CHAPTER XXI
The sheriff had finished his investigations by noon of the followingday, and after lunch I was free to work upon the problem that I felt wasthe key to the whole mystery--the cryptogram beside Florey's body.Lately I had been thinking that in all probability to procure the scripthad been the direct motive of the murder; and the fact of its theft frommy room seemed to bear me out.
Why wasn't it reasonable to presume that in the last instant of Florey'slife, just before the attack was made, he had attempted to conceal thescript. He had thrown it from him; his death-cry had aroused thehousehold so that the murderer had no time to seek and procure it. Thenfrom a hiding place, or even from among a group of the guests, he hadseen me pick it up.
To work out that cryptogram, to read its hidden meaning was the firstand the best thing I could do in the way to solve the mystery of KastleKrags. Written originally on parchment, sixty or seventy years before,it doubtless referred and was in explanation of the secret of the oldmanor house--the legend of the treasure, supposedly hidden by GodfreyJason in the long ago. I had just toyed with it before. Perhaps I hadhad little faith that it was of any real importance. But now, otheravenues had failed, and I was resolved to know the truth if it washumanly possible to do so. I copied the script again, with great care:
aned dqbo aqcd trkm fipj dqbo seho ohuy wvyn dljn dtht
Then I began to make a systematic analysis. I noticed first that thesecond and the sixth words were identical, indicating--considering thebrevity of the entire message--that it must represent a word of mostfrequent use. Of course the articles "a" and "the" occur most often inany English writing, yet I found it hard to believe that "dqbo"represented either. In the first place, in a message of that length itis reasonable to assume that all articles and words not absolutelynecessary to the meaning had been omitted.
Weeks that seemed years before Nealman had told me that, after carefulstudy, he had been convinced that there was some truth in the legend ofburied treasure. Was it not within the bounds of reason to assume thatthis cryptic message revealed the hiding place of the treasure? Workingon this assumption, I made up an imaginary description of some hidingplace, just to see what words occurred with the greatest frequency. Ifound at once that the word that would be most likely to be used twicein a description of that kind would be some measurement--either feet,yards, meters, rods, or something of the kind. If I could convincemyself that "dqbo" represented some English measurement I might find thekey and system of the code.
Either "feet," "yard" or "rods" were words of four letters--either oneof which might be represented by "dqbo." Then I tested each one to seeif I could establish a pattern.
I tried first the old code-system of having each letter in the wordrepresent some other letter a certain number of spaces backward orforward in the alphabet. Suppose a man wanted to disguise the word"cab." He might do so, very easily, by spelling it "dbc"--using, insteadof the right letter, the letter immediately following it in thealphabet, "d" for "c," "b" for "a," etc. Testing for "feet" as apossible interpretation of "dqbo" I saw that "f" was the secondletter in the alphabet beyond the letter "d"--first letter in thescript-word--but I found that such a relation could not possibly holdwith "e" and "q" respectively, the second letters. "Yard" or "rods"failed the same test. Nor by any juggling of this simple code, countingso many spaces backwards or forwards, could I make it come out true.
Some time before I had decided that it was unlikely to the verge ofimpossibility that any message could be made up completely of fourletter words. It seemed likely, at first, that letters had been cutfrom each word in order to make them of four letters. Working on thishypothesis I tested for "meters" but the word "dqbo" could not be madeto conform.
At that point it was necessary to begin on another tack. I smoked awhile in silence, hoping that some idea, some little inspiration thatso often furnished the key for such a mystery as this, would come to me.I had a dim thought that, since the words were all of four letters andcould not be made intelligible by any shifting of the alphabet, thatperhaps it had undergone some double transformation--changed first fromwords into some other symbol form, and then back into words. But Icouldn't seem to get hold.
If I could only see the key! Possibly it was extremely simple, justbefore my eyes if I could only grasp it. It wasn't reasonable, Ithought, for a lone man to leave a hidden message without giving somekey, however adroit, for the reader to translate it. Jason hadn'twritten that message for his own amusement. He had inscribed it to beread by some one who came after--perhaps by himself when old age haddulled his memory.
Working from this point of view I set myself to remember what had beenwritten on the parchment beside the column of figures. Perhaps the keyhad been there also; I had simply failed to observe it. At the bottom ofthe message had appeared the words "At F. T." And at first this seemedto offer the most interesting possibilities.
Certainly the word and letters had some meaning. In the first placethis, and the sentence above the script, indicated that the writer didhis thinking in English--not in Spanish or Portuguese or any otherlanguage. But "F. T." did not convey any meaning to my mind. I simplycouldn't catch it.
I tried to make the letters "F" and "T" a starting point in the alphabetfor rearranging the letters in the column of words, on the same theorythat I had worked at first, but nothing came of it. And at that point myhopes and confidence, falling steadily for the past hour, was at itslowest ebb. I didn't see but that I would have to give up the ventureafter all.
My mind slipped easily to the message in English above thecolumn--"Sworn by the Book," or something after that nature. Takingthese words simply as they seemed, an oath on the part of the writerthat the ensuing message was true, I hadn't taken the trouble to copythem from the original parchment. Fortunately I remembered them,approximately at least. And I felt a little quickening of hope as Icontemplated them.
The more I looked at them the more they seemed to be "dragged in by theheels." I didn't think that one with knowledge of hidden treasure,conveying its hiding place to some one else, would have taken thetrouble to declare the truth of his statement by oath. Nor was sucha pious beginning, on the part of that iniquitous murderer andcut-throat, Jason, quite in character. He would have been more likely tohave begun with a sentence of piratical profanity. He had some reasonfor bringing in the "Book"--and when I knew what it was, I believed Iwould know the key to the cryptogram.
The "Book" was the Bible of course--a name still in wide use. And thewhole volume of my blood seemed to spurt through the veins when Iremembered what an important place the Bible had taken in the events ofthe past few days!
Nealman had had a Bible, wide open, in his room. Edith had been seen tocarry it to him through the corridor--and this business with it had beenof such a character that he had ordered Edith's silence in regard to theerrand. Whether or not Florey had possessed a copy I wasn't able toremember for certain.
It must have been a grim old joke to Jason--to use the Holy Word totransmit the record of his iniquity! In an instant I was burrowing, nota little excited, into the bottom of my bag for a small copy of theBible that I carried with me on every journey.
Apart from religious reasons, there is no better traveling companionfor a knowledge-loving man than King James' Bible. The font of allliterature, the mighty well of inspiration, the record of the ages--itwas beloved not only of the scientist and historian, but the literatiand the esthete. Hardly a week had passed that I hadn't referred to it,in one capacity or another. And now I felt that I was on the right trackat last.
There is no book in such common usage, published with such fidelity asto the position of every word, so easily procured in any place or time,as the Holy Bible. It would be the perfect code-book. Certainly it couldbe used to the greatest advantage as the key to a cryptogram.
But what had been the method of its use? In what way could thesefour-letter words, none of which were intelligible, be made through
theagency of the Bible to present an intelligent meaning? Again I foundmyself relying on inductive reasoning. I worked backward, just as I haddone before, trying to see some way to convey a secret meaning throughthe agency of this universally read book.
All at once I saw the way. The Bible contained almost every word in thepresent English vocabulary. In all probability each one of the words inthe column represented some English word to be found somewhere in theBible, and the column of them, written out, would be the message infull.
How to find that word was the only problem that remained. True, itlooked formidable enough at first. Yet I saw in a moment that thefour-letter words could not represent the words of the messagethemselves, but only their _position_ in the Bible.
My mind was working clearly now, leaping from one conclusion to another;and reasoning deductively I tried to work out some method of secretwriting whereby I could reveal to another person the position of acertain word I wanted him to know. Suppose, for instance, that Jasonwished to use the word "feet" in his message. Looking through the Biblehe found the word--say on page 86, third line, fourth word. It wasconceivable that he might send the numbers "86-3-4" to some otherperson; and the latter, aware that the Bible acted as the key, lookedup the place in the Book and learned what the word was.
The number of pages vary, however, in Bibles of different size. It wasnatural that the location must be a constant in order that the recipientof the note could always find it. So I began again:
Suppose Jason, looking through his Bible, found the word "feet" in thebook of Genesis, the first chapter, the third verse, and the fourth wordof the verse. If he should send the symbols "Gen. 1, 3, 4" to hisfriend, the man could easily look up the place and see what he meant.And in this case he wouldn't have to have any certain edition of theBible. The fourth word of the third verse of the first chapter ofGenesis is the same in all copies of King James' Bible over all theworld.
Now I was working on sure ground. I had no doubt but that "dqbo"represented a certain point in the Bible--the letter "d" probablyrepresenting the book, "q" the chapter, "b" the verse and "o" the word.Once more my attention was called, with particular vividness, to thefact that all the words in the column were of four letters, proving inmy mind that this last contention was true.
My heart was racing as I moved to the next step in working out thecryptogram. It was simply that of finding what method had been used totransform such a symbol as "Gen. 1, 3, 4" into such a sign as "dqbo." Ifinstead of four-letter words I was working with sequences of numberssuch as "1, 1, 3, 4" I would have felt that the problem was solved. "1,1, 3, 4" would have plainly meant the first book, the first chapter,the third verse, and the fourth word.
To transform letters into numbers--that was all that remained. Again Iwent back to "dqbo" and took the simplest method of transformation. "D"was the fourth letter in the alphabet. "Q" was the seventeenth letter inthe alphabet. "B" was the second letter in the alphabet. "O" was thefifteenth letter in the alphabet. I wrote down the numbers:
4-17-2-15
And I felt sure that they meant the fourth book, the seventeenthchapter, the second verse and the fifteenth word in the Holy Bible.
Shaken, so nervous I could hardly hold my hands still, I stopped amoment to rest. This was the crisis. I was either at the verge ofabsolute success or hopeless failure. If when I looked up the place Ifound some word that couldn't possibly be used in such a message Iwouldn't have the spirit to seek further. And it would be a real blow toall my hopes.
I opened the Bible. The fourth book proved to be "Numbers." I turned tothe seventeenth chapter, the second verse. And there I read as follows:
Speak unto the children of Israel and take one of them a _rod_ according to the house of their fathers.
The fifteenth word was _rod_--used as a staff in this case butundoubtedly used as a term of measurement in the script.
From then on my fingers flew through the pages of the Book. "Aned," thevery first word in the column, represented--finding the alphabeticalposition of each letter--the numbers 1-14-5-4. It was a simple matter tolook up the first book of the Bible, Genesis, the fourteenth chapter,the fifth verse, and the fourth word. The verse in this case began:
"And in the _fourteenth_ year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him."
The fourth word of the verse was _fourteenth_--and the first word of thefinished script.
It was easy to find the other words. I worked them all out in fifteenminutes. "Aqcd," the third in the column, proved to be the first,seventeenth, third, and fourth letters of the alphabet, respectively,and 1-17-3-4 meant first book, seventeenth chapter, third verse, fourthword, as plain as could be. The word proved to be "on." Swiftly I wentdown the list. And at last I had the whole column translated:
fourteen rod on wall three rod straight right fastened white rock
Writing it out, I had:
Fourteen rod on wall three rod straight right fastened white rock.
In clearer language, it meant simply and unmistakably, that to find themissing object--unquestionably Jason's treasure--go fourteen rods out onthe natural rock wall, turn straight right into the lagoon for threerods, and there I would find it--fastened to a white rock.
The thing was done. I came to myself to find my fingers toying with thepencil, and my thoughts soaring far away. In spite of the grim record ofdeath already made, the deadly precedent that had been set, in spite ofall the dictates of ordinary intelligence, I knew what my future coursewould be. The lure of gold had hold of me. As soon as the opportunityoffered, I was going to follow the thing through to its end, and seewith my own eyes that which lay hidden in the depths of the lagoon.