XII
"THE DOUBLE CODE"
It was one night in early fall that Bill Quinn and I were browsingaround the library in the house that he had called "home" ever since acounterfeiter's bullet incapacitated him from further active work in theSecret Service. Prior to that time he had lived, as he put it, "whereverhe hung his hat," but now there was a comfortable little house with aden where Quinn kept the more unusual, and often gruesome, relics whichbrought back memories of the past.
There, hanging on the wall with a dark-brown stain still adorning therazorlike edge, was a Chinese hatchet which had doubtless figured insome tong war on the Coast. Below was an ordinary twenty-five-centpiece, attached to the wall paper with chewing gum--"just as it onceaided in robbing the Treasury of nearly a million dollars," Quinnassured me. In another part of the room was a frame containing whatappeared to be a bit torn from the wrapping of a package, with thecanceled stamp and a half-obliterated postmark as the only clues to themurder of the man who had received it, and, beside the bookcases, whichcontained a wide range of detective literature, hung a larger frame inwhich were the finger prints of more than a score of criminals, menbearing names practically unknown to the public, but whose exploits werebywords in the various governmental detective services.
It was while glancing over the contents of the bookcase that I noted onevolume which appeared strangely out of place in this collection of thefictional romances of crime.
"What's this doing here?" I inquired, taking down a volume of _The GiantRaft_, by Jules Verne. "Verne didn't write detective stories, did he?"
"No," replied Quinn, "and it's really out of place in the bookcase. Ifpossible, I'd like to have it framed and put on the wall with the restof the relics--for it's really more important than any of them, from thestandpoint of value to the nation. That quarter on the wall overthere--the one which figured in the Sugar Fraud case--cost thegovernment in the neighborhood of a million dollars, but this bookprobably saved a score of millions and hundreds of lives as well. If ithadn't been for the fact that Thurber of the Navy Department knew hisJules Vernes even better than he did his Bible, it's quite possiblethat--
"Well, there's no use telling the end of the story before the beginning.Make yourself comfortable and I'll see if I can recall the details ofthe case."
* * * * *
Remember Dr. Heinrich Albert? [Quinn inquired, after we had bothstretched out in front of the open fire]. Theoretically, the Herr Doktorwas attached to the German embassy in Washington merely in an advisoryand financial capacity. He and Haniel von Heimhausen--the same counselorthat the present German government wanted to send over here asambassador after the signing of the peace treaty--were charged with thesolution of many of the legal difficulties which arose in connectionwith the business of the big red brick dwelling on Massachusetts Avenue.But while von Heimhausen was occupied with the legal end of the game,Doctor Albert attended to many of the underground details which wentunsuspected for many years.
It was he, for example, who managed the bidding for the wireless stationin the Philippines--the plan which permitted the German government todictate the location of the station and to see to it that the towerswere so placed where they would be most useful to Berlin. He undoubtedlyworked with von Papen and Boy-Ed during the early years of thewar--years in which this precious trio, either with or without theknowledge of Count von Bernstorff, sought by every means to crippleAmerican shipping, violate American neutrality, and make a laughingstockof American diplomatic methods. What's more, they got away with it formonths, not because the Secret Service and the Department of Justiceweren't hot on their trail, but because the Germans were too cagy to becaught and you can't arrest a diplomat just on suspicion.
During the months which followed the first of August, nineteen fourteen,practically every one of the government's detective services was calledupon in some way to pry into the affairs of the embassy staff. But thebrunt of the work naturally devolved upon the two organizations directlyconcerned with preventing flagrant breaches of neutrality--the SecretService and the Department of Justice.
Every time that Doctor Albert, or any other official of the Germangovernment, left Washington he was trailed by anywhere from one to fivemen. Every move he made was noted and reported to headquarters, with theresult that the State Department had a very good idea of the names ofthe men who were being used to forward Germany's ends, even though itknew comparatively little about what was actually planned. The attacheswere entirely too clever to carry on compromising conversations in theopen, and their appointments were made in such a manner as effectuallyto prevent the planting of a dictaphone or any other device by whichthey might be overheard.
The directions to the men who were responsible for the working of thetwo Services were:
Every attache of the German embassy is to be guarded with extreme care, day and night. Reports are to be made through the usual channels and, in the event that something unusual is observed, Divisional Headquarters is to be notified instantly, the information being transmitted to Washington before any final action is taken.
This last clause, of course, was inserted to prevent some hot-headedoperative from going off half-cocked and thus spoiling the StateDepartment's plans. As long as Albert and his associates were merely"guarded" they couldn't enter any formal complaint. But, given half achance, they would have gotten on their official dignity and demandedthat the espionage cease.
From the State Department's point of view it was an excellent rule, butGene Barlow and the other Service men assigned to follow Albert couldn'tsee it in that light.
"What's the idea, anyhow?" Gene growled one night as his pet taxicabdashed down Massachusetts Avenue in the wake of the big touring car thatwas carrying the German attache to the Union Station. "Here we have tobe on the job at all hours, just to watch this Dutchman and see what hedoes. And," with a note of contempt, "he never does anything worthreporting. Sees half a dozen people, lunches at the German-AmericanClub, drops in at two or three offices downtown, and then back hereagain. If they'd only let us waylay him and get hold of that black bagthat he always carts around there'd be nothing to it. Some day I'mgoing to do that little thing, just to see what happens."
But Barlow took it out in threats. Secret Service men find pleasure instating what they are going to do "some day"--but the quality ofimplicit obedience has been drilled into them too thoroughly for them toforget it, which is possibly the reason why they take such a sheer andgenuine delight in going ahead when the restrictions are finally lifted.
It was in New York, more than two years after the war had commenced,that Barlow got his first opportunity to "see what would happen." In themeantime, he had been assigned to half a dozen other cases, but alwaysreturned to the shadowing of Doctor Albert because he was the one manwho had been eminently successful in that work. The German had an almostuncanny habit of throwing his pursuers off the trail whenever he wantedto and in spite of the efforts of the cleverest men in the Service haddisappeared from time to time. The resumption of unrestricted submarinewarfare and the delicacy of the diplomatic situation which ensued madeit imperative that the "man with the saber scar," as Doctor Albert wasknown, be kept constantly under surveillance.
"Stick to him, Gene, and don't bother about reporting until you arecertain that he will stay put long enough for you to phone," were theinstructions that Barlow received. "The doctor must be watched everymoment that he's away from the Embassy and it's up to you to do it."
"Anything else beside watching him?" inquired the operative, hopefully.
"No," smiled the chief, "there isn't to be any rough stuff. We're on theverge of an explosion as it is, and anyone who pulls the hair triggerwill not only find himself out of a job, but will have the doubtfulsatisfaction of knowing that he's responsible for wrecking some verycarefully laid plans. Where Albert goes, who he talks with and, ifpossible, a few details of what they discuss, is all that's wanted."
"Wouldn't like to have a piece of the Kaiser's mustache or anything ofthat kind, would you, Chief?" Barlow retorted. "I could get that for youa whole lot easier than I could find out what the man with the saberscar talks about. He's the original George B. Careful. Never was knownto take a chance. Wouldn't bet a nickel against a hundred dollars thatthe sun would come up to-morrow and always sees to it that hisconferences are held behind bolted doors. They even pull down the shadesso that no lip reader with a pair of field glasses can get a tip as towhat they're talking about."
"That's the reason you were picked for this case," was the chief'sreply. "Any strong-arm man could whale Albert over the head and throwhim in the river. That wouldn't help any. What we need is informationconcerning what his plans are, and it takes a clever man to get that."
"All bull and a yard wide!" laughed Gene, but the compliment pleasedhim, nevertheless. "I'll watch him, but let me know when the lid comesoff and I can use other methods."
The chief promised that he would--and it was not more than three weekslater that he had an opportunity to make good.
"Barlow," he directed, speaking over the long-distance phone to theoperative in New York, "the Department of Justice has just reported thatDoctor Albert is in receipt of a document of some kind--probably aletter of instruction from Berlin--which it is vital that we have atonce. Our information is that the message is written on a slip of oiledpaper carried inside a dummy lead pencil. It's possible that the doctorhas destroyed it, but it isn't probable. Can you get it?"
"How far am I allowed to go?" inquired Gene, hoping for permission tostage a kidnaping of the German attache, but fully expecting theseinstructions which followed--orders that he was to do nothing that wouldcause an open breach, nothing for which Doctor Albert could demandreparation or even an apology.
"In other words," Barlow said to himself, as he hung up the phone, "I'mto accomplish the impossible, blindfolded and with my hands tied. Wonderwhether Paula would have a hunch--"
Paula was Barlow's sweetheart, a pretty little brunette who earned avery good salary as private secretary to one of the leading lights ofWall Street--which accounted for the fact that the operative had learnedto rely upon her quick flashes of intuitive judgment for help in anumber of situations which had required tact as well as action. Theywere to be married whenever Gene's professional activities subsidedsufficiently to allow him to remain home at least one night a month,but, meanwhile, Paula maintained that she would as soon be the wife ofan African explorer--"Because at least I would know that he wouldn't beback for six months, while I haven't any idea whether you'll be out oftown two days or two years."
After they had talked the Albert matter over from all angles, Paulainquired, "Where would your friend with the saber scar be likely tocarry the paper?"
"Either in his pocket or in the black bag that he invariably has withhim."
"Hum!" she mused, "if it's in his pocket I don't see that there isanything you can do, short of knocking him down and taking it away fromhim, and that's barred by the rules of the game. But if it is in themysterious black bag.... Is the doctor in town now?"
"Yes, he's at the Astor, probably for two or three days. I left Dwyerand French on guard there while I, presumably, snatched a little sleep.But I'd rather have your advice than any amount of rest."
"Thanks," was the girl's only comment, for her mind was busy with theproblem. "There's apparently no time to lose, so I'll inform the officethe first thing in the morning that I won't be down, meet you in frontof the Astor, and we'll see what happens. Just let me stick with you,inconspicuously, and I think that I can guarantee at least anopportunity to lift the bag without giving the German a chance to raisea row."
Thus it was that, early the next day, Gene Barlow was joined by adistinctly personable young woman who, after a moment's conversation,strolled up and down Broadway in front of the hotel.
Some twenty minutes later a man whose face had been disfigured by asaber slash received at Heidelberg came down the steps and asked for ataxi. But Barlow, acting under directions from Paula, had seen thatthere were no taxis to be had. A flash of his badge and some coin of therealm had fixed that. So Dr. Heinrich Albert, of the German embassy, wasforced to take a plebeian surface car--as Paula had intended that heshould. The Secret Service operative and his pretty companion boardedthe same car a block farther down, two other government agents havingheld it sufficiently long at Forty-fourth Street to permit of this move.
Worming their way through the crowd when their prey changed to the SixthAvenue Elevated, Gene and Paula soon reached points of vantage on eitherside of the German, who carried his black bag tightly grasped in hisright hand, and the trio kept this formation until they reached FiftiethStreet, when the girl apparently started to make her way toward thedoor. Something caused her to stumble, however, and she pitched forwardright into the arms of the German, who by that time had secured a seatand had placed his bag beside him, still guarding it with a protectingarm.
Before the foreigner had time to gather his wits, he found himself witha pretty girl literally in his lap--a girl who was manifestly a lady andwho blushed to the tips of her ears as she apologized for herawkwardness. Even if the German had been a woman-hater there would havebeen nothing for him to do but to assist her to her feet, and that,necessarily, required the use of both hands. As it happened, DoctorAlbert was distinctly susceptible to feminine charms, and there wassomething about this girl's smile which was friendly, thoughembarrassed.
So he spent longer than was strictly essential in helping her to thedoor--she appeared to have turned her ankle--and then returned to hisseat only to find that his portfolio was missing!
Recriminations and threats were useless. A score of people had left thecar and, as the guard heartlessly refused to stop the train before thenext station, there was naturally not a trace of the girl or the man whohad accompanied her. By that time, in fact, Barlow and Paula had slippedinto the shelter of a neighboring hotel lobby and were busy inspectingthe contents of Doctor Albert's precious brief case.
"Even if there's nothing in it," laughed the girl, "we've had thesatisfaction of scaring him to death."
Gene said nothing, but pawed through the papers in frantic haste.
"A slip of oiled paper," he muttered. "By the Lord Harry! here it is!"and he produced a pencil which his trained fingers told him was lighterthan it should be. With a wrench he broke off the metal tip that heldthe eraser, and from within the wooden spindle removed a tightly wrappedroll of very thin, almost transparent paper, covered with unintelligiblelettering.
"What's on it?" demanded Paula.
"I'll never tell you," was Barlow's reply. "It would take a better manthan I am to decipher this," and he read off:
"I i i t f b b t t x o...."
"Code?" interrupted the girl.
"Sure it is--and apparently a peach." The next moment he had slipped thepaper carefully into an inside pocket, crammed the rest of the papersback into the brief case, and was disappearing into a phone booth.
"Better get down to work, dear," he called over his shoulder. "I'm goingto report to the office here and then take this stuff down toWashington!" And that was the last that Paula saw of him for a week.
Six hours later Barlow entered the chief's office in the TreasuryDepartment and reported that he had secured the code message.
"So New York phoned," was the only comment from the man who directed thedestinies of the Secret Service. "Take it right up to the NavyDepartment and turn it over to Thurber, the librarian. He'll be able toread it, if anybody can."
Thurber, Gene knew, was the man who was recognizedly the leadingauthority on military codes and ciphers in the United States, the manwho had made a hobby as well as a business of decoding mysteriousmessages and who had finally deciphered the famous "square letter" code,though it took him months to do it.
"He'll have to work faster than that this time," thought Barlow, as hemade his way toward the librarian's office on the fourth floor of
thebig gray-stone building. "Time's at a premium and Germany moves too fastto waste any of it."
But Thurber was fully cognizant of the necessity for quick action. Hehad been warned that Barlow was bringing the dispatch and the entireoffice was cleared for work.
Spreading the oiled paper on a table top made of clear glass, theLibrarian turned on a battery of strong electric lights underneath sothat any watermark or secret writing would have been at once apparent.But there was nothing on the sheet except line after line of meaninglessletters.
"It's possible, of course, that there may be some writing in invisibleink on the sheet," admitted the cipher expert. "But the fact that oiledpaper is used would seem to preclude that. The code itself may be anyone of several varieties and it's a matter of trying 'em all until youhit upon the right one."
"I thought that Poe's story of 'The Gold Bug' claimed that any ciphercould be read if you selected the letter that appeared most frequentlyand substituted for it the letter 'e,' which is used most often inEnglish, and so on down the list," stated Barlow.
"So it did. But there are lots of things that Poe didn't know aboutcodes." Thurber retorted, his eyes riveted to the sheet before him."Besides, that was fiction and the author knew just how the code wasconstructed, while this is fact and we have to depend upon hard work andblind luck.
"There are any number of arbitrary systems which might have been used inwriting this message," he continued. "The army clock code is one ofthem--the one in which a number is added to every letter figure,dependent upon the hour at which the message is written. But I don'tthink that applies in this case. The cipher doesn't look like it--thoughI'll have to admit that it doesn't look like any that I've come acrossbefore. Let's put it on the blackboard and study it from across theroom. That often helps in concentrating."
"You're not going to write the whole thing on the board?" queried theoperative.
"No, only the first fifteen letters or so," and Thurber put down thisline:
I i i t f b b t t x o r q w s b b
"Translated into what we call 'letter figures,'" he went on, "that wouldbe 9 9 9 20 6 2 2 20 20 24 15 18 17 23 19 2 2--the system where 'a' isdenoted by 1, 'b' by 2, and so on. No, that's still meaningless. Thatrepetition of the letter 'i' at the beginning of the message is whatmakes it particularly puzzling.
"If you don't mind, I'll lock the door and get to work on this inearnest. Where can I reach you by phone?"
Barlow smiled at this polite dismissal and, stating that he would be atheadquarters for the rest of the evening and that they would know whereto reach him after that, left the office--decidedly doubtful as toThurber's ability to read the message.
Long after midnight Gene answered a ring from the phone beside his bedand through a haze of sleep heard the voice of the navy librarianinquiring if he still had the other papers which had been in DoctorAlbert's bag.
"No," replied the operative, "but I can get them. They are on top of thechief's desk. Nothing in them, though. Went over them with amicroscope."
"Just the same," directed Thurber, "I'd like to have them right away. Ithink I'm on the trail, but the message is impossible to decipher unlesswe get the code word. It may be in some of the other papers."
Barlow found the librarian red-eyed from his lack of sleep and thestrain of the concentration over the code letter. But when they had goneover the papers found in the black bag, even Thurber had to admit thathe was checkmated.
"Somewhere," he maintained, "is the one word which will solve the wholething. I know the type of cipher. It's one that is very seldom used; infact, the only reference to it that I know of is in Jules Verne's novel_The Giant Raft_. It's a question of taking a key word, using the letterfigures which denote this, and adding these to the letter figures of theoriginal letter. That will give you a series of numbers which it isimpossible to decipher unless you know the key word. I feel certain thatthis is a variation of that system, for the fact that two letters appeartogether so frequently would seem to indicate that the numbers whichthey represent are higher than twenty-six, the number of the letters inthe alphabet."
"One word!" muttered Barlow. Then, seizing what was apparently amemorandum sheet from the pile of Albert's papers, he exclaimed: "Here'sa list that neither the chief nor I could make anything of. See? It hastwelve numbers, which might be the months of the year, with a name orword behind each one!"
"Yes," replied Thurber, disconsolately, "I saw that the first thing. Butthis is October and the word corresponding to the number ten is'Wilhelmstrasse'--and that doesn't help at all. I tried it."
"Then try 'Hohenzollern,' the September word!" snapped Barlow. "Thismessage was presumably written in Berlin and therefore took some time toget over here."
"By George! that's so! A variation of the 'clock code' as well asVerne's idea. Here, read off the letters and I'll put them on the boardwith the figures representing Hohenzollern underneath. Take the firstfifteen as before."
When they had finished, the blackboard bore the following, the firstline being the original code letters, the second the letter figures ofthese, and the third the figures of the word "Hohenzollern" with thefirst "h" repeated for the fifteenth letter:
I i i t f b b t t x o r q w s b b
I ii t f bb tt x o r q w s bb 9 35 20 6 28 46 24 15 18 17 23 19 28 8 15 8 5 14 26 15 12 12 5 18 14 8
"Why thirty-five for that double 'i' and twenty-eight for the double'b's'?" asked Barlow.
"Add twenty-six--the total number of letters in the alphabet--to theletter figure for the letter itself," said Thurber. "That's the onebeauty of this code, one of the things which helps to throw you off thescent. Now subtracting the two lines we have:
"1 20 12 1 14 20 9 3 6 12 5 5 20
"We've got it!" he cried an instant later, as he stepped back to look atthe figures and read off:
"A t l a n t i c f l e e t
"It was a double code, after all," Thurber stated when he had decipheredthe entire message by the same procedure and had reported his discoveryto the Secretary of the Navy over the phone. "Practically infallible,too, save for the fact that I, as well as Doctor Albert, happened to befamiliar with Jules Verne. That, plus the doctor's inability to rely onhis memory and therefore leaving his key words in his brief case,rendered the whole thing pretty easy."
"Yes," thought Gene, "plus my suggestion of the September word, ratherthan the October one, and plus Paula's quick wit--that's really allthere was to it!" But he kept his thoughts to himself, preferring toallow Thurber to reap all the rewards that were coming to him for thesolution of the "double code."
* * * * *
"Do you know what the whole message was?" I inquired, as Quinn stoppedhis narrative.
"You'll find it pasted on the back of that copy of _The Giant Raft_,"replied the former operative. "That's why I claim that the book ought tobe preserved as a souvenir of an incident that saved millions of dollarsand hundreds of lives."
Turning to the back of the Verne book I saw pasted there the followingsignificant lines:
Atlantic Fleet sails (from) Hampton Roads (at) six (o'clock) morning of seventeenth. Eight U-boats will be waiting. Advise necessary parties and be ready (to) seek safety. Success (of) attack inevitable.
"That means that if Thurber hadn't been able to decipher that code thegreater part of our fleet would have been sunk by an unexpectedsubmarine attack, launched by a nation with whom we weren't even atwar?" I demanded, when I had finished the message.
"Precisely," agreed Quinn. "But if you'll look up the records you'llfind that the fleet did not sail on schedule, while Dr. Heinrich Albertand the entire staff from the house on Massachusetts Avenue weredeported before many more weeks had passed. There was no sense inraising a fuss about the incident at the time, for von Bernstorff wouldhave denied any knowledge of the message and probably would have chargedthat the
whole thing was a plant, designed to embroil the United Statesin the war. So it was allowed to rest for the time being and merelyjotted down as another score to be wiped off the slate later on.
"But you have to admit that a knowledge of Jules Verne came in veryhandy--quite as much so, in fact, as did a knowledge of the habits anddisposition of white mice in another case."
"Which one was that?"
Quinn merely pointed to the top of his bookcase, where there reposed astuffed white mouse, apparently asleep.
"That's a memento of the case," replied the former operative. "I'll tellyou of it the next time you drop in."