lesser Dignitaries easier to work upon.
These two subjects are in truth much more nearly allied than might
appear upon a superficial view of them. They are in fact closely
connected with each other as small branches of the same vast subject of
_combinations_.
Several years ago, the celebrated thief-taker, Vidocq, paid a short
visit to London. I had an interview of some duration with this
celebrity, who obligingly conveyed to me much information, which,
though highly interesting, was not of a nature to become personally
useful to me.
He possessed a very remarkable power, which he was so good as to
exhibit to me. It consisted in altering his height to about an inch and
a half less than his ordinary height. He threw over his shoulders a
cloak, in which he walked round the room. It did not touch the floor in
any part, and was, I should say, about an inch and a half above it. He
then altered his height and took the same walk. The cloak then touched
the floor and lay upon it in some part or other during the whole {234}
walk. He then stood still and altered his height alternately, several
times to about the same amount.
I inquired whether the altered height, if sustained for several hours,
produced fatigue. He replied that it did not, and that he had often
used it during a whole day without any additional fatigue. He remarked
that he had found this gift very useful as a disguise. I asked whether
any medical man had examined the question; but it did not appear that
any satisfactory explanation had been arrived at.
〈PICKING LOCKS, VIDOCQ, HOBBS.〉
I now entered upon a favourite subject of my own—the art of picking
locks—but, to my great disappointment, I found him not at all strong
upon that question. I had myself bestowed some attention upon it,
and had written a paper, ‘On the Art of Opening all Locks,’ at the
conclusion of which I had proposed a plan of partially defeating my own
method. My paper on that subject is not yet published.
Several years after Vidocq’s appearance in London, the Exhibition of
1851 occurred. On one of my earliest visits, I observed a very curious
lock of large dimensions with its internal mechanism fully exposed to
view. I found, on inquiry, that it belonged to the American department.
Having discovered the exhibitor, I asked for an explanation of the
lock. I listened with great interest to a very profound disquisition
upon locks and the means of picking them, conveyed to me with the most
unaffected simplicity.
I felt that the maker of that lock surpassed me in knowledge of the
subject almost as much as I had thought I excelled Vidocq. Having
mentioned it to the late Duke of Wellington, he proposed that we
should pay a visit to the lock the next time I accompanied him to the
Exhibition. We did so a few days after, when the Duke was equally
pleased with the lock and its inventor. Mr. Hobbs, the {235} gentleman
of whom I am speaking, and whose locks have now become so celebrated,
was good enough to explain to me from time to time many difficult
questions in the science of constructing and of picking locks. He
informed me that he had devised a system for defeating all these
methods of picking locks, for which he proposed taking out a patent.
I was, however, much gratified when I found that it was precisely the
plan I had previously described in my own unpublished pamphlet.
_Deciphering._
Deciphering is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating of arts, and
I fear I have wasted upon it more time than it deserves. I practised
it in its simplest form when I was at school. The bigger boys made
ciphers, but if I got hold of a few words, I usually found out the key.
The consequence of this ingenuity was occasionally painful: the owners
of the detected ciphers sometimes thrashed me, though the fault really
lay in their own stupidity.
There is a kind of maxim amongst the craft of decipherers (similar to
one amongst the locksmiths), that every cipher can be deciphered.
〈BELIEF IN AN INSCRUTABLE CIPHER.〉
I am myself inclined to think that deciphering is an affair of time,
ingenuity, and patience; and that very few ciphers are worth the
trouble of unravelling them.
One of the most singular characteristics of the art of deciphering
is the strong conviction possessed by every person, even moderately
acquainted with it, that he is able to construct a cipher which nobody
else can decipher. I have also observed that the cleverer the person,
the more intimate is his conviction. In my earliest study of the
subject I shared in this belief, and maintained it for many years.
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〈THE PRESIDENT OF ROYAL SOCIETY’S CIPHER DECIPHERED.〉
In a conversation on that subject which I had with the late Mr. Davies
Gilbert, President of the Royal Society, each maintained that he
possessed a cipher which was absolutely inscrutable. On comparison,
it appeared that we had both imagined the same law, and we were thus
confirmed in our conviction of the security of our cipher.
Many years after, the late Dr. Fitton, having asked my opinion of
the possibility of making an inscrutable cipher, I mentioned the
conversation I had had with Davies Gilbert, and explained the law of
the cipher, which we both thought would baffle the greatest adept
in that science. Dr. Fitton fully agreed in my view of the subject;
but even whilst I was explaining the law, an indistinct glimpse of
defeating it presented itself vaguely to my imagination. Having
mentioned my newly-conceived doubt, it was entirely rejected by my
friend. I then proposed that Dr. Fitton should write a few sentences in
a cipher constructed according to this law, and that I should make some
attempts to unravel it. I offered to give a few hours to the subject;
and if I could see my way to a solution, to continue my researches; but
if not on the road to success, to tell him I had given up the task.
Late in the evening of that day I commenced a preparatory inquiry into
the means of unravelling this new cipher, and I soon arrived at a
tolerable certainty that I should succeed. The next night, on my return
from a party, I found Dr. Fitton’s cipher on my table. I immediately
commenced my attempt. After some time I found that it would not yield
to my means of treating it; and on further examination I succeeded in
proving that it was not written according to the law agreed upon. At
first my friend was very positive that I was mistaken; and having taken
it to his sister, by whose {237} aid it was composed, he returned and
told me that it _was_ constructed upon the very law I had proposed. I
then assured him that they _must_ have made some mistake, and that my
evidence was so irresistible, that if my life depended upon the result
I should have no hesitation in making my election.
Dr. Fitton again retired to consult his sister; and after the lapse of
a considerable interval of time again returned, and informed me that I
was right—that his sister had inadvertently mistaken the enunciation
of the law. I now remarked that I possessed an absolute demonstration
of the fact I had communicated to him; and added that, having
conjectured the origin of the mistake, I would decipher the cipher with
the erroneous law before he could send me the new cipher to be made
according to the law originally proposed. Before the evening of the
next day both ciphers had been translated.
This cipher was arranged upon the following principle:—Two concentric
circles of cardboard were formed, each divided into twenty-six or more
divisions.
On the outer were written in regular order the letters of the alphabet.
On the inner circle were written the same twenty-six letters, but in
any irregular manner.
In order to use this cipher, look for the first letter of the word to
be ciphered on the outside circle. Opposite to it, on the inner circle,
will be another letter, which is to be written as the cipher for the
former.
Now turn round the inner circle until the cipher just written is
opposite the letter _a_ on the _outer_ circle. Proceed in the same
manner for the next, and so on for all succeeding letters.
Many varieties of this cipher may be made by inserting {238} other
characters to represent the divisions between words, the various stops,
or even blanks. Although Davies Gilbert, I believe, and myself, both
arrived at it from our own efforts, I have reason to think that it is
of very much older date. I am not sure that it may not be found in the
“Steganographia” of Schott, or even of Trithemius.
〈NEW DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE.〉
One great aid in deciphering is, a complete analysis of the language
in which the cipher is written. For this purpose I took a good English
dictionary, and had it copied out into a series of twenty-four other
dictionaries. They comprised all words of
One letter,
Two letters,
Three letters,
&c. &c.:
Twenty-six letters.
Each dictionary was then carefully examined, and all the modifications
of each word, as, for instance, the plurals of substantives, the
comparatives and superlatives of adjectives, the tenses and participles
of verbs, &c., were carefully indicated. A second edition of these
twenty-six dictionaries was then made, including these new derivatives.
Each of these dictionaries was then examined, and every word which
contained any two or more letters of the same kind was carefully
marked. Thus, against the word _tell_ the numbers 3 and 4 were placed
to indicate that the third and fourth letters are identical. Similarly,
the word _better_ was followed by the numbers 25, 34. Each of these
dictionaries was then re-arranged thus:—In the first or original one
each word was arranged according to the alphabetical order of its
_initial_ letter.
In the next the words were arranged alphabetically {239} according to
the _second_ letter of each word, and so in the other dictionaries on
to the last letter.
Again, each dictionary was divided into several others, according to
the numerical characteristics placed at the end of each word. Many
words appeared repeatedly in several of these subdivisions.
The work is yet unfinished, although the classification already
amounts, I believe, to nearly half a million words.
〈QUEER COINCIDENCES.〉
From some of these, dictionaries were made of those words only which
by transposition of their letters formed anagrams. A few of these are
curious:—
Opposite. Similarity. Satirical.
vote veto fuel flue odes dose
acre care taps pats bard drab
evil veil tubs buts poem mope
ever veer vast vats poet tope
lips slip note tone trio riot
cask sack cold clod star rats
fowl wolf evil vile wive view
gods dogs arms mars nabs bans
tory tyro rove over tame mate
tars rats lips lisp acts cats
There are some verbal puzzles costing much time to solve which may be
readily detected by these dictionaries. Such, for instance, is the
sentence,
I tore ten Persian MSS.,
which it is required to form into one word of eighteen letters.
The first process is to put opposite each letter the number of times it
occurs, thus:— {240}
i 2
t 2
o 1
r 2
e 3
n 2
p 1
s 3
a 1
m 1
──
18
It contains—
2 triplets.
4 pairs.
4 single letters.
──
18
Now, on examining the dictionary of all words of eighteen letters, it
will be observed that they amount to twenty-seven, and that they may be
arranged in six classes:—
7 having five letters of the same kind.
5 having four letters of the same kind.
3 having three triplets.
7 having two triplets.
3 having one triplet.
2 having seven pairs.
──
27
〈ANAGRAMS.〉
Hence it appears that the word sought must be one of those seven having
two triplets, and also that it must have four pairs; this reduces the
question to the two words—
misinterpretations, misrepresentations.
The latter is the one sought, because its triplets are e and s, whilst
those of the former are i and t.
The reader who has leisure may try to find out the word of eighteen
letters formed by the following sentence:—
Art is not in, but Satan.
〈SQUARING A DEAN.〉
Another amusing puzzle may be greatly assisted by these {241}
dictionaries. It is called squaring words, and is thus practised:—Let
the given word to be squared be Dean. It is to be written horizontally,
and also vertically, thus:—
D e a n.
e . . .
a . . .
n . . .
And it is required to fill up the blanks with such letters that each
vertical column shall be the same as its corresponding horizontal
column, thus:—
D e a n
e a s e
a s k s
n e s t
The various ranks of the church are easily squared; but it is stated, I
know not on what authority, that no one has yet succeeded in squaring
the word bishop.
Having obtained one squared word, as in the case of Dean, it will be
observed that any of the letters in the two diagonals, d, a, k, t,—n,
s, s, n, may be changed into any other letter which will make an
English word.
Thus Dean may be changed into such words as
dear peas weak beam
fear seas lead seal
deaf bear real team
In fact there are upwards of sixty substitutes: possibly some of these
might render the two diagonals, d, a, k, t, and n, s, s, n, also
English words.
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