Upon the carpet at our feet lay scattered a pack of very small, rather
dirty cards which had fallen from the little sachet, and which both of
us stood regarding with surprise and disappointment.
For my own part I expected to find within that treasured bag of
wash-leather something of more value than those thumbed and half
worn-out pieces of pasteboard, but our curiosity was instantly aroused
when, on stooping, I picked up one of them and discovered certain
letters written in brown faded ink upon it, similar to those upon the
card already in my possession.
It chanced to be the ten of diamonds, and in order that you may be able
to the more clearly understand the arrangement of the letters upon them,
I reproduce it here:--
"How strange!" cried Mabel, taking the card and examining it closely.
"It surely must be some cipher, the same as the other card which I found
sealed up in the safe."
"No doubt," I exclaimed, as, stooping and gathering up the remainder of
the pack, I noticed that upon each of them, either upon the front or
upon the back, were scrawled either fourteen or fifteen letters in a
treble column, all, of course, utterly unintelligible.
I counted them. It was a piquet pack of thirty-one, the missing card
being the ace of hearts which we had already discovered. By the
friction of having been carried on the person for so long the corners
and edges were worn, while the gloss of the surface had long ago
disappeared.
Aided by Mabel I spread them all upon the table, utterly bewildered by
the columns of letters which showed that some deep secret was written
upon them, yet what it was we were utterly unable to decipher.
Upon the front of the ace of clubs was scrawled in three parallel
columns of five letters each, thus:--
E H N
W E D
T O L
I E H
W H R
Again, I turned up the king of spades and found on the reverse only
fourteen letters:--
Q W F
T S W
T H U
O F E
Y E
"I wonder what it all means?" I exclaimed, carefully examining the
written characters in the light. The letters were in capitals just as
rudely and unevenly drawn as those upon the ace of hearts, evidently by
an uneducated hand. Indeed the A's betrayed a foreign form rather than
English, and the fact that some of the cards were inscribed on the
obverse and others on the reverse seemed to convey some hidden meaning.
What it was, however, was both tantalising and puzzling.
"It certainly is very curious," Mabel remarked after she had vainly
striven to construct intelligible words from the columns of letters by
the easy methods of calculation. "I had no idea that my father carried
his secret concealed in this manner."
"Yes," I said, "it really is amazing. No doubt his secret is really
written here, if we only knew the key. But in all probability his
enemies are aware of its existence, or he would not have left it
secreted here when he set forth on his journey to Manchester. That man
Dawson may know it."
"Most probably," was her reply. "He was my father's intimate
acquaintance."
"His friend--he says he was."
"Friend!" she cried resentfully. "No, his enemy."
"And therefore your father held him in fear? It was that reason which
induced him to insert that very injudicious clause in his will."
And then I described to her the visit of the man Dawson on the previous
night, telling her what he had said, and his impudent, defiant attitude
towards us.
She sighed, but uttered no reply. I noticed that as I spoke her
countenance went a trifle paler, but she remained silent, as though she
feared to speak lest she should inadvertently expose what she intended
should remain a secret.
My chief thought at that moment, however, was the elucidation of the
problem presented by those thirty-two well-thumbed cards. The secret of
Burton Blair, the knowledge of which had brought him his millions, was
hidden there, and as it had been bequeathed to me it was surely to my
interest to exert every effort to gain exact knowledge of it. I
recollected how very careful he had been over that little bag which now
lay empty upon the table, and with what careless confidence he had shown
it to me on that night when he was but a homeless wanderer tramping the
muddy turnpike roads.
As he had held it in his hand, his eyes had brightened with keen
anticipation. He would be a rich man some day, he had prophesied, and
I, in my ignorance, had then believed him to be romancing. But when I
looked around that room in which I now stood and saw that Murillo and
that Tintoretto, each of them worth a small fortune in themselves, I was
bound to confess that I had wrongly mistrusted him.
And the secret written upon that insignificant-looking little pack of
cards was mine--if only I could decipher it!
Surely no situation could be more tantalising to a poor man like myself.
The man whom I had been able to befriend had left me, in gracious
recognition, the secret of the source of his enormous income, yet so
well concealed was it that neither Mabel nor myself could decipher it.
"What shall you do?" she inquired presently, after poring over the cards
in silence for quite ten minutes. "Is there no expert in London who
might find out the key? Surely those people who do cryptograms and
things could help us?"
"Certainly," was my answer, "but in that case, if they were successful
they would discover the secret for themselves."
"Ah, I never thought of that!"
"Your father's directions in his will as to secrecy are very explicit."
"But possession of these cards without the key is surely not of much
benefit," she argued. "Could you not consult somebody, and ascertain by
what means such records are deciphered?"
"I might make inquiries in a general way," I answered, "but to place the
pack of cards blindly in the hands of an expert would, I fear, simply be
giving away your father's most confidential possession. There may be
written here some fact which it is not desirable that the world shall
know."
"Ah!" she said, glancing quickly up at me. "Some facts regarding his
past, you mean. Yes. You are quite right, Mr. Greenwood. We must be
very careful to guard the secret of these cards well, especially if, as
you suggest, the man Dawson really knows the means by which the record
may be rendered intelligible."
"The secret has been bequeathed to me, therefore I will take possession
of them," I said. "I will also make inquiries, and ascertain by what
means such ciphers are rendered into plain English."
I had at that moment thought of a man named Boyle, a professor at a
training-college in Leicester who was an expert at anagrams, ciphers,
and such things, and I intended to lose no time in running up there to
see him and ascertain his opinion.
Therefore at noon I took train at St. Pancras, and about half-past two
was sitting with him in his private room at the college. He was a
middle-aged, clean-shaven man of quick intelligence, who had frequently
won prizes in various competitions offered by different journals; a man
who seemed to have committed Bartlett's _Dictionary of Familiar
Quotations_ to memory, and whose ingenuity in deciphering puzzles was
unequalled.
While smoking a cigarette with him, I explained the point upon which I
desired his opinion.
"May I see the cards?" he inquired, removing his briar from his mouth
and looking at me with some surprise, I thought.
My first impulse was to refuse him sight of them, but on second thoughts
I recollected that of all men he was one of the greatest experts in such
matters, therefore I drew the little pack from the envelope in which I
had placed them.
"Ah!" he exclaimed the moment he took them in his hand and ran quickly
through them. "This, Mr. Greenwood, is the most complicated and most
difficult of all ciphers. It was in vogue in Italy and Spain in the
seventeenth century, and afterwards in England, but seems to have
dropped into disuse during the past hundred years or so, probably on
account of its great difficulty."
Carefully he spread the cards out in suits upon the table, and seemed to
make long and elaborate calculations between the heavy puffs at his
pipe.
"No!" he exclaimed. "It isn't what I expected. Guess-work will never
help you in this solution. You might try for a hundred years to
decipher it, but will fail, if you do not discover the key. Indeed, so
much ingenuity is shown in it that a writer in the last century
estimated that in such a pack of cards as this, with such a cipher upon
them, there are at least fully fifty-two millions of possible
arrangements."
"But how is the cipher written?" I inquired much interested, yet with
heart-sinking at his inability to assist me.
"It is done in this way," he said. "The writer of the secret settles
what he wishes to record and he then arranges the thirty-two cards in
what order he wishes. He then writes the first thirty-two letters of
his message record, or whatever it may be, on the face or on the back of
the thirty-two cards, one letter upon each card consecutively,
commencing with the first column, and going on with columns two and
three, working down each column, until he has written the last letter of
the cipher. In the writing, however, certain prearranged letters are
used in place of spaces, and sometimes the cipher is made still more
difficult for a chance finder of the cards to decipher by the
introduction of a specially arranged shuffle of the cards half way
through the writing of the record."
"Very ingenious!" I remarked, utterly bewildered by the extraordinary
complication of Burton Blair's secret. "And yet the letters are so
plainly written!"
"That's just it," he laughed. "To the eye it is the plainest of all
ciphers, and yet one that is utterly unintelligible unless the exact
formula in its writing be known. When that is ascertained the solution
becomes easy. The cards are rearranged in the order in which they were
written upon, and the record or message spelt off, one letter on each
card in succession, reading down one column after another and omitting
the letter arranged as spaces."
"Ah!" I exclaimed fervently. "How I wish I knew the key."
"Is this a very important secret, then?" asked Boyle.
"Very," I replied. "A confidential matter which has been placed in my
hands, and one which I am bound to solve."
"I fear you will never do so unless the key is in existence," was his
answer. "It is far too difficult for me to attempt. The complications
which are so simply effected in the writing, shield it effectually from
any chance solution. Therefore, all endeavours to decipher it without
knowledge of the pre-arrangement of the pack must necessarily prove
futile."
He replaced the cards in the envelope and handed them back to me,
regretting that he could not render me assistance.
"You might try every day for years and years," he declared, "and you
would be no nearer the truth. It is too well protected for chance
discovery, and is, indeed, the safest and most ingenious cipher ever
devised by man's ingenuity."
I remained and took a cup of tea with him, then at half-past four
entered the express and returned to London, disappointed at my utterly
fruitless errand. What he had explained to me rendered the secret more
impenetrable and inscrutable than ever.