Next morning I was somewhat _distrait_. Half the night I had lain awakethinking; the other half I had dreamt. Both sleeping and waking dreamswere mixed, ranging from all the brightness of hope to the harrowingpossibilities of vague, undefined fear.
Sleeping dreams have this difference over day dreams, that thepossibilities become for the time actualities, and thus for good andill, pleasure or pain, multiply the joys or sufferings. Through all,however, there remained one fixed hope always verging toward belief, Ishould see Miss Anita--Marjory--again.
Late in the afternoon I got a letter directed in a strange hand, fineand firm, with marked characteristics and well formed letters, and justenough of unevenness to set me at ease. I am never quite happy with thewriter whose hand is exact, letter by letter, and word by word, and lineby line. So much can be told by handwriting, I thought, as I looked atthe letter lying beside my plate. A hand that has no characteristics isthat of a person insipid; a hand that is too marked and too various isdisconcerting and undependable. Here my philosophising came to an end,for I had opened the envelope, and not knowing the writing, had lookedat the signature, "Marjory Anita."
I hoped that no one at the table d'hote breakfast noticed me, for I feltthat I was red and pale by turns. I laid the letter down, taking carethat the blank back page was uppermost; with what nonchalance I could Iwent on with my smoked haddie. Then I put the letter in my pocket andwaited till I was in my own room, secure from interruption, before Iread it.
That one should kiss a letter before reading it, is conceivable,especially when it is the first which one has received from the girl heloves.
It was not dated nor addressed. A swift intuition told me that she hadnot given the date because she did not wish to give the address; theabsence of both was less marked than the presence of the one alone. Itaddressed me as "Dear Mr. Hunter." She knew my name, of course, for Ihad told it to her; it was on the envelope. The body of the letter saidthat she was asked by Mrs. Jack to convey her warm thanks for the greatservice rendered; to which she ventured to add the expression of her owngratitude. That in the hurry and confusion of mind, consequent on theirunexpected position, they had both quite forgotten about the boat whichthey had hired and which had been lost. That the owner of it would nodoubt be uneasy about it, and that they would both be grateful if Iwould see him--he lived in one of the cottages close to the harbour ofPort Erroll--and find out from him the value of the boat so that Mrs.Jack might pay it to him, as well as a reasonable sum for the loss ofits use until he should have been able to procure another. That Mrs.Jack ventured to give him so much trouble, as Mr. Hunter had beenalready so kind that she felt emboldened to trespass upon his goodness.And was "yours faithfully, 'Marjory Anita.'" Of course there was apostscript--it was a woman's letter! It ran as follows:
"Have you deciphered those papers? I have been thinking over them as well as other things, and I am convinced they contain some secret. You must tell me all about them when I see you on Tuesday.
M."
I fear that logic, as understood in books, had little to do with my kisson reading this; the reasoning belonged to that higher plane of thoughton which rests the happiness of men and women in this world and thenext. There was not a thought in the postscript which did not give mejoy--utter and unspeakable joy; and the more I thought of it and theoftener I read it the more it seemed to satisfy some aching void in myheart, "Have you deciphered the papers"--the papers whose existence wasonly known to her and me! It was delightful that we should know so muchof a secret in common. She had been 'thinking over them'--and otherthings! 'Other things!'--I had been thinking of other things; thinkingof them so often that every detail of their being or happening wasphotographed not only on my memory but seemingly on my very soul. Andof all these 'other things' there was one!!...
To see her again; to hear her voice; to look in her eyes; to see herlips move and watch each varying expression which might pass across thatlovely face, evoked by thoughts which we should hold in common; to touchher hand....
I sat for a while like one in a rapturous dream, where one sees all thehopes of the heart fulfilled in completeness and endlessly. And this wasall to be on Tuesday next--Only six days off!...
I started impulsively and went to the oak chest which stood in thecorner of my room and took out the papers.
After looking over them carefully I settled quietly down to a minuteexamination of them. I felt instinctively that my mandate or commissionwas to see if they contained any secret writing. The letters I placedaside, for the present at any rate. They were transparently simpleand written in a flowing hand which made anything like the necessaryelaboration impossible. I knew something of secret writing, for such hadin my boyhood been a favourite amusement with me. At one time I had beenan invalid for a considerable period and had taken from my father'slibrary a book by Bishop Wilkins, the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell,called "Mercury: or the Secret and Swift Messenger." Herein were givenaccounts of many of the old methods of secret communication, ciphers,string writing, hidden meanings, and many of the mechanical devicesemployed in an age when the correspondence of ambassadors, spies andsecret agents was mainly conducted by such means. This experience hadset my mind somewhat on secret writing, and ever after when in thecourse of miscellaneous reading I
came across anything relating to thesubject I made a note of it. I now looked over the papers to see if Icould find traces of any of the methods with which I was acquainted;before long I had an idea.
It was only a rudimentary idea, a surmise, a possibility; but still itwas worth going into. It was not any cause of undue pride to me, for itcame as a corollary to an established conclusion, rather than as a finepiece of reasoning from acute observation. The dates of the letters gavethe period as the end of the sixteenth century, when one of the bestciphers of that time had been conceived, the "Biliteral Cipher" ofFrancis Bacon. To this my attention had been directed by the workof John Wilkins and I had followed it out with great care. As I wasfamiliar with the principle and method of this cipher I was able todetect signs of its existence; and this being so, I had at once stronghopes of being able to find the key to it. The Biliteral cipher has asits great advantage, that it can be used in any ordinary writing, andthat its forms and methods are simply endless. All that it requires inthe first instance is that there be some method arranged on between thewriter and the reader of distinguishing between different forms of thesame letter. In my desk I had a typewritten copy of a monograph on thesubject of the Biliteral cipher, in which I half suggested that possiblyBacon's idea might be worked out more fully so that a fewer number ofsymbols than his five would be sufficient. Leaving my present occupationfor a moment I went and got it; for by reading it over I might get someclue to aid me. Some thought which had already come to me, or someconclusion at which I had already arrived might guide me in this newlabyrinth of figures, words and symbols.[1]
[1] See Appendix A.
When I had carefully read the paper, occasionally referring to thedocuments before me, I sat down and wrote a letter to Miss Anitatelling her that I had undertaken the task at once on her suggestion andthat I surmised that the method of secret writing adopted if any, wasprobably a variant of the Biliteral cipher. I therefore sent her my ownmonograph on the subject so that if she chose she might study it and beprepared to go into the matter when we met. I studiously avoided sayinganything which might frighten her or make any barrier between us;matters were shaping themselves too clearly for me to allow myself tofall into the folly of over-precipitation. It was only when I hadplaced the letter with its enclosure in the envelope and writtenMarjory's--Miss Anita's--name that I remembered that I had not got heraddress. I put it in my pocket to keep for her till we should meet onTuesday.
When I resumed my work I began on the two remaining exhibits. The firstwas a sheaf of some thirty pages torn out of some black-letter law-book.The only remarkable thing about it was that every page seemed coveredwith dots--hundreds, perhaps thousands on each page. The second wasquite different: a narrow slip of paper somewhat longer than a halfsheet of modern note paper, covered with an endless array of figures ineven lines, written small and with exquisite care. The paper was justsuch a size as might be put as marker in an ordinary quarto; that it hadbeen so used was manifest by the discolouration of a portion of it thathad evidently stuck out at the top of the volume. Fortunately, in itslong dusty rest in the bookshelf the side written on had been downwardso that the figures, though obscured by dust and faded by light andexposure to the air, were still decipherable. This paper I examined mostcarefully with a microscope; but could see in it no signs of secretwriting beyond what might be contained in the disposition of the numbersthemselves. I got a sheet of foolscap and made an enlarged copy, takingcare to leave fair space between the rows of figures and between thefigures themselves.
Then I placed the copy of figures and the first of the dotted pages sideby side before me and began to study them.
I confined my attention at first chiefly to the paper of figures, for itstruck me that it would of necessity be the simpler of the two systemsto read, inasmuch as the symbols should be self-contained. In the dottedletters it was possible that more than one element existed, for thedisposition of significants appeared to be of endless variety, andthe very novelty of the method--it being one to which the eyes and thesenses were not accustomed--made it a difficult one to follow at first.I had little doubt, however, that I should ultimately find the dotcipher the more simple of the two, when I should have learned its secretand become accustomed to its form. Its mere bulk made the suppositionlikely that it was in reality simple; for it would be indeed an endlesstask, to work out in this laborious form two whole sheets of acomplicated cipher.
Over and over and over again I read the script of numbers. Forward andbackward; vertically; up and down, for the lines both horizontal andvertical were complete and exact, I read it. But nothing struck me ofsufficient importance to commence with as a beginning.
Of course there were here and there repetitions of the same combinationof figures, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four together; butof the larger combinations the instances were rare and did not afford meany suggestion of a clue!
So I became practical, and spent the remainder of my work-time that dayin making by aid of my microscope an exact but enlarged copy, but inRoman letters, of the first of the printed pages.
Then I reproduced the dots as exactly as I could. This was a laborioustask indeed. When the page was finished, half-blinded, I took my hat andwent out along the shore towards Whinnyfold. I wanted to go to the SandCraigs; but even to myself I said 'Whinnyfold' which lay farther on.
"Men are deceivers ever," sang Balthazar in the play: they deceiveeven themselves at times. Or they pretend they do--which is a new andadvanced form of the same deceit.
CHAPTER X
A CLEAR HORIZON
If any ordinary person be afflicted with ennui and want somethingto take his thoughts away from a perpetual consideration of his ownweariness let me recommend him to take up the interpretation of secretwriting. At first, perhaps, he may regard the matter lightly and beinclined to smile at its triviality. But after a little while, if hehave in him at all any of the persistence or doggedness which is, andshould be, a part of a man's nature, he will find the subject takepossession of him to the almost entire exclusion of all else. Turn fromit how he will; make he never so many resolutions to put the matterbehind him; try he never so hard to find some more engrossing topic, hewill still find the evasive mystery ever close before him. For my ownpart I can honestly say that I ate, drank, slept and dreamed secretwriting during the entire of the days and nights which intervenedbetween my taking up the task and the coming of Miss Anita to CrudenBay. All day long the hidden mystery was before me; wherever I was, inmy room, still or contorting myself; walking on the beach; or out on theheadlands, with the breezes singing in my ears, and the waves lappingbelow my feet. Hitherto in my life my only experience of hauntinghad been that of Gormala; but even that experience failed before theever-hopeful, ever-baffling subject of the cryptograms. The worst of myfeeling, and that which made it more poignant, was that I was of thefirm belief not only that there was a cryptogram but that my mind wasalready on the track of it. Every now and again, sometimes when the MS.or its copy was before me and sometimes when I was out in the open,for the moment not thinking of it at all, a sort of inspiration wouldcome to me; some sort of root idea whose full significance I felt itdifficult to grasp.
My first relief came on Tuesday when at noon I saw the high dog-cartdash past the gate and draw up short opposite the post-office.
I did not lose any time in reaching the cart so as to be able to helpthe ladies down. Marjory gave me both her hands and jumped lightly, butthe elder lady required a good deal of help. It is always thus; theexperience of every young man is the same. Every woman, old or young,except the one whom he likes to lift or carry tenderly, is willing to belifted or carried in the most leisurely or self-denying manner.