THE CIPHER
Chester Fay watched the stout form of the Chief of Division as he
crossed the room, tapped lightly on the door which led to the hallway,
then waited with his fingers toying with a heavy, gold chain which
crossed a vest the color of old wine.
MacKeenon turned the knob and came into the room. He closed and locked
the door at Sir Richard’s suggestion. He sniffed the air of the room,
glanced keenly toward Fay, then said:
“Ye have come to an understanding?”
“We have!” declared Sir Richard. “Fay is with us. You know what that
means? We are bound to get the key and trick the Germans.”
“A’ hae noo doot ov it,” said the Scotch detective, rubbing his hands
and peering for a second time at the cracksman. “A verra gude mon—but a
wee bit reckless.”
Sir Richard laughed pleasantly. “Oh, we’re all that way—more or less. I
guess it was recklessness that broke the Hindenburg Line. It would never
have been done if we had counted the cost.”
Fay moved around the end of the table and stood by the three black
boxes. He studied the situation from every angle. It was possible to
escape. It was not too late to go back on his bargain with Sir Richard.
A swift rush, the bowling over of the two detectives, and a plunge
through the shrubbery of the house would carry him to westward, where
quiet, shaded lamps and reaching aisles of mansions would offer freedom
for all time.
He waited to hear more. The gripping mystery of the cipher clutched and
stilled his desire for liberty. There would be other chances at a later
hour.
There was something of the American in Sir Richard. Fay watched the two
detectives come across the room, take seats at the table and then pull
toward themselves the locked boxes.
“We’ll begin at the beginning,” said the chief, glancing up at the
ceiling and then into Fay’s eyes. “Take a seat, Chester, right here! I
want to explain to you about the cipher and the dye business.”
Fay turned and gripped the ornate arms of a teakwood chair which had
certainly come from India in one of the old hulks. He turned this chair
so that the light from the overhead cluster would shine in the faces of
the two detectives and leave his in shadow. It was an old trick!
He sat down, pulled up the knees of his tweed trousers and leaned
slightly forward in an attitude of attention. Sir Richard had already
drawn a small key from his pocket. This key was evidently the one to the
three locks of the boxes.
“What do you know about German dyes?” snapped the chief as he held out
the key. “Know anything at all, Fay?”
“I’ve heard of fast-black.”
“Is that all?”
“About all, Chief. I suppose the Germans have gone deeper into the
subject than most men. I thought the States had made some new
discoveries. You see I didn’t get much chance to read in the last place
I was in. The subject of reading for occasional offenders should be
called to the attention of the Home Secretary.”
“I’ll mention it,” said Sir Richard dryly. “I might add that the Home
Secretary and I have spent three months on this damn cipher.”
Fay leveled his shaded eyes toward the boxes. He glanced at Sir Richard.
There was a frown on the chief’s face and an angry pucker about his
strong mouth.
“Three months, on a cipher! Let me see it, Chief.”
Sir Richard turned toward MacKeenon. “Better get up and stand by the
windows when I open these boxes,” he said. “We can’t be too careful.
There is a billion pounds involved in this!”
Fay was impressed for the first time since leaving the sombre walls of
Dartmoor. Sir Richard was no man to exaggerate. He might have had the
treasure of the Diamond Clique as he reached, pulled a box close up to
his side, inserted the key and slowly lifted the sheet-metal lid.
The cracksman leaned out of the shadow and into the light. Sir Richard
laid the key upon the polished surface of the table, thrust his fingers
inside the box and drew out a sheet of white paper. He held this sheet
so that Fay could read the top lines. They were:
“SCHUCKER—MAINTZ—WERKE—FRANKFORT ON MAIN—BERLIN”
Underneath this heading was an even row of ten-point letters, the first
of which ran:
“aaahhhsssaaacccstopxxxgggssstttstopmmmwwwccc
pppfffbbbstopxxxzzzccceeesssuuukkkwwwssstttst
opyyynnnvvvfffssshhhstopmmmtttnnnpppwwwfffccc”
Fay counted thirty-two rows of similar letters, between the lines of
which were double spaces of blank white. He turned to the box as Sir
Richard replaced the sheet and snapped down the lid.
“They’re all like that,” said the chief bitterly. “It’s a clever, clever
cipher. A cipher that runs through ten reams of paper. There’s all of
six hundred thousand letters in the thing. There’s at least thirty or
forty thousand words. The whole will give us the formulae to such dyes
as Alizarine Sapphire and Carbanthrene Blue.”
“Might be the names of sleeping cars,” said Fay.
“They’re much-wanted dyes! The man who was slain in Switzerland said the
formulae to these two colors would be found in the boxes. They may be
there, but we haven’t found them!”
MacKeenon lowered a blind and turned. He sniffed with the scent of a
baffled hound. The pouches at the side of his cheeks dropped, his teeth
showed beneath curled gums. Fay wheeled upon him suddenly and was
startled at the inspector’s appearance. It was as if the old dog had
snarled in silence.
“We’ll continue,” broke in Sir Richard as he shoved the box upon the
table. “The game isn’t lost! There’s a key to the cipher in the
embassy.”
“Have you tried everything?” asked Fay. “How about these cipher experts?
I’ve heard they can cipher anything. There’s a Russian in Dartmoor who
used to talk to the whole gallery by tapping on his bars. All you had to
know was the key-word and deduct the numbers it represented from the
numbers he sent. The quotient would be the message.”
“We’ve tried that,” snapped Sir Richard. “Believe me, Fay, that was the
first thing tried. It’s the Nihilist key-word cipher! Fifty of the
keenest brains in Europe and America have worked on this thing. It does
not follow Bacon’s biliteral cipher or Poe’s cryptogram. It has some of
the marks of an old Italian cipher used in the time of Pope Alexander.
It isn’t that! It has already driven one professor of mathematics mad.
He cross-indexed it and tried it backward. He found a queer average in
the repetition of certain letters. They followed no sane rule. For that
reason he went insane. More may go mad if this thing isn’t solved. It
represents the final triumph over Germany—the winning of the commercial
war which is upon us!”
Fay drew his head back into the shadow. He still retained the ringing
timbre of Sir Richard’s voice. The energetic chief of the Intelligence
Division had once been on a mission to the States. He had learned much
that was American on that visit.
“Damnit!” he heard Sir Richard blurt. “We’re not children! We have
defeated the Germans on the field of battle. Why can’t we solve a simple
cipher?”
“What did you pay for it?” Fay shot the question out of the shadow and
watched its effect on Sir Richard’s features.
“Pay for it? What do you mean, Fay?”
“What did you pay that man in Switzerland?”
“Ten thousand pounds.”
“And the fellow in Holland?”
“He died too soon to receive his share. The money went to the general
funds.”
Fay crossed his legs and glanced at the slender shape of the boots he
wore. “I think you have been gulled,” he said with the ghost of a smile.
“I think that cipher in the boxes is a bum steer, if you know what that
means. You tossed away ten thousand pounds—like that!” Fay threw out his
hand expressively.
Sir Richard blinked both eyes. The frown died from his face, wrinkle by
wrinkle. He leaned back in his chair, thrust his knees against the edge
of the table and said, half to Fay, half to MacKeenon:
“Mac thought the same thing! You’re both wrong. The thing was tested
before the money was paid. The agent who completed the transaction in
Switzerland made no mistake. He went to extreme length in the matter.”
“How?” asked Fay.
“He named a dye—a fast blue—which the German chemist said was one of the
thirty-six which were fully worked out in the formulae. The chemist took
the boxes, went into a room, and came out with the formula of the
fast-blue, down to the last reaction. It couldn’t be done by any trick
of memory!”
“That sounds plausible,” Fay said. “Then it is no hoax?”
“It’s straight goods, Fay! The five thousand sheets in these three boxes
contain the chemical formulae for the thirty-six dyes. The devil of it
is, we lost the key, in—the country north and east of here. You’re going
to get that key for us!”
“Just a moment. Isn’t it possible that the whole thing is a blind?”
“Be clear!”
“I mean that the lines of letters, thirty-two or three on each page, are
there for a gull?”
“Go on!”
“They might be a gull for fools to go mad about. The real cipher may be
within the lines. That also is a common practice at Dartmoor. Men have
received letters from the outside which are written with lemon juice
between the lines. All they did was to heat the paper and the message
came out in brown ink.”
Sir Richard smiled broadly. “That has been thought of,” he said,
glancing at MacKeenon. “To be frank, as I said, everything has been
tried. We’ve even split some of the paper. We’ve tried every reaction
known to science. We’ve bathed the sheets in oxalic acid and iodine.
There was only one clue in this direction.”
Fay lifted his hand and fingered the pearl-pin in his cravat.
“That one clue,” continued Sir Richard, “was the report of an American
chemist that he detected a salt in the composition of the paper. It was
so faint, however, that nothing came of it. We’re squarely up against
the last card—that big gopher in the embassy!”
Fay frowned slightly at the chief’s use of an American yegg’s pet name
for a strong-box. It showed Sir Richard’s versatility, and also showed
the cracksman what manner of man he was dealing with.
“Gopher has gone out,” said Fay in correction. “Only the low-brows of
the Middle Western States use it. You should say: ‘can or jug or
keister.’”
“We’ll compromise on ‘crib,’ a good old word used in the time of Jack
Cade and other mid-Victorian gentlemen!”
“All right, Chief! You want me to take it—without trace. In it I’m to
find the key to the cipher—if there is a key. What can you say
concerning the key? Is it a book, paper or design of some kind?”
“Now we’re getting close!” Sir Richard exclaimed. “It is a small packet
in the back of the embassy’s crib. It was seen only last week by a
trusted agent who could go no further. This agent informs me that the
neutral nation, north and east of here, is in a quandary concerning it.
Germany has requested that the packet be returned over her border.”
“Any marks of identification?”
“Yes! You will always know it by a name written in ink across one
corner, under a blue string. The name is Otto Mononsonburg—the man who
was stabbed in the back, near the Schwartz Canal.”
“Ah,” said Fay, “the matter seems easy. I get my freedom?”
“If you get the packet and turn it over to me.”
“I’ll get it! Now a number of other things, Sir Richard—” Fay turned and
stared at the lurking figure of the Scotch inspector. MacKeenon lifted
his hand and stroked his jaw with a sly motion. His eyes swung from
Fay’s to Sir Richard’s. They held the glint of the manhunter and the
hound. A tawny fire was in them.
For the second time that evening there came an air of tenseness into the
room. Fay felt it as he watched the Scotch inspector. Try, as he should,
he could never get over the feeling that the detective was his born
enemy.
MacKeenon was so like a waiting collie. The leathern pouches of the
Scot—the curl to his lips—the fang-like teeth, all made this thing seem
real.
With Sir Richard Colstrom there was this difference. The chief had
traveled far. He had taken the pains to acquire some of the argot of the
underworld. He was rated square—after he caught his quarry. Fay could
never believe that a manhunter played a fair game in running down
criminals. There was too much oral evidence to the contrary. There had
been a number of stool-pigeons in his life. To him, the despicable thing
about the game was the traitors.
Born a gentleman’s son and riding swiftly through a moderate fortune,
Fay had taken the easier way. He had paid! There were other convictions
beside the Hatton Gardens affair recorded at Scotland Yard.
Freedom was a precious thing. He gripped his lips with his teeth and
counted ten before he said to Sir Richard:
“One of the conditions of this matter is that I have no hell-hounds of
the law trailing me!”
Sir Richard glanced at MacKeenon. The two men understood each other down
to the fraction of a glance.
“That’s all right,” said Sir Richard soothingly. “You can go scot-free.
All we want is the key to the cipher. Then, afterwards, you can wear
that perfectly good suit to the States instead of donning the broad
arrow at Dartmoor.”
“Fine!” said Fay without warmth. “Now another matter—”
“What is it?”
“Money!”
“You can have it.”
“I’ll need a hundred pounds, now!”
Sir Richard drew from his inner vest-pocket a thin bill-fold, which he
opened upon the table. From this he extracted ten ten-pound notes and
tossed them to Fay.
“Count them,” he said as he replaced the bill-fold and made an entry in
the little book which he had already consulted when giving the data
concerning the strong-box in the embassy.
“One hundred, correct!” said the cracksman, crinkling the sheath of
white papers. “Clean notes! I shall have to lose a shilling on the pound
with these.”
“That’s the rate the fences get, eh?”
Fay smiled as he thrust the bills in his tweed trousers. “How should I
know?” he inquired with good-nature.
Sir Richard stared at MacKeenon. Both detectives mirrored Fay’s engaging
manner. The tensity of the air had vanished.
“You’ll get another hundred pounds when you start,” Sir Richard said,
tapping the table. “When will you start?”
“There’s another matter, Chief.”
“And that is—?”
“Passports and clearance papers or whatever you call them. I understand
there is still some difficulty on account of customs. I might as well
travel to Holland, first-class. That means a damn fine alibi of the
superior order. Have you any suggestions?”
Sir Richard fingered the lapel of his coat. He turned this down after
thought. Fay leaned forward. He saw a little silver greyhound pinned
there. It was a passport in a million!
“Do you know what this represents?” asked Sir Richard.
Fay nodded his head and stared at the insignia. “It’s the badge of the
King’s Couriers.”
“Correct!”
“Do I get one?”
“I can tell you where there is one which can be—stolen.”
“Where?”
Sir Richard allowed his lapel to flap back.
He rested his elbows on the edge of the table and fastened upon Fay’s
eager face the cold scrutiny of a master advising a novice.
“The King’s Couriers,” he said impressively, “is an ancient and
honorable order. The members of the office are chosen for fidelity and
speed—hence the greyhound. They can go anywhere by showing the insignia.
They need no passports or papers. Show this to a custom officer and he
will pass your luggage. Show this little badge to a Mandarin in China or
a Zelot in Afghanistan and it is all the same. You get through!”
“Where can I get one?”
Sir Richard beamed at Fay’s enthusiasm. “There’s a courier living in
Richmond Hill who has what you want,” said the chief. “This courier has
been to—the country north and east of here. From this courier you not
only will obtain the little silver greyhound, but also a detailed
description of the embassy where the key to the cipher is. I would
suggest that you turn the courier’s place of residence off tomorrow
night. We’ll give out that you escaped from Dartmoor and entered London
in some surprising manner. What would be more natural than you robbing a
house for clothes and papers? That will let us out in case of
complications with the neutral nation.”
“You mean if I get caught?”
“Stranger things than that have happened. Now, Fay—”
Sir Richard pulled down the lapels of his coat and rose to his feet. He
pressed back the chair with his legs. He cleared his throat.
“Now, Fay,” he continued impressively, “you have everything. The address
in Richmond Hill is Number 4, Rose Crescent. Go there tomorrow about
midnight and prowl the house. Get the little silver greyhound and talk
things over with the courier—who failed to do what you are going to do.”
Fay moved toward the door after picking up his cap. MacKeenon glided to
his side. The cracksman stood erect. He turned slowly and stared at Sir
Richard, who was studying the cipher boxes.
“Au revoir,” said Fay.
The chief swung his head and rested his chin on his chest.
“Same to you,” he said. “You’re hep! Now blow! Mum’s the office, pal!
The ducat and more kale will be ready for you at London Bridge Station
when you’re ready to go. Inspector MacKeenon, the niftiest gumshoe
runner out of the Yard, will fetch them at your order. Eh, Mac?”
“Weil, I don’ know! I daurna disagree wi’ twa o’ you!”
Sir Richard came back to respectability as he lifted his chin and
advanced his hand toward Fay.
“Drop around Cockspur Street and the Strand,” he said. “Get the old, old
moss out of your head, Fay. Talk to the splendid men of your own country
who made victory possible. The town is full of Pershing’s boys! And
Fay—”
The cracksman’s hand was on the door.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Don’t overlook the trifles. They beat you before!”
“I’ll watch out for them!”
“And, Fay—”
“Y—es!”
“Don’t look for Saidee Isaacs. Go right to Number 4, Rose Crescent and
turn the house off. You know how to do that!”
Fay was half through the doorway. Sir Richard made a signal for
MacKeenon to draw back. The inspector’s face clouded as he caught the
order. He peered around the edge of the chamfering. His eyes snapped
like a wiry terrier’s as he heard the swift patter of footsteps on the
pavement.
“He’s goon, mon!” he said. “Fay’s goon!”
“Good!” said Sir Richard.