The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  “Well, what do you make of it?”

  “Not very much as yet,” replied Crewe, putting down the magnifying glass, “but there are one or two points of interest. In the first place, the paper has been cut with a pair of scissors from the fly leaf or title page of an old book—an expensive book of its period, of the late fifties, I should say—but the writing is of much later date. These facts are obvious, and do not help us much towards a solution of the contents.”

  “They may be obvious to you, but they are not so obvious to me,” said Marsland, taking the paper into his hands and looking at it thoughtfully. “I suppose you judge the sheet to have been taken from an old book, because it is yellow with age, but why an expensive one of the fifties? And how do you know it was cut out with a pair of scissors? Again, how do you know the writing is of a much later date than the book? The ink is completely faded.”

  “The smooth yellow, and glossy surface of the blank side of the paper indicates conclusively that it is the title-page or fly-leaf of a good class book of the fifties. You will not find that peculiar yellow colour—which is not the effect of age—and velvety ‘feel’ in books of a much later date. The unevenness of the cut proves that the sheet was taken from the book with a pair of scissors; haven’t you ever noticed that nobody—except, perhaps, a paperhanger—can cut straight with a pair of scissors? If it had been cut with a knife it might have slanted a little, but it would have been straighter: a knife cut is always straighter than the wavering cut of a pair of scissors directed by the eye. The faded ink proves nothing: inferior ink such as is sold in small village shops—from where the ink at Cliff Farm was probably procured—will fade in a few days; it is only the best ink that retains its original colour for any length of time. But the character of this writing indicates to me that it was written with a particular kind of fine nib, which was not invented till after 1900.”

  “Can you make anything of the figures and letters on the paper?” asked Marsland.

  “That is where our difficulties commence. We have to ascertain the connection between the figures and the letters and the circle; to find out whether the former explain the latter or whether the circle explains the figures and the letters. If the figures and the letters are a cryptogram we ought to be able to find the solution without much difficulty. The circle, however, is a remarkable device, and it is difficult to fathom its meaning without something to guide us. I thought at first it might have been capable of some masonic interpretation, but now I doubt it. The most likely assumption is that the circle and the lines in some way indicate the hiding place of the money.”

  “By geometry?” suggested Marsland, closely examining the circle on the paper.

  “I think not. It is hardly likely that the old farmer who concealed the treasure would be versed in the science of geometry. He may have drawn the circle to indicate a certain place where he had concealed the money, and added the two lines to indicate the radius or point where it was to be found.”

  “Local gossip declares that the old man hid his money somewhere in the landing-place or old boat-house, where it is covered at high tide, and that his ghost watches over it at low tide to prevent anybody stealing it. There are stories of treasure-seekers having been chased along the sands almost to Ashlingsea by the old man’s ghost. The villagers give the landing place and that part of the coast road a wide berth at night in consequence.”

  “I do not think the old man hid his money in the boat-house or landing-place,” said Crewe. “He would have known that the action of weather and tide would make such a hiding-place unsafe. He would look for a safer place. He has almost certainly hidden it somewhere about the farm, and the circle and the letters and figures will tell us where, when we discover their meaning.”

  Crewe opened his notebook and commenced to make some calculations in figures. Marsland meantime occupied himself by looking at the circle through the magnifying glass, and in counting the figures in its circumference.

  “Perhaps these marks in the circle represent paces,” he said, struck by a new thought. “Suppose, for instance, that the old man measured off a piece of ground with a tape measure fastened to some point which would represent the pivot or centre of his circle. He may have fastened the end of his tape measure to the well pump in the bricked yard, and walked round in a circle holding the other end in his hand, sticking in pegs as he walked. The top figure inside the circle—150—may mean that the circle is 150 yards in circumference. Within the radius of the circle he buries his money, makes a drawing of the circle of figures and the remaining figures to indicate its whereabouts, and then removes the cord and pegs.”

  “Ingenious, but unlikely,” commented Crewe. “For one thing, such a plan would need compass points to enable the searchers to take their bearings.”

  “North or south may be indicated in the cryptogram—when we discover it,” said Marsland.

  “No, no,” said Crewe, shaking his head. “Your idea is based on treasure-hunt charts in novels. My experience is that in real life people do not go to much trouble in hiding money or valuables; they put them away in some chance place or odd receptacle which happens to appeal to them, and where I think they really have a better chance of remaining undiscovered for years than in a more elaborately contrived hiding-place. In the Farndon missing will case, involving one of the largest estates in England, the will was found after the lapse of ten years concealed in the back of a book, where the deceased Lord Farndon had placed it in his latter days, when he imagined himself surrounded by thieves. If you open a large book about the middle it discloses an aperture at the back sufficiently large to conceal a paper, and when the book is closed there will be no sign. Lord Farndon concealed his will in one of the estate ledgers which was in constant use for some time after his death, and yet the will would probably have never been discovered if a mouse had not eaten through the leather back long afterwards, disclosing the hidden parchment.

  “In the case of the stolen Trimarden diamond, the thief—a servant in the house—escaped detection by hiding the jewel in a common wooden match-box in a candlestick in his bedroom. The police searched his room, but never thought of looking into the matchbox, and he got away with the diamond. If he had not bragged of the trick in a tavern he would never have been caught. As regards hidden money, people of miserly proclivities who are frightened to put their money into banks prefer a hiding-place under cover to one in the open. A hiding-place in the house seems safer to them, and, moreover, it enables them to look at their money whenever they feel inclined. I knew one miser who used to hide sovereigns in a bar of yellow soap—thrusting them in till they were hidden from view. The treasure of Cliff Farm is hidden somewhere in the farm, and the circle and the cryptogram are the keys. The explanation is hidden in the cryptogram, and I have no doubt that there is a very simple explanation of the circle—when we discover the cryptogram.”

  “I remember as a boy at school that we used to have endless fun solving cryptograms which appeared in a boys’ magazine,” said Marsland. “Figures were substituted for letters, and the interpretation of the cryptogram depended largely on hitting on the book from which the figures had been taken. The system was to put down the number of the page, then the number of the line, then the number of letters in the line which would form a word. The key book happened to be a bound volume of the magazine in question: I guessed that, and won a prize. Another form of cryptogram for competition in the same journal was a transposition of the letters of the alphabet. But that was easily guessed, from the repeated occurrence of certain letters used to represent the vowels.”

  “I remember those boyish devices,” said Crewe, with a smile. “But true cryptography is more scientifically based than that. Systems of secret writing are practically unlimited in number and variety—and so are solutions. Human nature hates being baffled, and the human brain has performed some really wonderful achievements—at the expense of much effort and patience—in solving systems of cryptography which the inventors deemed to
be insoluble. I have a weakness for cryptograms myself, and at one time collected quite a small library on secret writing, from the earlier works by Bacon and Trithemius, to the more modern works by German cryptographists, who have devised some remarkably complicated systems which, no doubt, were largely used by the Germans before and during the war for secret service work. It is astonishing the number of books which have been written on the subject by men who believed they had discovered insoluble systems of secret writing, and by men who have set out to prove that no system of secret writing is insoluble. Even the ancient Hebraic prophets used cryptography at times to veil their attacks on the wicked kings of Israel.”

  “How long do cryptograms—the more scientific, I mean—usually take to solve?”

  “Some cryptograms can be solved in an hour; others may take months.”

  “Do you think that this one will prove very difficult?” asked Marsland, pointing to the Cliff Farm plan as he spoke.

  “I cannot say until I have studied it more closely. The solution of any cryptogram depends first on whether you have any knowledge of the particular system used, and then on finding the key. It is quite possible, and frequently happens, that one is able to reconstruct the particular system of secret writing from which a cryptogram has been constructed, and then fail to find the key. A really scientific cryptogram never leaves the key to guesswork, but gives a carefully hidden clue for the finder to work upon; because most cryptograms are intended to be solved, and if the composer of the message left its discovery to guesswork he would be defeating his own ends. This particular cryptogram looks to me to be scientifically constructed; I cannot say yet whether it is possible to reconstruct it and solve it.”

  Crewe resumed his scrutiny of the plan, making occasional entries in his notebook as he did so.

  Marsland leaned back in an easy chair, lit a cigar, and watched him in silence. The detective’s remark convinced him that there was a wide difference between serious cryptography and the puzzle diversions of his schoolboy days, and he felt that he would be more of a hindrance than a help if he attempted to assist Crewe in his task of unravelling the secret of the hidden wealth whose hiding-place had been indicated by its deceased owner in the symbols and hieroglyphics on the faded sheet of paper. He reclined comfortably in his chair, watching languidly through half-closed eyes and a mist of cigar smoke the detective’s intellectual face bent over the plan in intense concentration. After a while Crewe’s face seemed to grow shadowy and indistinct, and finally it disappeared behind the tobacco smoke. Marsland had fallen fast asleep in his chair.

  He was awakened by a hand on his shoulder, and struggled back to consciousness to find Crewe standing beside him, his dark eyes smiling down at him.

  “I am afraid I fell into a doze,” Marsland murmured apologetically, as the room and its surroundings came back to him.

  “You’ve been sleeping soundly for nearly two hours,” said Crewe, with a smile.

  “Impossible!” exclaimed Marsland. He took out his watch and looked at it in astonishment. “By Jove, it’s actually six o’clock. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “What for? I became so absorbed in the old man’s secret that I had no idea of the flight of time till I looked at my watch a few minutes ago. He has evolved a very neat cryptogram—very neat and work-manlike. It was quite a pleasure to try and decipher it.”

  “Have you found out anything about it?”

  “I believe I have solved it.”

  “And what is the solution?” asked Marsland, now thoroughly awake. “Where is the money hidden?”

  “Now you are going too fast,” said Crewe. “I said I believed I have solved the secret. In other words, I believe I have hit on the old man’s cryptogram, and the key which solves it, but I have deferred applying the key till I awakened you, as I thought you would like to share in it.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Crewe went to the table and picked up the plan.

  “My first impression was that the circle of figures represented some form of letters of the alphabet arranged on what is called the cardboard or trellis cipher, in which a message is concealed by altering the places of the letters without changing their powers. Such messages are generally written after the Chinese fashion—upwards and downwards—but there is no reason why a circle should not be used to conceal the message. In this case I did not expect to find a message hidden in the circle, but rather, the key to the solution of the letters above the circle, which, I was convinced, formed the real cryptogram.

  “The recurring T’s and M’s in the top line seemed to indicate that it was some form of changed letter cipher, complicated by having to be read in connection with the figures in the circle, which represented other letters of the alphabet. The numbers, representing an ascending series from 6 to 89, with one recurring 6, suggested the possibility of this form of cryptogram having been used. The numbers in the centre suggested a sum, which, when done, would throw some light on the arithmetical puzzle in the centre of the circle by division, subtraction, or multiplication.

  “I worked for a solution on these lines for some time, but ultimately came to the conclusion that the solution did not lie within them. I am not an arithmetician, but my calculations told me enough to make me realize that I was on the wrong track.

  “I next attempted to ascertain if the two mysterious messages—the lines on the top and the circle of figures—were two separate messages read independently of one another. I did not think they were, but I determined to put it to the test. Obviously, if they were, the top line was merely a changed letter cipher, and nothing more. These are usually easy to decipher because of the frequency with which certain letters recur. In English the letter that occurs oftenest is E, then T, then A, O, N, I, then R, S, H; the others in lessening frequency down to J and Z, which are the least used letters in the English alphabet. The recurring letters in our cryptogram are T’s and M’s. Using these as a basis to give me the key, I tried all likely combinations on the changed letter basis, but without success.

  “I came back to my original idea that the figures in the circle were the solvent of the line of letters above, and concentrated my efforts in attempting to discover their meaning. I finally came to the conclusion that the figures represented the pages or lines of some book.”

  “Like the cryptograms I used to solve when I was at school,” suggested Marsland, with a smile.

  “Rather more difficult than that. In that form of cryptogram rows of figures are turned into words once you hit on the right book. This cryptogram is much more ingenious, for it consists of three parts—a line of meaningless letters and a circle of equally meaningless figures, with other figures within it, and some plain English verses of Scripture, the whole probably interdependent. If the circle of figures represented some book necessary to the solution of the whole cryptogram, the first thing to find out was the book from which the figures had been taken. I had not much difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that this book was a large brass-bound family Bible I saw at Cliff Farm.”

  “I suppose the texts on the bottom of the sheet suggested that idea to you?” said Marsland.

  Crewe shook his head.

  “I’ve learnt to mistrust guesswork,” he said. “It would be a jump at random to come to the conclusion that the cryptogram had been drawn on the fly-leaf of a Bible because it contained some Scripture texts. There is no connection between the facts. In fact, it seemed unlikely to me at first that a religious man like the old farmer would have mutilated his family Bible for such a purpose. I was inclined to the view that he had taken a fly-leaf from one of his Leisure Hourbound volumes, which at the farm range from 1860 to the early seventies—a period of years when this kind of glossy thick paper was much used for fly-leaves by English printers. But while I was examining the sheet through the magnifying glass I detected this mark on the edge, which proved conclusively to me that the cryptogram had been drawn on the fly-leaf of the family Bible. Have a look at it through the glass—you cann
ot detect it with the naked eye.”

  Crewe held the sheet edgeways as he spoke, and pointed to one of the outer corners. Marsland gazed intently through the glass, and was able to detect a minute glittering spot not much larger than a pin’s point.

  “I see it,” he said, relinquishing the glass. “But I do not understand what it means.”

  “It is Dutch metal or gold-leaf. The book from which this sheet was cut was gilt-edged. That disposes of the volumes of Leisure Hour and other bound periodicals, none of which is gilt-edged. When I was looking at the books at the farm I noticed only two with gilt-edged leaves. One was the big family Bible, and the other was a large, old fashionedLanguage of Flowers. But this sheet could not have been cut from The Language of Flowers.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it has two rounded corners. As a rule, only sacred books and poetry are bound with rounded corners. In any case, I remember that The Language of Flowers at the farm is square-edged. Therefore the sheet on which the cryptogram has been drawn was cut from the Bible.

  “The next question that faced me was how the numbers had been used: they did not represent the numbers of the pages, I was sure of that. The Bible is a book in which figures are used freely in the arrangement of the contents. The pages are numbered, the chapters are divided into verses which are numbered, and there is a numbered table of contents at the beginning of each chapter. Obviously, the Bible is an excellent book from which to devise a cryptogram of numbers owing to the multiplicity of figures used in it and the variety of ways in which they are arranged. I found both a Bible and Prayer Book in the bookshelves, here, and set to work to study the numerical arrangement of the chapters, the divisions of the verses, and the arrangement of figures at the head of the chapters.”

  “It was while I was thus engaged that I remembered that at the beginning of the authorised version of the Bible is inserted a table of the books of the Old and New Testaments, the pages on which they begin, and the number of chapters in each. Here was the possibility of a starting-point, sufficiently unusual to make a good concealment, yet not too remote. I turned to the table, and, on running my eye down it, I saw that the Psalms, and the Psalms alone, contain 150 chapters. Now, the first line of central figures in the cryptogram is 150. I was really fortunate in starting off with this discovery, because otherwise I might have been led off the track by the doubling and trebling of the 3 in the second line of central figures, and have wasted time trying to fathom some mystic interpretation of the 9—a numeral which has always had a special significance for humanity: the Nine Muses, the Nine Worthies, ‘dressed up to the nines,’ and so on. But with 150 as the indication that the cryptogram had been composed from the Book of Psalms, it was obvious that the next line of numerals in the centre directed attention to some particular portion of them. As there are not 396 verses in any chapter of the Psalms—”