“Do you think he’s shielding somebody?”
“Foolish question number thirty-seven. He must have some idea of who shot him even if he only saw a shadow. He won’t even say how big the figure was—it might be Evans or Federhut or even Mrs. Hudson from all he’ll say. But you can take it from me, if he’s shielding anybody, it isn’t out of human kindness. He knows what he’s about, that baby; he’s no Boy Scout.”
“Did you see,” Maureen ventured tentatively, “if there were any other wounds on his body?”
Finch smilingly tamped his corncob. “I suppose you think, young lady, that that’s cryptic question. You want to be mysterious with the police, like all the clever heroines. I hate to disappoint you, but that other wound was the first thing the police thought of. It’s a frame, I said to myself. He’s pulling an alibi out of a book—stage an attack on yourself and you seem innocent. And if we do notice how the gun got out the window, we’re supposed to think the murderer is just confusing things like with Worth. But then! I said, he couldn’t have written on the wall after a wound like that. He’d have to get blood some other way. So is there maybe another wound? Am I right—that’s what you’re after?”
“Yes. Only please, I wasn’t trying to be a smarty. I just wanted—”
“I know. I never saw a case with so many people trying to solve it. Hell and Maria, we’ve even got a member of our own police force working as an amateur! All detectives and no suspects, that’s what’s the matter.”
“But was there another wound?”
“There was. A cut on the upper lip—pretty bad. On the one hand, it could easily have been caused while shaving. On the other, it would have furnished enough blood to do that writing. This RACHE was smaller than the other, and pretty faint.”
“Then he did do it himself!”
“Horse feathers! I thought so too, till I got the doctor’s report. Nobody could have faked that shot. He only lived because the bullet glanced off a rib. The least fraction of an inch to one side and it would have been fatal. If you fake a shooting you pick the shoulder or the leg; you don’t aim at just missing the heart by a hairsbreadth. No, whoever fired that shot meant business.”
“I guess that’s that then.” Maureen sounded regretful. “It would have been so simple. And I’d soonest he was the murderer out of all of them.”
“He still might be. Because somebody tried to kill him doesn’t mean he’s innocent of Worth’s murder; it just means we’ve maybe got two of ’em on our hands.”
“But,” Maureen insisted, “men don’t shave at night just before they go to bed. It isn’t natural. I’ve watched my brother. He always shaves either first thing in the morning or before he goes out in the evening—sometimes both, but he hates that. He wouldn’t think of shaving before he went to bed.”
Lieutenant Finch rubbed his chin reminiscently. “Wait till he’s married,” he said. “Wait till you’re married yourself; you’ll find out why men shave at night.”
“But Mr. Ridgly is a bachelor. He wouldn’t have any habits like that.”
Lieutenant Finch rose from his chair. “You know, Miss O’Breen, you may know a lot of stories that a nice girl shouldn’t; but I guess you’re pretty pure at heart after all.” With which he took his departure.
Chapter 19
The main dish at lunch puzzled Maureen. On either end of a large platter were heaps of green peas and of crisp fried noodles; but the mass in the center she could not place. It looked like scrambled eggs, but not quite. She was still uncertain after she had sampled it. It tasted like Welsh rabbit, but not quite.
“What is it?” she finally asked Jonadab Evans. They were lunching alone, while Mrs. Hudson, clinging to class distinction as one small chunk of solidity in chaos, fed Sergeant Hinkle in the kitchen.
“Do you like it?” Mr. Evans was solicitous.
“Very much indeed. It’s delicious.”
“I’m very glad.” He hemmed an instant. “You see—I made it.”
“You did?”
“Yes. There was a certain satisfaction in accomplishing something. I had been losing confidence in myself. In such a state, I frequently find it advisable to reassert my ability in the kitchen; and since I particularly pride myself on my fondue, I attempted that.”
“How do you make it? I must try it on my brother sometime. You see, I go on the principle that if you can please a brother with your cooking, a husband, when the time comes, will be a cinch.”
Mr. Evans beamed. “Take a small skillet,” he began. “Iron, preferably. Melt therein a sizable chunk of butter. Add broken lumps of cheese—whatever sort you prefer—and melt them slowly. You will forgive me if my quantities are not precise? I am not what you might call a metric chef.”
“I’m afraid I am,” said Maureen, “but I’ll try to get the idea.”
“Now,” Mr. Evans’ voice grew warmer as he spoke, “the cheese is melted—a golden lava. Take the skillet from the fire—an essential and often neglected step. Break into it the eggs—one or one and a half per person—and add salt and Worcester source ‘to taste,’ as sensible cookbooks should say. Mix eggs and cheese together with a fork and return to a very low fire. Cook as slowly as possible and never cease stirring; for it should be—and, I trust, is—impossible to say where cheese leaves off and egg begins. When the mass, of its own consistency, frees itself from the pan, the fondue is done. If you wish to add a final tribute to the eye as well as the tongue, a few dots of paprika will do. For my sake, however, do not add sprigs of parsley; for I hold with the eminent Alexis Soyer that no food should be garnished with anything which will remain on the plate uneaten.”
Maureen smiled. “You make it sound even better than it tastes.”
“I hope not!” Mr. Evans exclaimed in horror. “I abominate these cooks whose sole artistry lies in glowing words. The ideal cook should be a deaf-mute and preferably illiterate, so that he might create freely with no end save the palate.”
Maureen took another mouthful of the fondue and let its cheeseful richness dissolve against her rejoicing taste buds. “But I’ve had what they called a fondue,” she said. “It was a baked dish with bread crumbs and things.”
“I know.” Mr. Evans shook his head. “In modern cookbooks that puddingy abomination is known by the splendid name of fondue. But Brillat-Savarin,” he said with not unjustified pride, “supports my usage.”
“And do you feel happy and self-satisfied again now? You certainly should after this.”
“I don’t know. Of course I feel better, but still—I know that I am a reasonably good writer and a somewhat better cook; but there was once a time when I thought that I was a passable amateur cryptanalyst.”
“Crypt—?”
“Code solver. Interpreter of ciphers—though pray do not think that I confuse the words.”
“I see. You mean you’re stumped on something. Would it be that list of numbers in the brief case?”
“My dear young lady, not only would it be; it is. I have spent much of two days on those absurd figures, and still do not know even whether they form a code message or a cipher.” He hesitated.
“Is there anything I could do?” Maureen asked. “Not that I know anything about crypt—”
“—analysis,” he finished for her. “Yes, there is. You listened so kindly to my few comments on cookery. I wonder if you could be equally kind and hear me outline my futile endeavors to interpret those numbers. Sometimes the lay mind …”
“Of course,” Maureen said, and regretfully took the last remaining bite of fondue.
“Very well.” The little man took from his vest pocket a sheaf of papers and spread them on the table. “First of all, here is a copy of the list:
20518
25414
25723
20974
25191
25585
22394
25237
Now what do you think those numbers must indicate?”
“Lord only knows. Maybe the
y’re a listing of bonds, or numbers of counterfeit bills.”
“The numbers of bills, I fear, are much longer and contain letters as well as figures. For instance,” he produced his wallet, “here is a five which reads E41619027A. About bonds I cannot be so sure; but if this were a list of the numbers of anything, those numbers would be arranged in their proper numerical sequence. No; consider the circumstances under which this was found. It was in Stephen Worth’s brief case, from which whatever else it contained has been carefully removed. It is barely possible, of course, that this slip of paper may have been overlooked; but it is far more likely that we found this list because it was deliberately left for us to find. Now everything else in that room, with the possible exception of that confusing shard of glass, was a purposeful clue, however misleading, and usually of a Holmesian origin. Is it illogical, then, to assume that this paper as well is a clue, and that its solution is to be found by the application of Holmesian methods?”
Maureen frowned. “I guess that’s all right so far.”
“Now when, I asked myself, did Holmes decipher a message similar to this? Obviously the interpretation of such simple ciphers as the dancing men or the candle movements in The Adventure of the Red Circle would be of no use to us. But I quickly recalled the magnificent opening chapter of The Valley of Fear, that strange calumny on the American labor movement. You will of course remember the message which Holmes had received from Porlock, the one flaw in the chain of Professor Moriarty’s organization.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Maureen confessed.
Mr. Evans regarded her with the mild but somewhat wounded surprise of the enthusiast who encounters the ignorance prevalent outside his blessed sphere. “One moment,” he said, and sped into the living room, whence he returned in a moment with the complete volume of the Holmes stories. “Here we are,” and he laid before her the page bearing the message referred to.
“‘534,’” Maureen read, “‘C2 13 127 …’ And your Mr. Holmes really read that?”
“Of course,” Mr. Evens replied with as much pride as though he had accomplished the feat himself. “He observed at once that these numbers referred to the words on a given page of some book, and by several rapid steps of deduction he concluded the identity of the book and from that the meaning of the message.”
“And you think you can do that with these numbers?”
“I thought so,” he sighed. “But have the kindness to go along with me as I follow the Holmesian line and tell me, if you can, where I have slipped. These earlier calculations we can disregard; they were based on cipher probabilities (which gave ridiculous results, as you can see) before I realized the possibility of this book code. Now let us assume that 20518 means page 205, 18th word, or possibly word 20, page 518; for it is likely that the word would be the smaller number, the page the larger. This indicates a book, in one case of average size—at least 257 pages; in the other of epic proportions, for the page numbers would run as high as 974. It must be a book which is certain to be available to us. Unfortunately, Americans outside of the Middle West are not certain to possess an almanac, in which Holmes found his solution; and as the Master himself pointed out, the Bible cannot have been used because of the variable pagination of its different editions. I toyed with various other possibilities, until at last I decided that the one book certain to be in our possession, the one volume to which reference could be made with absolute certainty, was the Los Angeles telephone directory. Names may frequently also be common nouns; to construct an intelligible message from such a directory would be nowise impossible. But here my train of logic comes up against hard fact. Behold my lists: if we follow the form of page 205, word 18, we get:
COOPER DOMECQ DORT COSGROVE DIXON DONNELL CUNNINGHAM DOCKINS
And if we try the form of word 20, page 518, the result is:
KNOX HELM PEACOCK WALKER COFFER MAIBEN HAPIP DEAN”
“The second list’s much better,” said Maureen. “PEACOCK and MAIBEN are good enough in themselves; but I just love HAPIP.”
“That,” said Mr. Evans, “is all very well; but can you tell me where I went wrong? Why should this logical attack produce gibberish?”
“Well then, I will tell you. You got the wrong book.”
“Thank you.” His tone was not friendly. “And could you tell me the right one?”
“Of course,” said Maureen unexpectedly. “There.” And she indicated The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
“Of course!” Mr. Evans exclaimed. “Miss O’Breen, you put me to shame. Holmes—the one volume that everyone in this house would be sure to have access to. And naturally in that one-volume Doubleday edition—anything else would have entailed a volume reference. Undoubtedly you have hit it! Now let us see. If you will be so kind as to read the numbers to me—” He fumbled eagerly with book, pencil, paper.
Maureen picked up the list. “What shall we try first—the 205, 18 division?”
“As you will. Page 205—plumb in the middle of The Red-headed League. The eighteenth word is—SLOWLY.” He noted it down on the paper beside him. “Not in itself significant but surely a possible beginning. Next?”
“Page 254, word 14.”
“Two—fifty—four. Ha! The Five Orange Pips, which our friend has quoted once already. This is familiar ground. The fourteenth word—THE. SLOWLY THE—the what, I wonder? Go on.”
“This is exciting, isn’t it? No wonder your Holmes loved his work. Page 257 next—word 23.”
“Still The Orange Pips. And the word is—” Suddenly his voice fell. “The twenty-third word on page 257, Miss O’Breen, is IT. SLOWLY THE IT—There must be some mistake.”
But there was no mistake. After the most careful checking and recounting, the message as transcribed read:
SLOWLY THE IT UNPACK ORDERS OPPOSED TO DESCRIBED
“I feel,” said Jonadab Evans, “as Holmes himself must have felt when he sought to decipher Porlock’s message by means of the wrong Whittaker, and received the answer:
MAHRATTA GOVERNMENT PIG’S-BRISTLES
But we are not through yet; let us try the 20, 518 division. The twentieth word on page 518 is—LETTER. That is encouraging enough. Next?”
“That would be page 414, word 25.”
“And that is—oh dear!”
“What is it?”
“IT again. Wretched word! But let us persevere.”
The result this time was even less coherent than the first. It read:
LETTER IT WERE A LEAD THERE HOLMES’S HOLMES
“But it must be this book,” Mr. Evans insisted plaintively. “Do you suppose it could be some tricky arrangement of numbers, such as the twenty-eighth word on page 51, or the fifty-first on page 208?”
“Why?”
“This way. You see?” He drew on the page 2(051)8 and 20(51)8. “We can at least try.”
They tried. The 2(051)8 arrangement gave them:
UNTIL AFTER FRONT BLONDE HE (*) PROBABLY TO
And the 20(51)8, most discouraging of all, resulted in this choice array of monosyllables:
IN THAT BUT BY THAT ITS THE IT
Maureen was tired of the game by this time. It had started out to be exciting, but now it was just silly drudgery. The spirit of the chase was still hot in Mr. Evans, but he was close to tears with exasperation at its hopelessness.
“There must be an answer,” he lamented. “But I am too exhausted and annoyed even to think any longer. Sometimes when I am in this state over a chapter in which I am forced to revise a snag in my friend’s plot, I can stimulate my lagging mind with music; but I have tried the radio here and all I can find is what I think is known as swing. If only I could—”
“If you wanted to walk down to the Boulevard with me,” Maureen suggested, “we could listen to records. Do you think that might help?”
Mr. Evans looked more cheerful. “Thank you, Miss O’Breen. It might at that. I do feel sure that if we could only break down this message—”
“I beg your pardon, Miss O�
�Breen.” Mrs. Hudson had entered silently and was regarding the paper-strewn table with manifest disapproval. “Do you think I could clear away? I’ve been waiting for you to ring.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maureen apologized. “We got to working on a code, and—”
“There’s a lot of codes in this house,” Mrs. Hudson announced, in something the same tones in which she would have proclaimed an incursion of rats.
Mr. Evans pricked up his ears. “What do you mean? Have my colleagues been—”
“This wasn’t writing codes,” the housekeeper explained. “It was the Austrian gentleman on the telephone this morning. I don’t know who he was talking to, but he didn’t say anything but numbers. Just a lot of numbers, and waiting in between like he was listening to something, and at the end he said thank you. That’s a code, I said to myself. And there’s enough going on in this house, I said, without foreigners talking codes over the phone.” And with this profound dictum she began to clear away the dishes.
“And one hell of a murder case this is!” Burly, rednecked Captain Norris, in charge of homicide, towered over Lieutenant Finch and thundered at him. “You haven’t even got a body to show for it. How the hell do you know anybody was murdered at all?”
“There’s the girl’s evidence—”
“And who’s the girl for Christ’s sake? Publicity agent for Metropolis Pictures, that’s who she is. Goddamn it, Finch, I tell you they’re making a monkey out of you. The whole stinking thing’s a gag, and you’ve fallen for it.”
“Ridgly’s shooting wasn’t any gag.”
“So what? What’s that got to do with Worth? Go ahead—find out who shot Ridgly if it makes you happy. But Jesus Christ with wheels on! Stop futzing around this Worth frame-up. Call their bluff and be damned to them.”
The phone rang. “For you, Finch,” Captain Norris grunted in a moment.
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars Page 22