"Don't you really know now the means by which the problem can be
solved?" I asked of old Mr. Hales, being seized with suspicion that he
was well aware of it.
"I'm sure I can't tell you," was his quick response. "To me, however,
it seems certain that the rhyme in some way forms the key. Try another
assortment."
"Which? What other can I try?" I asked blankly, but he only shook his
head.
Reggie, with paper and pencil, was trying to make the letters
intelligible by the means I had several times tried--namely, by
substituting A for B, C for D, and so on. Then he tried two letters
added, three letters added, and more still, in order to discover some
key, but, like myself, he was utterly foiled.
Meanwhile, the old man who seemed to be fingering the cards with
increased interest was, I saw, trying to rearrange them himself by
placing his finger upon one and then another, and then a third, as
though he knew the proper arrangement, and was reading the record to
himself.
Was it possible that he actually held the key to what we had displayed,
and was learning Burton Blair's secret while we remained in ignorance of
it!
Of a sudden, the wiry old seafarer straightened his back, and, looking
at me, exclaimed, with a triumphant smile--
"Now, look here, Mr. Greenwood, there are four suites, aren't there?
Try them in alphabetical order--that would be clubs, diamonds, hearts
and spades. First take all the clubs and arrange them king, eight,
knave, queen, ace, seven, nine, ten, then the diamonds, and afterwards
the other two suites. Then see what you make of it."
Assisted by Reggie, I proceeded to again resort the cards into suites,
and to arrange them according to the rhyme in four columns of eight each
upon the table, the suites as he suggested, in alphabetical order.
"At last!" shouted Reggie, almost beside himself with joy. "At last!
Why, we've got it, old chap! Look! Read the first letter on each card
straight down, one after the other? What do you make it spell?"
All three of us were breathless--old Hales apparently the most excited
of all--or perhaps, he had been misleading us and pretending ignorance.
I had, as yet, only placed the first suite, the clubs, but they read as
follows:--
King. B O N T D R N N C R O A U I T
Eight. E I T Y G O J T A E N N W N H
Knave. T N H J E N T Y N D J O I D E
Queen. W T E S J T H F D T O L L T C
Ace. E W J I W H E O E H N D L H R
Seven. E H L X H E F U F E E E F E O
Nine. N E E P E F I R E R W O I O S
Ten. T R F A R I F J N E I N N L S
"Why!" I cried, staring at the first intelligible word I had
discovered. "The first column commences `Between.'"
"Yes, and I see other words in the other columns!" cried Reggie,
excitedly snatching some of the cards from me in his excitement, and
assisting me to rearrange the other suites.
Those moments were among the most breathless and exciting of my life.
The great secret which had brought Burton Blair all his fabulous wealth
was about to be revealed to us.
It might render me a millionaire as it had already done its dead
possessor!
At last the cards being all arranged in their proper order, the eight
diamonds, eight hearts and eight spades beneath the eight clubs, I took
a pencil and wrote down the first letter on each card.
"Yes!" I cried, almost beside myself with excitement, "the arrangement
is perfect. Blair's secret is revealed!"
"Why, it's some kind of record!" exclaimed Reggie. "And it begins with
the words `Between the Ponte del Diavolo!' That's Italian for the
Devil's Bridge, I suppose!"
"The Ponte del Diavolo is an old mediaeval bridge near Lucca," I
explained quickly, and then I recollected the grave-faced Capuchin, who
lived in that silent monastery close by. But at that moment all my
attention was given to the transcript of the cipher, and I had no time
for reflection. The letter "J" was inserted sometimes in place of a
space, apparently in order to throw the lettering out, and so conceal it
from any chance solution.
At length, after nearly a quarter of an hour, for certain of the faded
letters on the cards were almost obliterated, I discovered that the
decipher I had scribbled was a strange record as follows:--"Between the
Ponte del Diavolo and the point where the Serchio joins the Lima on the
left bank, four hundred and fifty-six paces from the foot of the bridge,
where the sun shines only one hour on the fifth of April and two hours
on the fifth of May, at noon, descend twenty-four foot-holes behind
where a man can defend himself against four hundred. There two big
rocks one on each side. On one will be found cut the figure of an old
`E.' On the right hand go down and you will find what you seek. But
first find the old man who lives at the crossways."
"I wonder what it all means!" remarked Reggie, who, turning to old Mr.
Hales, added, "The latter indicates you," whereat the old fellow laughed
knowingly, and we saw that he knew more of Blair's affairs than he would
admit.
"It means," I said, "that some secret is concealed in that narrow,
romantic valley of the Serchio, and these are the directions for its
discovery. I know the winding river where through ages the water has
cut deeply down into a rocky bed full of giant boulders and wild leaping
torrents and deep pools. Of the pointed Ponte del Diavolo are told many
quaint stories of the devil building the bridge and taking for his own
the first living thing to pass over it, which proved to be a dog.
Indeed," I added, "the spot is one of the wildest and most romantic in
all rural Tuscany. Strange, too, the Fra Antonio should live in the
monastery only three miles from the spot indicated."
"Who is Fra Antonio?" asked Hales, still gazing upon the cards
thoughtfully.
I explained, whereupon the old fellow smiled, and I felt certain that he
recognised in the monk's description one of Blair's friends of days
bygone.
"Who actually wrote this record?" I inquired of him. "It was not
Blair, that's plain."
"No," was his reply. "Now that it has been legally left to you by our
friend, and that you have succeeded in deciphering it, I may as well
tell you something more concerning it."
"Yes, do," we both cried eagerly with one breath.
"Well, it happened in this way," explained the thin old fellow, pressing
down the tobacco hard into his long clay. "Some years ago I was serving
as first mate on the barque _Annie Curtis_ of Liverpool, engaged in the
Mediterranean fruit trade and running regularly between Naples, Smyrna,
Barcelona, Algiers and Liverpool. Our crew was a mixed one of English,
Spaniards and Italians, and among the latter was an old fellow named
Bruno. He was a mysterious individual from Calabria, and among the crew
it was whispered that he had once been the head of a noted band of
brigands who had terrorised that most southern portion of Italy, and who
had only recently been exterminated by the Carabineers. The other
Italians nicknamed him Baffitone, which in their language is, I believe,
Big Moustache. He was a hard worker, drank next to nothing, and was
apparently rather well-educated, for he spoke and wrote English quite
well, and further he was always worrying everybody to devise ciphers,
the solution of which he would set himself in his leisure to puzzle out.
One day, on a religious feast, made excuse by the Italians for a
holiday, I found him in the forecastle writing something on a small pack
of cards. He tried to conceal what he was doing, but, my curiosity
aroused, I detected at once how he had arranged them, and the very fact
told me what a remarkably ingenious cipher he had discovered."
The old man paused for a moment, as though he hesitated to tell us the
whole truth. Presently when he had lit his pipe with a spill, he
resumed, saying--
"I left the sea, came back to my wife here, and for fully six years saw
nothing of the Italian until one day, looking well and prosperous in a
suit of brand new clothes and a new hard hat, he called upon me. He was
still on the _Annie Curtis_, but she was in dry dock, and therefore he
was, he said, having a bit of a spree ashore. He remained here with me
for two days, and with his little camera, evidently a fresh acquisition
he snapshotted every conceivable object, including this house. Before
he went away he took me into his confidence and told me that what had
been suspected of him on board the _Annie Curtis_ was true, that he was
none other than the notorious Poldo Pensi, the brigand whose daring and
ferocity had long been chronicled in Italian song and story. He had,
however, since the breaking up of his band, become a reformed character,
and rather than profit by certain knowledge that he had obtained while
an outlaw, he worked for his living on board an English ship. The
knowledge, he said, was obtained from a certain Cardinal Sannini of the
Vatican whom he had held to ransom, and was of such a character that he
might become a rich man any day he wished, but having regard to the fact
that the Government had offered a large reward for his capture either
dead or alive, he deemed it best to conceal his identity and sail the
seas. But he told me, here in this room, as we sat smoking together the
night before he departed, that the secret was on record, but in such a
manner that any one discovering it would not be able to read it without
possessing the key to the cipher."
"Then he left it on these cards!" I cried, interrupting.
"Exactly. The secret of Cardinal Sannini, obtained by the notorious
outlaw Poldo Pensi, whose terrible band ravaged half Italy twenty-five
years ago, and who compelled Pope Pius IX himself to pay tribute to
them, is written here--just as you have deciphered it."
"Is this man Pensi dead?" I inquired.
"Oh yes, he died and was buried at sea, somewhere off Lisbon, before
Burton Blair came into possession of the cards. The secret, I
ascertained, was wrung from Cardinal Sannini, who, while on his way
across the wild, inhospitable country between Reggio and Gerace was
seized by Pensi and his gang, taken up to their stronghold--a small
mountain village about three miles from Nicastro--and there held
prisoner, a large ransom being about to be demanded of the Holy See.
For certain reasons, it seemed, the wily old Cardinal in question did
not desire that the Vatican should be made aware of his capture,
therefore he made it a condition of his release that he should reveal a
certain very remarkable secret--the secret written upon the cards--which
he did, and in exchange for which Pensi released him."
"But Sannini was one of the highest placed Cardinals in Rome," I
exclaimed. "Why, at the death of Pio Nono, he was believed to be
designed as his successor to the Pontificate."
"True," remarked the old man, who seemed well versed in all the recent
history of St. Peter's at Rome. "The secret divulged by the Cardinal is
undoubtedly one of very great value, and he did so in order to save his
own reputation, I believe, for from what the outlaw told me, they had
discovered that he was in the extreme south in direct opposition to the
Pope's orders, and in order to stir up some religious ill-feeling
against Pio Nono. Hence Sannini, so trusted by His Holiness, was
compelled at all hazards to keep the facts of his capture an absolute
secret. Pensi related how, before releasing the Cardinal, he went
himself in secret to a certain spot in Tuscany, and ascertained that
what the great ecclesiastic had divulged was absolutely the truth. He
was then released, and given safe escort back to Cosenza, whence he took
train back to Rome."
"But how came Burton Blair possessed of the secret?" I inquired
eagerly.
"Ah!" remarked the old fellow, showing the palms of his hard brown
hands, "that's the question. I know that upon these very cards, Poldo
Pensi, the ex-brigand of Calabria, inscribed the Cardinal's directions
in English. Indeed you will note that the wording betrays a foreigner.
Those faded capital letters were traced by him on board the _Annie
Curtis_, and he certainly held the secret safely until his death. What
he told me I never divulged until--well, until I was compelled to by
Burton Blair on that night when he recognised this house from Poldo's
photograph, and rediscovered me."
"Compelled you!" Reggie exclaimed. "How?"