I
In some of the cases which we now know to have been connected with theRed Triangle, there was nothing, in the first place, to show any suchassociation. In some of these cases the connection has become apparentonly since the final clearing up of the whole mystery, and with thesecases we have no present concern; but in others it revealed itselfduring the investigation of the case. It was to this second categorythat the next case belonged--the next at all connectible, that is, afterthat of the mysterious death of Mr. Jacob Mason and the flight ofEverard Myatt.
The case was remarkable in other respects also; first, because in one ofits features it had a resemblance to the case of Samuel's diamonds,which first brought the Red Triangle to Hewitt's notice; next, becausein its course Hewitt encountered what he declared to be the mostingenious and baffling cryptogram that he had ever seen in the length ofhis strange experience; and thirdly, because I was the means of placingthat cryptogram in his hands, owing to one of those odd chances thatarise again and again in real life--are, indeed, so common as to passalmost unregarded--and yet might be thought improbable if offered in theguise of a mere story. Hewitt has often alluded to the curiouspersistence of such chances in his experience. I think I have elsewherementioned a certain police officer's prolonged search after a criminalfor whose arrest he held a warrant, ending in the discovery--because ofa misdirected call--that the man had been living all the time next doorto himself; and I have also told of the other detective inspector, who,being sent in search of a criminal of whom he had but the meagrest andmost unsatisfactory particulars, and whom he scarcely hoped ever to rundown, actually _fell over_ the man as he was leaving the office where hehad received his information, in the doorway of which the fellow hadstooped to tie his shoe-lace! But, as Hewitt would say, nothing but theexceptional nature of the surrounding circumstances makes these thingsseem extraordinary. What more ordinary experience, for example, than tomeet a friend in some London street--perhaps one friend of the onlydozen or so you have among the four millions of people about you? Theodds against you two, of all the millions, choosing the one street ofthe thousands in London to walk down at the same minute of time, wouldseem incalculable; and yet the chance comes off so often as to be amatter of the most ordinary experience.
On this occasion I was expecting orders from my editor to producecertain articles on the subject of the London hospitals. It will beremembered that the matter was very much in the air a few years ago, andas nothing is professionally more uncomfortable than to be called onsuddenly for an accurate and reasonable leading article on a subject oneknows nothing about, I wrote to my friend, Barton McCarthy, who ishouse-surgeon at St. Augustine's, and he replied by an offer to tell meanything I cared to ask if I would call at the hospital.
I set out accordingly some little time after a breakfast even later thanordinary, and called in at Hewitt's office on my way downstairs, to saythat I should not be lunching at our usual place that day.
"No," Hewitt answered, "nor shall I, I expect. I'm off to the City, atonce. I have an urgent message to go immediately to Kingsley, Bell andDalton's, in Broad Street, where a big bond robbery has just beendiscovered. Perhaps I can give you a lift in my cab?"
We hurried off together accordingly. Hewitt knew nothing of the case hehad to examine, and so could tell me nothing, beyond the short urgentrequest that he would come at once, and that the matter involved theloss of bonds to a very large amount; and he dropped me at a convenientspot, whence my walk to the hospital was but a short one.
I saw my friend McCarthy, and bothered him very successfully for nearlyan hour, getting all the information I had expected, and more, during avery interesting walk through the great hospital.
"You get some idea in a place like this," said McCarthy, as we came atlast into the receiving room for accident cases, "you get some idea,Brett, of the size of this great London machine working about us. Youmight walk about the streets for a week and never see a seriousaccident, or even an accident at all, and yet, you see, here they comeall day long--a stream of people damaged or killed in the machine."
A decent workman was having a gashed hand dressed and strapped, and anavvy with bandages about his head was being led away by a friend.Nurses and dressers were waiting ready to take their orderly turns atthe incoming casualties, and as we looked a more serious case wasbrought in on an ambulance by two policemen. The patient was a ragged,disreputable-looking fellow of middle age, in grimy and tatteredclothes, whose head had been roughly bandaged by the policemen whobrought him. He had been knocked down and kicked on the head by abutcher's cart-horse, it seemed, in Moorgate Street, and he was quiteinsensible. A very short examination showed that the case was nothingtrivial, and McCarthy sent me to sit in his private room to wait lunch,while he gave the matter his personal attention.
When he returned he brought a small crumpled envelope in his hand. "Thatcase is put to bed," he said, "still insensible."
"Is it very bad?" I asked.
"Slight fracture of the occipital, and, of course, concussion of thebrain--probably contusion, too, I expect we shall find presently. Not soover serious for a healthy man, but I'm afraid he's an old soaker--thesort that crumple up at a touch. Nobody knows him, and there's nothingto identify him in the pockets--a few coppers, an old knife, and so on.So we can't send to tell his friends--unless we bring in your friendMartin Hewitt to trace 'em out, which would come too expensive.Besides," McCarthy added, dropping into a seat before his desk, "if he'sgot any friends they'll come, sooner or later, when they miss him. Thisis the only thing he'd got beside what's in the pockets--he'd been senton a message, probably."
My friend held up the crumpled envelope and took from it a small key."He'd got this envelope gripped tightly in his hand," he said, "butthere was no address on it, so we tore it open in the hope of findingone inside. But there was nothing there but the key. If you were a verypromising pupil of your friend Hewitt, I should expect you to take aglance at it and tell us the man's address at once, together with hisage, birthplace, when vaccinated, and the residence of his maternalgrandmother. But you're not, so I'll let you off."
McCarthy turned the key idly about in his hand and tried it on a lock inhis desk. "Stopped up," he remarked, withdrawing it, and peeping intothe barrel; "not dirt, either--stopped up with paper! What's that for?"
He took a pin to clear the barrel, and the paper came away quitereadily. It was a tight little roll, which the surgeon pulled out into asmall strip rather less than three inches long and about half-an-inchbroad.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "Look here! Here's a job for Martin Hewitt, afterall! Figures! What does that mean? And what an amazing place to putthem in! A key barrel! By Jove, Brett, this looks like one of yourfavourite adventures. Somebody sends a key in an envelope, and a row ofincomprehensible figures rolled up inside the key. Look at it!"
I took the key and the paper. The key was of a good sort; small,inscribed "Tripp's Patent" on the bow, and it evidently belonged to asuperior lever lock. The paper which had come from the barrel was verythin and tough--a kind I have seen used in typewriters. It had been verycarefully and closely rolled, and then pushed into the key so that itsnatural tendency to open out held it tightly within. Written upon itwith a fine pen appeared a series of very minute figures, thus:--
9, 8, 14, 4, 20, 18, 5, 9; 15, 19, 20, 0, 3, 9, 8, 5; 3, 23, 0, 0, 5, 13, 14, 19; 19, 20, 0, 0, 0, 0, 6, 1; 5, 20, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 22; 1, 15, 0, 0, 0, 0, 18, 5; 1, 8, 20, 11, 18, 9, 5, 20; 12, 5, 23, 14, 14, 1, 1, 20.
"Well," inquired McCarthy, "what do you make of it?"
"Not much as yet," I admitted. "But it's pretty certain it must be acryptogram or code-writing of some sort; and if that's the case, I_think_ I might back myself to read it--with a little time." For I wellremembered the case of the "Flitterbat Lancers," and the lesson incypher-reading which Hewitt then gave me.
"Come," my friend replied, much interested, "let's see how
you do it.Meantime we'll get on with our lunch."
I took a pencil and a spare sheet of paper, and I studied those figuresall through lunch and for some little time after. It soon became plainthat the problem was much more difficult than it looked, and I said so."At the first glance," I said, "it looked a fairly easy cypher; but as amatter of fact, I don't think it's easy at all. One assumes, of course,that the figures stand for letters, and on that assumption two or threepeculiarities are noticeable. First, the highest number written here is23, so that all the letters indicated, in whatever order they may come,are within the compass of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Next,the numbers most frequently repeated, if we except the noughts, are 5and 20, which occur seven times each. Now, the vowel most frequentlyoccurring in average English writing is e, and you will at once perceivethat e is number five in the alphabet, counting from the beginning.More, if we go on counting so, we shall find that 20 is _t_, which isone of the most frequently occurring consonants. This would seem to hintthat the cypher is of the very simplest description, consisting of themere substitution of figures for letters in the exact order of thealphabet. But what, then, of the noughts? What can they mean? Moreespecially when we consider that in three places there are actually fournoughts in succession; for, of course, no letter is repeated four timessuccessively in any English word, nor in any foreign word that I canimagine. But let us put down the letters in substitution for thefigures, on the supposition that the figures stand for letters in theiralphabetical order, leaving the noughts as they are. Then we get this."
I rapidly pencilled the letters on the spare paper, thus:--_i, h, n, d,t, r, e, i; o, s, t, 0, c, i, h, e; c, w, 0, 0, e, m, n, s; s, t, 0, 0,0, 0, f, a; e, t, 0, 0, 0, 0, c, v; a, o, 0, 0, 0, 0, r, e; a, h, t, k,r, i, e, t; l, e, w, n, n, a, a, t_.
"See there," I said. "Now, I can make nothing of that. When I come toexamine the comparative frequency of the different letters, I find themmuch as they might be expected to be in a sentence of normal English,and any change would destroy the proportion. _E_ and _t_ are the mostfrequent, and then come _a, n, i, r, s,_ and _c_. But as they standthey all mean nothing. It is possible that this may be one of thedifficult variable letter cyphers, which Hewitt might read, but I can't.But even then, if the values of the letters change as they would do,they would get out of their normal proportions of frequency; so that avariable letter cypher seems unlikely. And there is another oddity.Look, and you will see that, counting the noughts in, the letters go ingroups of eight, with a semi-colon at the end of each group. Now, it isimpossible that the message can be a sentence in which every word hasexactly eight letters--or, at least, I should think so. It can scarcelybe that the semi-colon itself means a letter--it would be singular forone letter to occur with such curious regularity as that. There is noother visible division between the words, nor any single one of theusual aids by which the reader of secret cypher is able to take a holdof his work. No, I'm afraid I must give it up; for the present, at anyrate. But I really think it is a thing that would vastly interestHewitt, if I might show it to him. I suppose I mustn't?"
"Well," McCarthy answered, "perhaps it isn't strictly according to rule,but I think I might venture to lend it to you till to-morrow, if thatwill do. Indeed, I think, on second thoughts, that I may considermyself quite justified, since it may lead to the man's identification,and it will be a sufficient answer to any inquiry to say that I haveshown it to Mr. Martin Hewitt for that purpose. But you'll be careful ofit, won't you? Do you want the key, too?"
"I think, if I may, I will take the key and the envelope all together.You can never tell what may or what may not help him, and the threethings may hang together, and perhaps explain each other in somemysterious way."
"Very good--here's the whole bag of tricks. It's a queer businessaltogether, and I must say I feel inquisitive; certainly, if Hewitt canget anything out of those figures I shall be mighty curious to know howhe does it. You'll come in again to-morrow, then?"
I promised I would, and walked off with the crumpled envelope, thelittle key, and the puzzling strip of figures. Since the lesson fromHewitt which I have alluded to, I had often amused myself withcryptogram reading, and I had never found a cypher message in anewspaper "agony-column" the meaning of which I could not get at with alittle trouble. But this was something altogether beyond me; and if Ihave any reader who prides himself on his ability to read secret cypher,I recommend him to try his skill on this one before he reads further.
The circumstances, too, seemed as puzzling as the writing itself. Why,if any person wished to send a note and a key in a closed envelope,should he take the trouble to pack the note inside the key? Why,especially when the note was already written in so baffling a cypher?Whither had this ragged messenger been going with the mysteriouspackage, and who had sent him, and why?
Guessing and musing, I reached home, and found that Hewitt had returnedbefore me. I made my way into his office, and came on him sitting at hisdesk with a large lens, attentively examining a broken brass padlock.
"Am I bothering you?" I asked. "Are you on the bond robbery, now?"
Martin Hewitt nodded, with a jerk of the hand toward the padlock. "It'sa tough job," he said, "and I shall shut myself up presently and thinkhard over it; just now I can't see my way into it at all. But what haveyou got there?"
"Never mind," I said, "you're too busy now. I came across something veryodd at the hospital, which I thought would interest you--that's all."
"Very well, let me see it. I haven't begun my bout of cogitation yet.Show me."
I put the envelope, the key and the paper on the table before him.Hewitt, with a glance of surprise, picked up the key and examined it."That's curious," he said, and straightway began fitting the key to thebroken padlock on the desk.
"Why, man alive!" he cried, with a sudden burst of excitement, "wheredid you get this? This--this is the article--the key--the very thing Iwant!" He sprang to his feet and stared in my face in sheer amazement."Heavens, Brett, the thing's almost supernatural! I've a broken leverpadlock here, and of all things in the world I wanted to find the onekey that fitted it; and you calmly walk in and clap down the very thingunder my nose! Where did you get it?"
I told him the tale of the man who had been knocked down in MoorgateStreet, and I explained exactly how the paper, the key and the envelopewere found in relation to each other, and why I had brought them.
"And when was the man knocked over?" Hewitt asked.
"Some time between one and two o'clock, I should say," I replied. "Theybrought him in well before two, at any rate."
Hewitt stared into vacancy for a moment, thinking hard. Then he said,"Brett, I believe you've saved my reputation--not that it could havesuffered much, perhaps, in such a desperate case. But as a fact I hadalready advised the calling in of the police, and should, perhaps, evenhave given up the part of the case still left me. But this ought to putme on the proper track. You see, every one of these patent lever locksdiffers in some slight degree from all the rest, and only its own keywill fit it; and here, by this amazing piece of good luck, is the onekey for this very lock, and the man who had it is detained in hospital.Come, I'm off to see him. Insensible, you say, when you left?"
"Yes," I answered, "and likely to be so for some time, McCarthy thinks;so you probably won't get much information out of him just yet. But thecypher----"
"I'll examine the cypher as I go along, I think. But I should like totake a look at the man, at any rate, even if he can't tell me anything.Will you give me a note to your friend McCarthy?"
"Of course," I answered, readily, and sat down to scribble the few linesnecessary to introduce Hewitt.
When I had finished, Hewitt, who had been examining the cryptogrammeanwhile, remarked: "This cypher is something out of the common,Brett. I certainly don't expect to be able to read it in thecab-journey--perhaps not in a week of study. The man who devised this isa man of abilities altogether beyond the average."
"I have had my best try at it," I said,
"but it beats me wholly. Ibrought it purely as a matter of curiosity, to show you; it was themerest chance that I brought the key as well."
"And if you hadn't I should probably have put the cypher aside until thecase was over, and so have missed the whole thing. Another lesson neverto despise what seem like trifles. If you have studied the cypher youhave no doubt observed--but there, we'll talk that over afterwards, andthe whole case if you like. I'll go now, and I'll tell you all about thebusiness when time permits."
The Red Triangle Page 7