Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

JOHNSON: “To read yonder cypher aright; for sure ’tis the key to tell us, whither Fanny’s brilliant has flown.”

  BOSWELL: “Why, sir, the words are plain; ’tis but the interpretation that eludes us.”

  JOHNSON: “NO, sir, the words are not plain; the words are somehow to be transposed. Now, sir, could I but find a French dictionary printed in two columns, ’twould go hard but we should find, in the second column, the words we seek, jig-by-jole with the meaningless words we now have.”

  Upon this I joined the search; but in twenty-four hours we advanced no further in reading the cypher.

  After dinner the next day I came upon Dr. Johnson conning it over by the fire, muttering the words to himself:

  “Te halle l’eau oui l’aune ire te garde haine …”

  I was scarce attending. An idea had occurred to me.

  “Yonder hollow willow near the garden—” I began.

  “How?” cried Dr. Johnson, starting up.

  “The hollow willow near the garden—”

  “You have it, Bozzy!” cried my companion in excitement. “Te hollow willown ear te gard en.”

  So strange was the accent and inflection with which my revered friend repeated my words, that I could only stare.

  “Read it!” he cried. “Read it aloud!”

  He thrust the decyphered message under my nose. I read it off with my best French accent, acquired in my elegant grand tour.

  “Can’t you see,” cried Dr. Johnson, “when you speak it, the words are English—the hollow willow near the garden! ’Twill be the miscreants’ post-office, ’tis clear to me now. See, they had cause to distrust the maid who was go-between.”

  He pointed to the last words: aille frent salle lit, I fear Sally.

  “How did you do it, Bozzy?”

  “I, sir? Trust me, ’twas the furthest thing from my mind. It had come into my head, perhaps by the alder was meant yonder hollow willow—”

  “No, sir,” returned Dr. Johnson, “there came into your mind, a picture of the hollow willow, because you heard, without knowing that you heard, the words I uttered; and when you spoke the words, I recognized that you were repeating mine. But come, sir; let us investigate this thieves’ post-office.”

  He fairly ran out at the door.

  Coming suddenly about the corner of the house, we surprized the sailorman standing under the wall of the kitchen garden; and I could have sworn that I caught the swirl of a skirt where the wall turned. As we came up, the one-legged man finished knotting something into his neckerchief, and made off with astonishing speed. He stumped his way across the common in the direction of the ale-house on the other side.

  “Shall we not catch him up?” I cried.

  “In good time,” replied my friend. “First we must call for the post.”

  Accordingly we lingered to sound the hollow tree. Save for some grubs and beetles, and a quantity of feathers, it was empty.

  Our fortune was better when we passed under the wall where the one-legged man had stood. There we picked up the second of the strange messages that came under our eyes at Streatham.

  ’Twas a strip of paper, scarce an inch wide and some twelve inches long. Along both its edges someone had made chicken-tracks with a pen. One end was roughly torn away. Search as we might, the missing fragment was not to be found. At last we repaired to the house.

  In the library we encountered Mrs. Thrale, in philosophical discourse with Dr. Thomas. She looked at the strange piece of paper, and gave a screech.

  “’Tis Ogam!”

  “Ogam?”

  “I know it well, ’tis the antique writing of the Irish,” said Dr. Thomas, scanning the page with interest. “You must understand, sir, that the untutored savages of Ireland, knowing nothing of pen and paper, had perforce to contrive some way of incising letters upon wood, stone, horn, and the like. They hit upon a system of scratching lines on the edges of these objects, as perpendicular or oblique, and grouped to represent the various letters. Thus it was said of many a deceased Irish hero, ‘They dug the grave and they raised the stone and they carved his name in Ogam.’”

  “Why, this is a learned jewel-thief. Pray, Dr. Thomas, translate these triangles and dashes.”

  “Alack, sir, I cannot do it extempore. I must first have my books.”

  “You, ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson to the volatile matron, “you are mighty familiar with Ogam, pray read it off for us.”

  “O Lud, sir, not I, I am none of your antiquarians.”

  “Why, so. Then I must extract the meaning for myself. ’Twill be no harder than the bi-literal cypher.”

  But try as he would, the strange marks on the edges of the paper would not yield to the theory of the printer’s case. At last he leaned back.

  “Let us begin afresh.”

  “No, sir,” I begged, “let us have our tea. I am no Spartan boy, to labour while a fox is gnawing my vitals.”

  “Spartan!” cried my companion. “You have earned your tea, Mr. Boswell. Do but answer me one question first, we may begin afresh and I think proceed in the right direction. Pray, what shape is this paper?”

  “Sir, long and flat.”

  Dr. Johnson dangled it by one end.

  “No, sir, ’tis helical.”

  Indeed as it dangled it coiled itself into a helix.

  “Let us restore it to its proper shape,” said Dr. Johnson. “Pray, Mr. Boswell, fetch me the besom.”

  I looked a question, but my sagacious friend said nothing further, and I went in search of the pretty housemaid and her besoms. After an interlude of knight-errantry, which taught me somewhat about women, but naught at all about our puzzle, I returned with such brooms as the house afforded.

  I found my learned friend surrounded by stocks and staves, thick and thin, long and short. Around them, one after one, he was coiling the strange paper as a friseur curls hair about his finger. The results left him but ill satisfied.

  “Could I but recall it to mind,” he muttered, “there is a thing missing, that is germane to this puzzle; but now ’tis gone from my memory.”

  “Why, sir,” said I, “we are to question the one-legged sailorman.”

  “Well remembered, Mr. Boswell.” He stuffed the coiled paper into his capacious pocket. “Come, let us be off.”

  I bade farewell to my tea as I followed him. We found the publick room of the Three Crowns nigh empty, its only occupants being the idling tapster, and two men drinking in the ingle; but one of them was the man we sought. His companion was a likely-looking youth with a high-bridged nose, who pledged him in nappy ale.

  “Good day, friend,” Dr. Johnson accosted the maimed sailor.

  The fresh-faced youth rose quietly, pulled a respectful forelock, and made off. Dr. Johnson looked at the sailorman’s tankard, now empty, and signed to the tapster.

  Not that the sailorman’s tongue wanted loosening. Previous potations had already done the business. He was all too ready to spin his yarn.

  “Nine sea fights I come through,” he cried, “and lost my peg in the end, mort dieu, in Quiberon Bay.”

  He dealt his wooden member a mighty thump with the again emptied tankard. My worthy friend, ever ready to relieve the lot of the unfortunate, once more signed to the tapster. As the can was filling, he animadverted upon the wretchedness of a sea-life.

  “I marvel, that any man will be a sailor, who has contrivance enough to get himself into a gaol; for being in a ship is being in gaol with the chance of being drowned.”

  “Ah,” said the peg-legged sailor mournfully, and buried his nose in his pot.

  My friend pressed upon him a gratuity in recognition of his perils passed. The sailorman accepted of it with protestations of gratitude.

  “’Tis nothing, sir,” replied my kindly friend. “Do you but gratify my whim, I’ll call myself overpaid.”

  “How, whim?” says the sailorman.

  “I’ve a whim,” says Johnson, “to borrow your wooden leg for a matter of half an hour.”

/>   I stared with open mouth, but the sailorman shewed no flicker of surprize. He unstrapped the contrivance immediately and put it in my friend’s hand.

  “Pray, Bozzy,” said Dr. Johnson, “see that our worthy friend here lacks for nothing until I come again.”

  Before I could put a question he had withdrawn, the unstrapped peg in his hand. I was left to the company of the tapster and the loquacious sailorman. He insisted upon telling me how he had made his peg himself, and how it had often been admired for its artistry.

  “Here’s this young fellow now,” he rattled on, gesturing vaguely across the common, “he thinks it a rarity, and but this morning he had it of me for an hour at a time.”

  This statement but doubled my puzzlement. What in the world could a two-legged man want with a peg-leg? Surely my learned friend was not intending to personate the one-legged sailorman? Had the high-nosed youth done so? I tried to recall the glimpse I had had of the one-legged beggar by the kitchen garden.

  When Dr. Johnson returned, he returned in his own guise. We left the sailorman, by this time snorting with vinous stertorousness in the corner of the ingle, and walked across the common back to the house.

  “Pray, sir, what success? Did you find the diamond?”

  “Find the diamond? No, sir, I did not find the diamond; but I know where it is, and I know how to lay the thief by the heels.”

  He dug from his pocket the strange strip of paper. Between the lines of Ogam he had penned the message:

  “£140 tonight 12 a clock ye oak nighest ye 3 crowns”

  “What shall this signify?”

  “Nay, Bozzy, ’tis plain. But here comes our friend Dr. Thomas. Pray, not a word more.”

  I was seething with curiosity as we supped at the Thrales’ sumptuous table. The talk turned, willy-nilly, to the strange way in which the Christmas gem had been spirited from the library. Dr. Johnson admitted himself baffled. He was in a depression from which he could not be wooed even by the blandishments of the spaniel Belle, who, spurred by hunger, begged eagerly for scraps; until a new larceny, committed against himself, restored him to good humour.

  It must be said that Dr. Sam: Johnson is scarce a dainty feeder. He is a valiant trencherman, and stows away vast quantities of his favourite comestibles.

  “Ma’am,” says he on this occasion, unbuttoning the middle button of his capacious vest and picking a capon wing in his fingers, “ma’am, where the dinner is ill gotten, the family is somehow grossly wrong; there is poverty, ma’am, or there is stupidity; for a man seldom thinks more earnestly of anything than of his dinner, and if he cannot get that well done, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other things.”

  “Oh,” says Mrs. Thrale, not knowing how to take this, but willing to turn it against him, “did you never, then, sir, huff your wife about your meat?”

  “Why, yes,” replied he, taking a second wing in his fingers, “but then she huffed me worse, for she said one day as I was going to say grace: ‘Nay, hold,’ says she, ‘and do not make a farce of thanking GOD for a dinner which you will presently protest to be uneatable.’”

  At this there was a general laugh; under cover of which Belle the spaniel, tempted beyond endurance, reared boldly up, snatched the capon wing from the philosopher’s fingers, and ran out of door with it.

  “Fie, Belle,” cried out Mrs. Thrale, “you used to be upon honour!”

  “Ay,” replied the Doctor with his great Olympian laugh, “but here has been a bad influence lately!”

  Not another word would he say, but devoted himself to a mighty veal pye with plums and sugar.

  Yet when we rose from the table, he sought out the guilty Belle and plied her with dainties.

  “’Tis a worthy canine, Bozzy,” cried he to me, “for she has told me, not only how Miss Fanny’s diamond was spirited from the library, but by whose contrivance. Between the good Belle, and yonder strange paper of Ogam, I now know where the conspirators shall meet, and when, and who they are, and what their object is; to prevent which, I shall make one at the rendezvous. Do you but join me, you shall see all made plain.”

  I was eager to do so. Muffled in greatcoats, we crossed the common and took up our station under the great oak a stone’s cast from the Three Crowns. As the wind rattled the dry branches over our heads, I was minded of other vigils we had shared and other miscreants we had laid by the heels.

  The darkness was profound. Across the common we saw window after window darken in the Thrale house as the occupants blew out their candles. Then I became aware of motion in the darkness, and towards us, stealing along the path, came a muffled shape, utterly without noise, flitting along like a creature of the night. For a moment we stood rigid, not breathing; then Dr. Johnson stepped forward and collared the advancing figure. It gave a startled squeak, and was silent. Dr. Johnson pulled the hat from the brow. In the starlight I stared at the face thus revealed.

  ’Twas Dr. Thomas! I beheld with horror his awful confusion at being detected.

  “Alas, Dr. Johnson, ’tis I alone am guilty! But pray, how have you smoaked me?”

  “Ogam,” says Dr. Johnson, looking sourly upon the clergyman. “Trust me, you knew that was no Ogam. Ogam is incised on both edges of a right angle, not scribbled on paper.”

  “That is so, sir. You have been too sharp for me. I will confess all. ’Tis my fatal passion for Welsh antiquities. I have pawned the very vestments of my office to procure them. I took Miss Fanny’s gem, I confess it, and flung it from the window wrapped in a leaf from my pocket book.”

  “I see it!” I exclaimed. “’Twas thrown at hazard, and the one-legged sailor carried it thence hid in the hollow of his wooden leg.”

  “Nothing of the kind,” said Dr. Johnson. “The role of the sailor and his wooden leg was quite other. But say, how much had you for the gem?”

  “Two hundred pounds,” replied the fallen clergyman. “Two hundred pounds! The price of my honour! Alas,” he cried in a transport of remorse, falling on his knees and holding up his hands to Heaven, “had I, when I stood at those crossroads, gone another way, had I but heeded the voice within me which cried, Turn aside, turn aside, lest thou fall into the hands of thine enemy, had I but gone swiftly upon the strait way, then in truth we might at the grave’s end have met together in the hereafter …”

  Dr. Johnson heard this piteous avowal unmoved, but not so I. ’Twas a solemn sight to see the unfortunate man wring his hands and cry out with anguish, turning up his eyes to Heaven. Suddenly, however, his gaze fixed eagerly upon the darkened inn. In the same instant Dr. Johnson whirled, and ran, swiftly for all his bulk, to where a light coach was just getting in motion. I heard the harness jingle, and then the startled snort of a horse as my fearless friend seized the near animal by the bit and forced it to a halt.

  “So,” he cried angrily, “you’ll meet them hereafter, at Gravesend! Never a whit. Come down, sir! Come down, miss!”

  For a moment there was only the jingle of harness as the nervous horses pranced. Then a figure stepped to earth, a tall young man muffled to his high-bridged nose in a heavy cape, and lifted down after him the cloaked figure of—

  Miss Fanny Plumbe!

  “Pray, Dr. Johnson,” she said statelily, “why do you hinder us? What wrong have we done?”

  “You have diddled your father, and all of us,” replied my companion sternly, “sending Bacon’s cypher to Jack Rice here with those letters you gave up so meekly—once you had the diamond that you might turn into journey-money.”

  The chit’s composure was wonderful.

  “Why, sir,” she owned with a smile, “you gave me a turn when you decyphered my last message by the hand of Sally; whom indeed, Mr. Boswell—” turning to me—“I no longer dared trust when she became so great with you. But confess, Dr. Johnson, my French held you off, after all, until I was able to convey a new cypher to Jack by the hand of the sailorman.”

  “And Dr. Thomas was your accomplice in making away with the gem?” I cried in
uncontrollable curiosity.

  “Be not so gullible, Bozzy,” cried my companion impatiently, “trust me, Dr. Thomas knew never a word of the matter until Miss here opened her mind to him in their close conference on Christmas Day. ’Twas the hussy herself that conveyed her diamond to her lover, that he might turn it into money for their elopement.”

  “Nay, how? For she never left the room.”

  “But Belle did—and carried with her the diamond, affixed to her riband by the hand of Miss Fanny. Out flies the dog to greet her friend the neighbour lad in his mummer’s disguise; who apprised of the scheam, caresses his canine friend and removes the brilliant in the same operation.”

  “That is so, sir,” said Jack Rice.

  “Surely,” said Miss Fanny, “surely I did no wrong, to convey my jewel to the man I mean to wed.”

  “That’s as may be,” said my friend, unrelenting, “but now, miss, do you accompany us back to the house, for there’ll be no elopement this night.”

  “Pray, sir,” said Dr. Thomas earnestly, “be mollified. The lad is a good lad, and will have a competence when once he turns twenty-one; and I have engaged to make one in their flight and bless their union, which the surly Alderman opposes out of mere ill nature.”

  “To this I cannot be a party,” began my authoritarian friend. The little clergyman was fumbling in his pocket. He brought forth, not a weapon, but a prayer-book.

  “Do you, John, take this woman …” he began suddenly.

  “Hold, hold!” cried Johnson.

  “I do,” cried the lad in a ringing voice.

  “And do you, Fanny …”

  Jack Rice pulled a seal-ring from his finger.

  “I do.”

  “Then I pronounce you man and wife.”

  The ring hung loose on the girl’s slim finger, but it stayed on.

  “You are witnesses, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Boswell,” cried the little clergyman. “Will not you salute the bride?”

  Dr. Johnson lifted his great shoulders in concession.

  “I wish you joy, my dear.”

  As the coach with its strangely-assorted trio of honeymooners receded in the distance:

  “Pray, Dr. Johnson,” said I, “resolve me one thing. If the strange message was not Ogam, what was it?”