The thing began in the colony room of the Empire Club in London. The
colony room is on the second floor and looks out over Piccadilly Circus.
It was at an hour when nobody is in an English club. There was a drift
of dirty fog outside. Such nights come along in October.
Douglas Hargrave did not see the Baronet until he closed the door behind
him. Sir Henry was seated at a table, leaning over, his face between his
hand, and his elbows resting on the polished mahogany board. There was
a sheet of paper on the table between the Baronet's elbows. There were a
few lines written on the paper and the man's faculties were concentrated
on them. He did not see the jewel dealer until that person was half
across the room, then he called to him.
“Hello, Hargrave,” he said. “Do you know anything about ciphers?”
“Only the trade one that our firm uses,” replied the jewel dealer. “And
that's a modification of the A B C code.”
“Well,” he said, “take a look at this.”
The jewel dealer sat down at the other side of the table and the Baronet
handed him the sheet of paper. The man expected to see a lot of queer
signs and figures; but instead he found a simple trade's message, as it
seemed to him.
P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight steamer Don Carlow from N.
Y.
Have the bill of lading handed over to our agent to check up.
“Well,” said the jewel dealer, “somebody's going to ship nine hundred
horses. Where's the mystery?”
The Baronet shrugged his big shoulders.
“The mystery,” he said, “is everywhere. It's before and after and in the
body of this message. There's hardly anything to it but mystery.”
“Who sent it?” said Hargrave.
“That's one of the mysteries,” replied the Baronet.
“Ah!” said the jewel dealer. “Who received it?”
“That's another,” he answered.
“At any rate,” continued Hargrave, “you know where you got it.”
“Right,” replied the Baronet. “I know where I got it.” He took three
newspapers out of the pocket of his big tweed coat. “There it is,” he
said, “in the personal column of three newspapers--today's Times printed
in London; the Matin printed in Paris; and a Dutch daily printed in
Amsterdam.”
And there was the message set up in English, in two sentences precisely
word for word, in three newspapers printed on the same day in London,
Paris and Amsterdam.
“It seems to be a message all right,” said Hargrave: “But why do you
imagine it's a cipher?”
The Baronet looked closely at the American jewel dealer for a moment.
“Why should it be printed in English in these foreign papers,” he said,
“if it were not a cipher?”
“Perhaps,” said Hargrave, “the person for whom it's intended does not
know any other language.”
The Baronet shrugged his shoulders.
“The persons for whom this message is intended,” he said, “do not
confine themselves to a single language. It's a pretty well-organized
international concern.”
“Well,” said Hargrave, “it doesn't look like a mystery that ought
to puzzle the ingenuity of the Chief of the Criminal Investigation
Department of the metropolitan police.” He nodded to Sir Henry. “You
have only to look out for the arrival of nine hundred horses and when
they get in to see who takes them off the boat. The thing looks easy.”
“It's not so easy as it looks,” replied the Baronet. “Evidently these
horses might go to France, Holland or England. That's the secret in this
message. That's where the cipher comes in. The name of the port is in
that cipher somewhere.”
“But you can, watch the steamer,” said Hargrave, “the Don Carlos.”
The Baronet laughed.
“There's no such steamer!” He got up and began to walk round the table.
“Nine hundred horses,” he said. “This thing has got to stop. They're on
the sea now, on the way over from America: We have got to find out where
they will go ashore.”
He stopped, stooped over and studied the message which he had written
out and which also lay before him in the three newspapers.
“It's there,” he said, “the name of the port of arrival, somewhere in
those two sentences. But I can't get at it. It's no cipher that I have
ever heard of. It's no one of the hundred figure or number ciphers that
the experts in the department know anything about. If we knew the port
of arrival we could pick up the clever gentleman who comes to take away
the horses. But what's the port--English, French or Dutch? There are a
score of ports.” He struck the paper with his hand. “It's there, my word
for it, if we could only decode the thing.”
Then he stood up, his face lifted, his fingers linked behind his
back. He crossed the room and stood looking out at the thin yellow fog
drifting over Piccadilly Circus. Finally he came back, gathered up his
papers and put them in the pocket of his big tweed coat.
“There's one man in Europe,” he said, “who can read this thing. That's
the Swiss expert criminologist, old Arnold, of Zurich. He's lecturing at
the Sorbonne in Paris. I'm going to see him.”
Then he went out.
Now that, as has been said, is how the thing began. It was the first
episode in the series of events that began to go forward on this
extraordinary night. One will say that the purchasing agent for a great
New York jewel house ought to be accustomed to adventures. The writers
of romance have stimulated that fancy. But the fact is that such persons
are practical people. They never do any of the things that the story
writers tell us. They never carry jewels about with them. Of course they
know the police departments of foreign cities. All jewel dealers make a
point of that. Hargrave's father was an old friend of Sir Henry Marquis,
chief of the C. I. D., and the young man always went to see him when he
happened in London. That explains the freedom of his talk to Hargrave on
this night in the Empire Club in Piccadilly.
The young man went over and sat down by the fire. The big room was
empty. The sounds outside seemed muffled and distant. The incident that
had just passed impressed him. He wondered why people should imagine
that a purchasing agent of a jewel house must be a sort of expert in the
devices of mystery. As has been said, the thing's a notion. Everything
is shipped through reliable transportation companies and insured. There
was much more mystery in a shipload of horses--the nine hundred horses
that were galloping through the head of Sir Henry Marquis--than in all
the five prosaic years during which young Hargrave had succeeded his
father as a jewel buyer. The American was impressed by this mystery of
the nine hundred horses. Sir Henry had said it was a mystery in every
direction.
Now, as he sat alone before the fire in the colony room of the Empire
Club and thought about it, the thing did seem inexplicable. Why should
the metropolitan police care who imported horses, or in what port a
shipload of them was landed? The war was over. Nobody was concerned
about the importation of horses. Why should Sir Henry be so disturbed
about it? But he was disturbed; and he had rushed off to Paris to see an
expert on ciphers. That seemed a tremendous lot of trouble to take. The
Baronet knew the horses were on the sea coming from America, he said. If
he knew that much, how could he fail to discover the boat on which
they were carried and the port at which they would arrive? Nobody could
conceal nine hundred horses!
Hargrave was thinking about that, idly, before the glow of the coal
fire, when the second episode in this extraordinary affair arrived.
A steward entered.
“Visitor, please,” he said, “to see Mr. Hargrave.”
Then he presented his tray with a card. The jewel dealer took the card
with some surprise. Everybody knew that he was at the Empire Club. It is
a colony thing with chambers for foreign guests. A list of arrivals is
always printed. He saw at a glance that it was not a man's card; the
size was too large. Then he turned it over before the light of the fire.
The name was engraved in script, an American fashion at this time.
The woman's card had surprised him; but the name on it brought him up
in his chair--“Mrs. A. B. Farmingham.” It was not a name that he knew
precisely; but he knew its genera, the family or group to which it
belonged. Mr. Jefferson removed titles of nobility in the American
republic, but his efforts did not eliminate caste zones. It only made
the lines of cleavage more pronounced. One knew these zones by the name
formation. Everybody knew “Alfa Baba” Farmingham, as the Sunday Press
was accustomed to translate his enigmatical initials. Some wonderful
Western bonanza was behind the man. Mrs. “Alfa Baba” Farmingham would
be, then, one of the persons that Hargrave's house was concerned to
reach. He looked again at the card. In the corner the engraved address,
“Point View, Newport,” was marked out with a pencil and “The Ritz”
written over it.
He got his coat and hat and followed the steward out of the club. There
was a carriage at the curb. A footman was holding the door open, and a
woman, leaning over in the seat, was looking out. She was precisely what
Hargrave expected to see, one of those dominant, impatient, aggressive
women who force their way to the head of social affairs in America. She
shot a volley of questions at him the moment he was before the door.
“Are you Douglas Hargrave, the purchasing agent for Bartholdi & Banks?”
The man said that he was, and at her service, and so forth. But she did
not stop to listen to any reply.
“You look mighty young, but perhaps you know your business. At any rate,
it's the best I can do. Get in.”
Hargrave got in, the footman closed the door, and the carriage turned
into Piccadilly Circus. The woman did not pay very much attention to
him. She made a laconic explanation, the sort of explanation one would
make to a shopkeeper.
“I want your opinion on some jewels,” she said. “I have a lot to do--no
time to fool away. When I found that I could see the jewels to-night I
concluded to pick you up on my way down. I didn't find out about it in
time to let you know.”
Hargrave told her that he would be very glad to give her the benefit of
his experience.
“Glad, nonsense!” she said. “I'll pay your fee. Do you know a jewel when
you see it?”
“I think I do, madam,” he replied.
She moved with energy.
“It won't do to think,” she said. “I have got to know. I don't buy
junk.”
He tried to carry himself up to her level with a laugh.
“I assure you, madam,” he said, “our house is not accustomed to buy
junk. It's a perfectly simple matter to tell a spurious jewel.”
And he began to explain the simple, decisive tests. But she did not
listen to him.
“I don't care how a vet knows that a hunter's sound. All that I want to
be certain about is that he does know it. I don't want to buy hunters on
my own hook. Neither do I want to buy jewels on what I know about
them. If you know, that's all I care about it. And you must know or old
Bartholdi wouldn't trust you. That's what I'm going on.”
She was a big aggressive woman, full of energy. Hargrave could not see
her very well, but that much was abundantly clear. The carriage turned
out of Piccadilly Circus, crossed Trafalgar Square and stopped before
Blackwell's Hotel. Blackwell's has had a distinct clientele since
the war; a sort of headquarters for Southeastern European visitors to
London.
When the carriage stopped Mrs. Farmingham opened the door herself,
before the footman could get down, and got out. It was the restless
American impatience always cropping out in this woman.
“Come along, young man,” she said, “and tell me whether this stuff is O.
K. or junk.”
They got in a lift and went up to the top floor of the hotel. Mrs.
Farmingham got out and Hargrave followed her along the hall to a door
at the end of a corridor. He could see her now clearly in the light. She
had gray eyes, a big determined mouth, and a mass of hair dyed as only a
Parisian expert, in the Rue de la Paix, can do it. She went directly to
a door at the end of the corridor, rapped on it with her gloved hand,
and turned the latch before anybody could possibly have responded.
Hargrave followed her into the room. It was a tiny sitting room, one
of the inexpensive rooms in the hotel. There was a bit of fire in
the grate, and standing by the mantelpiece was, a big old man with
close-cropped hair and a pale, unhealthy face. It was the type of face
that one associates with tribal races in Southeastern Europe. He was
dressed in a uniform that fitted closely to his figure. It was a uniform
of some elevated rank, from the apparent richness of it. There were one
or two decorations on the coat, a star and a heavy bronze medal. The
man looked to be of some importance; but this importance did not impress
Mrs. Farmingham.
“Major,” she said in her direct fashion, “I have brought an expert to
look at the jewels.”
She indicated Hargrave, and the foreign officer bowed courteously. Then
he took two candles from the mantelpiece and placed them on a little
table that stood in the center of the room.
He put three chairs round this table, sat down in one of them,
unbuttoned the bosom of his coat and took out a big oblong jewel case.
The case was in an Oriental design and of great age. The embroidered
silk cover was falling apart. He opened the case carefully, delicately,
like one handling fragile treasure. Inside, lying each in a little
pocket that exactly fitted the outlines of the stone, were three rows of
sapphires. He emptied the jewels out on the table.
“Sir,” he said, speaking with a queer, hesitating accent, “it saddens
one unspeakably to part with the ancient treasure of one's family.”
Mrs. Farmingham said nothing whatever. Hargrave stooped over the
jewels and spread them out on top of, the table. There were twenty-nine
sapphires of the very finest quality. He had never seen better sapphires
anywhere. He remembered seeing stones that were matched up better; but
he had never seen individual stones that were any finer in anybody's
collection. The foreigner was composed and silent while the American
examined the jewels. But Mrs. Farmingham moved restlessly in her chair.
“Well,” she said, “are they O. K.?”
“Yes, madam,” said Hargrave; “they are first-class stones.”
“Sure?” she asked.
“Quite sure, madam,” replied the American. “There can be no question
about it.”
“Are they worth eighteen thousand dollars?”
She put the question in such a way that Hargrave understood her
perfectly.
“Well,” he said, “that depends upon a good many conditions. But I'm
willing to say, quite frankly, that if you don't want the jewels I'm
ready to take them for our house at eighteen thousand dollars.”
The big, dominant, aggressive woman made the gesture of one who cracks a
dog whip.
“That's all right,” she said. Then she turned to the foreigner. “Now,
major, when do you want this money?”
The big old officer shrugged his shoulders and put out his hands.
“To-morrow, madam; to-morrow as I have said to you; before midday I must
return. I can by no means remain an hour longer; my leave of absence
expires. I must be in Bucharest at sunrise on the morning of the twelfth
of October. I can possibly arrive if I leave London to-morrow at midday,
but not later.”
Mrs. Farmingham began to wag her head in a determined fashion.
“Nonsense,” she said, “I can't get the money by noon. I have telegraphed
to the Credit Lyonnais in Paris. I can get it by the day after
to-morrow, or perhaps to-morrow evening.”
The foreigner looked down on the floor.
“It is impossible,” he said.
The woman interrupted him.
“Now, major, that's all nonsense! A day longer can't make any
difference.”
He drew himself up and looked calmly at her.
“Madam,” he said, “it would make all the difference in the world. If I
should remain one day over my time I might just as well remain all the
other days that are to follow it.”
There was finality and conviction in the man's voice. Mrs. Farmingham
got up and began to walk about the room. She seemed to speak to
Hargrave, although he imagined that she was speaking to herself.
“Now this is a pretty how-de-do,” she said “Lady Holbert told me about
this find to-night at dinner. She said Major Mikos wanted the money at
once; but I didn't suppose he wanted it cash on the hour like that. She
brought me right away after dinner to see him. And then I went for you.”
She stopped, and again made the gesture as of one who, cracks a dog
whip. “Now what shall I do?” she said.
The last remark was evidently not addressed to Hargrave. It was not
addressed to anybody. It was merely the reflection of a dominant nature
taking counsel with itself. She took another turn about the room. Then
she pulled up short.
“See here,” she said, “suppose you take these jewels and give the major
his money in the morning. Then I'll buy them of you.”
“Very well, madam,” said Hargrave; “but in that event we shall charge
you a ten per cent commission.”
She stormed at that.
“Eighteen hundred dollars?” she said. “That's absurd, ridiculous! I'm
willing to pay you five hundred dollars.”
The American did not undertake to argue the matter with her.
“We don't handle any sale for a less commission,” he said.
Then he explained that he could not act as any sort of agent in the
matter; that the only thing he could do would be to buy the jewels
outright and resell them to her. His house would not make any sale for
a less profit than ten per cent. Hargrave did not propose to be involved
in any but a straight-out transaction. He was quite willing to buy
the sapphires for eighteen thousand dollars. There was five thousand
dollars' profit in them on any market. He was perfectly safe either way
about. If Mrs. Farmingham made the repurchase there was a profit of ten
per cent. If not, there was five thousand dollars' profit in the bargain
under any conditions.
They were Siamese stones, and the cutting was of an old design. They
were not from any stock in Europe. Hargrave knew what Europe held of
sapphires. These were from some Oriental stock. And everybody bought an
Oriental stone wherever he could get it. How the seller got it did not
matter. Nobody undertook to verify the title of a Siamese trader or a
Burma agent.
Mrs. Farmingham walked about for several minutes, saying over to herself
as she had said before:
“Now what shall I do?”
Then like the big, dominant, decisive nature that she was she came to a
conclusion.
“All right,” she said, “bring in the money in the morning and get the
sapphires. I'll take them up in a day or two. Good-by, major; come
along, Mr. Hargrave.” And she went out of the room.
The American stopped at the door to bow to the old Rumanian officer who
was standing up beside the table before the heap of sapphires. They got
into the carriage at the curb before Blackwell's Hotel. Mrs. Farmingham
put Hargrave down at the Empire Club, and the carriage passed on, across
Piccadilly Circus toward the Ritz.
The following morning Hargrave got the sapphires from Major Mikos, and
paid him eighteen thousand dollars in English sovereigns for them. He
wanted gold to carry back with him for the jewels that he had brought
out of the kingdom of Rumania. He seemed a simple, anxious person. He
wished to carry his treasures with him like a peasant. The sapphires
looked better in the daylight. There ought to have been seven thousand
dollars' profit in them, perhaps more; seven thousand dollars, at any
rate, that very day in the London market. Hargrave took them to the
Empire Club and put them in a sealed envelope in the steward's safe.
The thin drift of yellow remained in the city; that sulphurous haze
that the blanket of sea fog, moving over London, presses down into her
streets. It was not heavy yet; it was only a mist of saffron; but it
threatened to gather volume as the day advanced.
At luncheon Hargrave got a note from Mrs. Farmingham, a line scrawled
on her card to say that she would call for him at three o'clock.
Her carriage was before the door on the stroke of the hour, and she
explained that the money to redeem the jewels had arrived. The Credit
Lyonnais had sent it over from Paris. She seemed a bit puzzled about it.
She had telegraphed the Credit Lyonnais yesterday to send her eighteen
thousand dollars. And she had expected that the French banking house
would have arranged for the payment of the money through its English
correspondent. But its telegram directed her to go to the United
Atlantic Express Company and receive the money.
A few minutes cleared the puzzle. The office of the company is on the
Strand above the Savoy. Mrs. Farmingham went to the manager and showed
him a lot of papers she had in an official-looking envelope. After a
good bit of official pother the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a
sort of heavy leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage. Mrs.
Farmingham came to Hargrave where he stood by the door.
“Now, what do you think!” she said. “Of all the stupid idiots, give me
a French idiot to be the stupidest; they have actually sent me eighteen
thousand dollars in gold!”
“Well,” said Hargrave, “perhaps you asked them to send you eighteen
thousand dollars in gold.”
She closed her mouth firmly for a moment and looked him vacantly in the
face.
“What did I do?” she said, in the old manner of addressing an inquiry
to herself. “The major wanted gold and perhaps I said gold. Why, yes, I
must have said I wanted eighteen thousand dollars in gold. Well, at any
rate, here's the money to pay you for the sapphires. I'll telegraph
the Credit Lyonnais to send me your eighteen hundred, and you can come
around to the Ritz for it in the morning.”
She wished Hargrave to see that the telegram was properly worded, so the
stupid French would not undertake to ship another bag of coin to her.
He wrote it out, so there could be no mistake, and sent it from Charing
Cross on the way back to the club.
Hargrave had to get two porters to carry the leather portmanteau into
his room at the Empire Club. Mrs. Farmingham did not wait to receive the
sapphires. She said he could bring them over to the Ritz after he had
counted the money. She wanted a cup of tea; he could come along in an
hour.
It took Hargrave the whole of the hour to verify the money. The case had
been shipped, the straps were knotted tight and the lock was sealed. He
had to get a man from the outside to break the lock open. The man said
it was an American lock and he hadn't any implement to turn it.
There were eighteen thousand dollars in American twenty-dollar gold
pieces packed in sawdust in the bag. The Credit Lyonnais had followed
Mrs. Farmingham's directions to the letter. Such is the custom of the
stupid French! She had asked for eighteen thousand dollars in gold, and
they had sent her eighteen thousand dollars in gold. Hargrave put one of
the pieces into his waistcoat pocket. He wanted to show Mrs. Farmingham
how strangely the stupid French had made the blunder of doing precisely
what she asked. Then he strapped up the portmanteau, pushed it under the
bed, went out and locked the door. He asked the chief steward to put a
man in the corridor to see that no one went into his room while he was
out. Then he got the sapphires out of the safe and went over to the
Ritz.
He met Mrs. Farmingham in the corridor coming out to her carriage.
“Ah, Mr. Hargrave,” she said, “here you are. I just told the clerk to
call you up and tell you to bring the sapphires over in the morning when
you came for the draft. I promised Lady Holbert last night to come out
to tea at five. Forgot it until a moment ago.”
She took Hargrave along out to the carriage and he gave her the
envelope. She tore off the corner, emptied the sapphires into her hand,
glanced at them, and dropped them loose into the pocket of her coat.
“Was the money all right?” she said.
“Precisely all right,” replied the American. “The Credit Lyonnais,
with amazing stupidity, sent you precisely what you asked for in your
telegram.” And he showed her the twenty-dollar gold piece.
“Well, well, the stupid darlings!” Then she laughed in her big,
energetic manner. “I'm not always a fool. Come in the morning at nine.
Good-night, Mr. Hargrave.”
And the carriage rolled across Piccadilly into Bond Street in the
direction of Grosvenor Square and Lady Holbert's.
The fog was settling down over London. Moving objects were beginning to
take on the loom of gigantic figures. It was getting difficult to see.
It must have taken Hargrave half an hour to reach the club. The first
man he saw when he went in was Sir Henry, his hands in the pockets of
his tweed coat and his figure blocking the passage.
“Hello, Hargrave!” he cried. “What have you got in your room that old
Ponsford won't let me go up?”
“Not nine hundred horses!” replied the American.
The Baronet laughed. Then he spoke in a lower voice:
“It's extraordinary lucky that I ran over to the Sorbonne. Come along up
to your room and I'll tell you. This place is filling up with a lot of
thirsty swine. We can't talk in any public room of it.”
They went up the great stairway, lined with paintings of famous
colonials celebrated in the English wars, and into the room. Hargrave
turned on the light and poked up the fire. Sir Henry sat down by the
table. He took out his three newspapers and laid them down before him.
“My word, Hargrave,” he said, “old Arnold is a clever beggar! He cleared
the thing up clean as rain.” The Baronet spread the newspapers out
before him.
“We knew here at the Criminal Investigation Department that this thing
was a cipher of some sort, because we knew about these horses. We had
caught up with this business of importing horses. We knew the shipment
was on the way as I explained to you. But we didn't know the port that
it would come into.”
“Well,” said the American, “did you find out?”
“My word,” he cried, “old Arnold laughed in my face. 'Ach, monsieur,'
he cried, mixing up several languages, 'it is Heidel's cipher! It is
explained in the seventeenth Criminal Archive at Gratz. Attend and I
will explain it, monsieur. It is always written in two paragraphs. The
first paragraph contains the secret message, and the second paragraph
contains the key to it. Voila! This message is in two paragraphs:
“'“P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight steamer Don Carlos from
N. Y.
“'“Have the bill of lading handed over to our agent to check up.”
“'The hidden message is made up of certain words and capital letters
contained in the first paragraph, while the presence of the letter t in
the second paragraph indicates the words or capital letters that count
in the first. One has only to note the numerical position of the letter
t in the second paragraph in order to know what capital letter or word
counts in the first paragraph.'”
The Baronet took out a pencil and underscored the words in the second
paragraph of the printed cipher: “Have the bill of lading handed over to
our agent to check up.”
“You will observe that the second, the eighth and the eleventh words
in this paragraph begin with the letter t. Therefore, the second, the
eighth and the eleventh capital letters or words in the first paragraph
make up the hidden message.”
And again with his pencil he underscored the letters of the first
paragraph of the cipher: “P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight
steamer Don Carlos from N. Y.”
“So we get L, on, Don.”
“London!” cried Hargrave. “The nine-hundred horses are to come into
London!”
And in his excitement he took the gold piece out of his pocket and
pitched it up. He had been stooping over the table. The fog was creeping
into the room. And in the uncertain light about the ceiling he missed
the gold piece and it fell on the table before Sir Henry. The gold piece
did not ring, it fell dull and heavy, and the big Baronet looked at it
openmouthed as though it had suddenly materialized out of the yellow fog
entering the room.
“My word!” he cried. “One of the nine hundred horses!”
Hargrave stopped motionless like a man stricken by some sorcery.
“One of the nine hundred horses!” he echoed.
The Baronet was digging at the gold piece with the blade of his knife.
“Precisely! In the criminal argot a counterfeit American twenty-dollar
gold piece is called a 'horse.'
“Look,” he said, and he dug into the coin with his knife, “it's white
inside, made of Babbit metal, milled with a file and gold-plated. Where
did you get it?”
The American stammered.
“Where could I have gotten it?” he murmured.
“Well,” the Baronet said, “you might have got it from a big, old,
pasty-faced Alsatian; that would be 'Dago' Mulehaus. Or you might have
got it from an energetic, middle-aged, American woman posing as a social
leader in the States; that would be 'Hustling' Anne; both bad crooks, at
the head of an international gang of counterfeiters.”