by Marvin Kaye
Now I understood her emotion at my return home. “Your tale is certainly extraordinary,” I declared, greatly moved by her words. “And I am most eager to see the letter you have striven so hard to deliver to me.”
She lifted from the box a folded paper. It bore only my name, written in a bold black script I had not seen for so many years. I broke the seal and read William Legrand’s letter. I did not know what to expect. Indeed, I had not thought ever to have received any message from him again. When I had finished, my opinion was that his letter was second only to Captain Kidd’s cryptic parchment as the most memorable document I had ever clapped eyes upon:
To my old companion, a most warm salutation.
So my kinswoman has found you. My congratulations on an auspicious start, though I did not doubt that such sharp wits would triumph. I am profoundly sorry that an old rift has put us apart for so long. But, by your own admission, it was your folly that brought it about. Now I grant you an opportunity to annul that old wrong. To borrow words from a scribbling blackguard, I punish you in my own way by a bit of mystification.
Long ago—with your aid—I found Kidd’s booty, but now my spirit has a loathing for that sinful hoard. At first I had thought simply to consign it back to oblivion. But as my kinfolk clamour for it I confront my family and you with your own hunt for gold. For it is now hid away again and your task is to bring it to light.
With what is in your hands you can find what was my portion of Kidd’s loot. Call to mind again our days on Sullivan’s Island and what I taught you in my old hut. Finally, I grant you this nominal hint: what is sought you will find through what is not found.
Good hunting.
There followed Legrand’s sprawling signature.
* * * *
Wordlessly I passed the paper to Madeline de Freville who scanned it closely. When she looked up her face was clouded with disappointment.
“But this does not help us! There is no indication of where my uncle’s wealth might be.”
“Seemingly not,” I agreed. “At least not directly. Tell me, do you recognise the writing as that of your uncle?”
“Oh yes,” she nodded. “Why do you ask?”
“Well,” said I. “In the tone of this letter I seem to hear once more your uncle’s sardonic humour. Yet the style seems awkward in a way I cannot precisely fathom. Perhaps it reflects his state of mind at the time of writing.”
Miss de Freville turned to me imploringly.
“What are we to do?” she cried. “If the bequest is not claimed within the next few weeks it will be beyond reach. To have endured so much—the death of my uncle, his extraordinary will, my search for you—and still to be no nearer saving my family!”
She had every reason to be distraught, and the strain I had earlier perceived was close to overwhelming her.
“My dear Madeline,” I said. “All is not lost. This letter purports to offer pointers to where your fortune is to be found, clews which I am charged to solve. I recollect that once before I received from your uncle a note that gave me great uneasiness. It proved to be the direct precursor to the adventure that changed my life. Therefore, let me consider this document further. We shall speak again in the morning. In the meantime I earnestly entreat you to get some rest.”
At length Miss de Freville consented to retire and, alone in the library, I reviewed the story she had told me. Fantastic certainly, but not out of character for William Legrand as I had known him. While it was shocking that he should torment those closest to him, more puzzling perhaps was why he should involve me in what appeared to be a family matter. Had it been in his mind simply to cause me discomfiture by reviving our old quarrel? Or had he felt some impulse to re-establish contact between us but, constrained by his perverse and wayward nature, been compelled to resort to this bizarre indirect course? In any event, I concluded, everything I now possessed flowed from Legrand’s recruitment of me in his astonishing expedition into the Carolina wilderness years ago. I had no choice now but to do whatever I could to comply with his wishes.
I poured a glass of brandy and looked again at the letter. “With what is in your hand you can find what was my portion of Kidd’s loot.” That at least was clear enough. The letter was itself the key. It must contain some covert message. However, while Legrand had delighted in such contrivances he had been well aware of my own lack of expertise in such matters.
Wait, now! I was not entirely ignorant. I knew a little. I knew what Legrand had told me himself! Once more I surveyed the cryptic document. “I bid you call to mind again our days on Sullivan’s Island and what I taught you in my old hut.” I raised my eyes to Legrand’s portrait. “But you told so much, my friend,” I murmured. “And it was long ago.”
There was no record of what had been said in Legrand’s secluded cabin on his sandy refuge, only my fading memories. The painted gaze of the picture’s deep-set eyes seemed to bore into my skull. Wait again! There was a record of a sort. And Legrand himself referred to it. “Words from a scribbling blackguard.” Could it be that he was deliberately calling to my attention that tale by Edgar Poe, the cause of our separation?
And I had a copy. When at first the journal had come into my possession I had crumpled it in bitter fury. I had not looked at it since heaven knew when but I knew where it lay. It was the work of moments to reclaim it from the bottom drawer of the secretaire. I spread the brittle pages with care upon the leather surface of my desk.
The paper was yellowing but the print was perfectly legible. The Dollar Newspaper No 23 Vol 1, Philadelphia, Wednesday Morning, June 28 1843. A Family Periodical—Devoted to Literature, Domestic and Foreign News, Agriculture, Education, Finance, Amusements &c—Independent On All Subjects.
The front page, seven columns wide, was almost entirely taken up by Poe’s text. It was claimed as an original story which—and this I remembered had been particularly galling to me—had been awarded a prize. Doubts assailed me. Could this wretched stuff really unlock the mystery? But what alternative did I have? I read the story from beginning to end.
My emotions were mixed. The faults in the story were many—the nonsense about the non-existent golden insect; the transformation of Legrand’s devoted manservant into a buffoon; the vastly exaggerated scale and value of what we found. Nevertheless, Poe had captured the extraordinary atmosphere surrounding those far-off events—the bleakness of Sullivan’s Island with the constant surf and pervading scent of myrtle, and the wildness of the craggy wooded Carolina tableland. He had caught, too, Legrand’s nervous excitement and my own bafflement during our journey, our wearying dig by lantern-light, and the thrill and wonder of the eventual discovery. More relevant to my present purpose, with great clarity Poe had set out the steps of Legrand’s decipherment of Kidd’s message, and I hoped my reviving memories would help to stimulate my wits to benefit from these details.
I paused twice in my reading. First at these words: “… it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.” The sentence may have been Poe’s own—at this remove I could not remember—but the sentiment had certainly been shared by my friend. Could I now live up to this daunting challenge? Secondly, close to the end of Poe’s story, I found the source of Legrand’s quotation from it: “ I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification.” That Legrand should borrow this phrase from Poe’s story endorsed my intuition that it must hold the key to the puzzle he had set for me.
For a second time I read the story, concentrating my attention on the latter part of the narrative, Legrand’s unravelling of Kidd’s conundrum, for this was the closest I could get to “what I taught you in my old hut.” From his first recognition of the death’s-head drawing through to the interpretation of the idiosyncratic directions to the precise location of the pirate’s buried chest, each step of Legrand’s reasoni
ng was there.
A little way into Poe’s version I was struck by these words: “You are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirits of nitre, gives a red. These colours disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon the re-application of heat.”
This was surely the answer! It was, after all, by this means that Legrand had first revealed the writing on Kidd’s parchment. He must have used his arcane knowledge to insert some invisible message between the lines of his script to me. True, I could discern no trace of additional penwork but I was convinced I had penetrated Legrand’s “mystification.”
I pressed his letter to the warm lamp, eagerly awaiting the emergence of the secret text, but nothing happened. I tried again with a candle, playing the flame gently over each surface of the document. But no writing appeared, whether tinted green or red or anything else. I was on a false trail.
For a third time I perused the story. On this reading, some halfway into the account of Legrand’s explanation, a statement brought me up short. I turned once more to my old friend’s letter and re-examined it with great care. I thrilled to find my suspicion confirmed. Here was something most extraordinary, even, according to Legrand’s own dictum, virtually impossible. From one mystery I was being led to another.
* * * *
Next morning I descended early to the breakfast room where I partook gratefully of hot fresh coffee. Madeline de Freville soon joined me.
“I barely slept,” she declared. “Please tell me, do you have any news?”
“Since you must be fatigued,” I replied “ you should first break your fast.” I indicated a covered plate set at her place.
“Oh, I cannot eat,” said she. “I am too anxious.”
“I insist,” I said. “Indeed, my dear, I shall tell you nothing until you have sampled what has been put out for you.”
Seeing that I was resolute on this point she sat down. Her face was a study as she raised the silver cover to reveal a long envelope upon the plate. The blood drained from her cheeks. “What is this?” she whispered.
“Since it is addressed to you,” I answered. “I have not opened it. But my surmise is that it contains the whereabouts of your uncle’s bequest to you.”
I was unprepared for her reaction to my statement. Her eyelids fluttered and to my great alarm she fell back in her chair in a swoon. Cursing myself I sprang to her side. I chafed her wrists and to my considerable relief her eyes soon opened.
“That was unpardonable of me, Madeline,” I said contritely. “I cannot apologise enough for such a prank.”
She smiled weakly. “I assure you I am quite recovered. It is just that I have had so many shocks in so brief a time.”
While I poured her coffee she reached for the envelope and slit it open with trembling fingers. She studied the documents she found within then held them out to me. In brief, they were addressed by William Legrand to lawyers in Richmond and Washington instructing them to hand over to Madeline de Freville or her accredited representative the sealed boxes he had deposited with them on specified occasions. Madeline would be able to restore her family’s fortunes.
“I do not understand,” she cried. “Where have these papers come from?”
I produced her uncle’s box and the letter she had given me the previous evening.
“From these,” I said.
She shook her head in wonderment. “You must explain.”
Seeing that she was almost overcome with impatience for a solution to this most perplexing riddle, I, emulating Legrand himself years earlier, entered into a full detail of the circumstances connected with it.
“Very well. Your uncle set us each a task. Yours was to find me. Mine was to uncover the route to his legacy. Your uncle wrote that it could be found “with what is in your hands.” All we held were the letter itself and the box that had contained it. Accordingly, my conviction grew that these two items somehow held the answer.”
She nodded eagerly. “Go on.”
“I followed Legrand’s guidance. His advice in his letter to me, you recall, is to remember what he taught me on Sullivan’s Island. He also subtly reminded me that if my memory was defective I could find assistance in Edgar Poe’s account of our adventure.” I showed Madeline the significant words in her uncle’s letter and produced my copy of The Dollar Newspaper.
“One thing Legrand had explained to me after we found the treasure was that the key to Kidd’s cipher lay in the frequency with which the letters of the alphabet normally appear in an English text. Here is how Mr Poe expressed it:
“Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is E. Afterwards the succession runs thus: a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w b k q x z. E predominates so remarkably that an individual sentence of any length is rarely seen in which it is not the prevailing character.
“Look again at that singular message of your uncle’s. Except in the signature it does not contain the letter E at all! That is the reason for the stilted style. He was constrained by the limitations of not employing any word with E in it. For example, he does not refer to you by name or describe you as his niece. It is also why when he quoted from Poe’s story he did not do so exactly—he was obliged to omit the words that include E.”
Madeline scrutinised the letter anew and satisfied herself of the veracity of my statements.
“I am vexed that I did not observe this for myself,” said she. “But I remain at a loss to imagine what it could mean.”
I resumed my explanation. “Your uncle went on to say that I should seek what is not found. Since what we cannot find in his note is the letter E then that is what I had to look for. At length I realised that staring me in the face was the capital E among the brass letters here on the lid of his box. These are the letters of his name and thus my hypothesis is confirmed when I recall Legrand described his hint as “nominal,” meaning on this occasion literally pertaining to a name—his name.
“Once my attention had been directed to the box the obvious inference to be drawn was that it had a concealed compartment access to which is controlled by the brass E. You see how the letters stand proud. My first thought was pressing down on the E was required. But this yielded no result and on reflection it was hardly a reasonable theory since any chance knock might inadvertently operate the mechanism. Nor could I shift it in any sidewise direction. The only possibility remaining was that the letter must be pulled up further from the surface. Now, apply these small pincers and attempt to draw the E outwards.”
As she did so there was a click as the metal rose about an eighth of an inch and a muffled clatter sounded within. She raised the lid to reveal that its inner surface had swung down to disclose a shallow padded recess. Marvelling at the intricate mechanism she played with the box like a fascinated child, closing and releasing the artfully fashioned hiding place.
“How ingenious of Uncle William to devise such a puzzle.” She looked up. “And how clever of you to solve it.”
I demurred. “No, my dear. I should have seen the answer far quicker than I did. Your uncle’s “nominal” hint pointed clearly to it. And consider: your family come from Huguenot stock. In French “le grand” may mean “the great” as, for example, “Alexandre le Grand” denotes “Alexander the Great.” But if I set it out like this, what could you have?”
She studied what I had written. “‘L’E grand.’ Why, that might possibly be taken to mean capital E!”
I nodded. “E is not only within your uncle’s name, it is the one letter that could be signified by it. In every way, you see, the key to your fortune lay in a letter from Legrand.”
Madeline de Frevill
e has left now, gone on the concluding stages of her quest. Though her stay was brief the house sees strangely empty without her. I hope she will return one day as she promised to do when she took her leave.
Again she had thanked most warmly for unravelling her uncle’s conundrum.
“I wish it were possible to thank Edgar Poe also,” she added. “For was it not his story that led you to the solution.”
“Indeed it was,” I acknowledged. “They say he had a strong sense of irony. It is certainly ironic that the man who caused the rift between your uncle and me should have brought us together, albeit in so strange a manner. Perhaps somewhere his shade has observed our little mystery with approval.”
Madeline will soon have her inheritance. But I have not gone unrewarded. For I had not told her that there had been another enclosure in that ingenious box. It lies before me now, a small slip on which are set down above her uncle’s distinctive signature, seven short lines of curious symbols. These I recognised at once as the characters devised by Captain Kidd for his cipher. For convenience I transcribe them below using the signs employed by Edgar Poe for our nineteenth-century printing press as follows:
9:†85(1(68*†
61:‡?(8:8))?(¶8:;48)806*8);48*:‡?
45¶8)‡0¶8†9:9:);616-5;6‡*
9:485(;68);-‡*3(5;?05;6‡*)
6†8-05(8;45;‡?(†6118(8*-8)5(8
(8)‡0¶8†5*†5006)1‡(36¶8*
1‡;4805);;6983‡‡†2:8
Although this new enigma had been unexpected I was confident that I could unravel it. And, indeed, following Legrand’s methodology, it was the work of minutes for me to reveal his final message:
My dear friend
If your eyes survey these lines then you have solved my mystification. My heartiest congratulations. I declare that our differences are resolved and all is forgiven. For the last time,