Chapter Twenty
The Reading of the Record
The envelope containing the thirty-two cards reposed in my pocket, together with the linen-mounted photograph, therefore, clearing the square old oak table, I opened them out eagerly, while Reggie and the old man watched me breathlessly.
“The first mentioned in the rhyme is king,” I said. “Let us have all four kings together.”
Having arranged them, I placed the four eights, the four knaves, the queens, aces, sevens, nines and tens, in the order given by the doggerel.
Reggie was quicker than I was in reading down the first column and declared it to be a hopeless jumble entirely unintelligible. I read for myself, and, deeply disappointed, was compelled to admit that the key was not, after all, to be found there.
Yet I recollected what my friend in Leicester had explained, how the record would be found in the first letter on each card being read consecutively from one to another through the whole pack, and tried over and over again to arrange them in intelligible order, but without any success. The cipher was just as tantalising and bewildering as it had ever been.
Whole nights I had spent with Reggie, trying in vain to make something of it, but failing always, unable to make out one single word.
I transcribed the letters backwards, but the result upon my piece of paper was the same.
“No,” remarked old Hales, “you haven’t got hold of it yet. I’m sure, however, you are near it. That rhyme gives the key – you mark me.”
“I honestly believe it does if we could only discover the proper arrangement,” I declared in breathless excitement.
“That’s just it,” remarked Reggie, in dismay. “That’s just where the ingenuity of the cipher lies. It’s so very simple, and yet so extraordinarily complicated that the possible combinations run into millions. Think of it!”
“But we have the rhyme which distinctly shows their arrangement: —
”‘King Henry the Eighth was a knave to his queen,
He’d one short of seven and nine or ten – ’
“That’s plain enough, and we ought, of course, to have seen it from the first,” I said.
“Well, try the king of one suit, the eight of another, the knave of another – and so on,” Hales suggested, bending with keen interest over the faces of the pigmy cards.
Without loss of time I took his advice, and carefully relaid the cards in the manner he suggested. But again the result was an unintelligible array of letters, puzzling, baffling and disappointing.
I recollected what my expert friend had told me, and my heart sank.
“Don’t you really know now the means by which the problem can be solved?” I asked of old Mr Hales, being seized with suspicion that he was well aware of it.
“I’m sure I can’t tell you,” was his quick response. “To me, however, it seems certain that the rhyme in some way forms the key. Try another assortment.”
“Which? What other can I try?” I asked blankly, but he only shook his head.
Reggie, with paper and pencil, was trying to make the letters intelligible by the means I had several times tried – namely, by substituting A for B, C for D, and so on. Then he tried two letters added, three letters added, and more still, in order to discover some key, but, like myself, he was utterly foiled.
Meanwhile, the old man who seemed to be fingering the cards with increased interest was, I saw, trying to rearrange them himself by placing his finger upon one and then another, and then a third, as though he knew the proper arrangement, and was reading the record to himself.
Was it possible that he actually held the key to what we had displayed, and was learning Burton Blair’s secret while we remained in ignorance of it!
Of a sudden, the wiry old seafarer straightened his back, and, looking at me, exclaimed, with a triumphant smile —
“Now, look here, Mr Greenwood, there are four suites, aren’t there? Try them in alphabetical order – that would be clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. First take all the clubs and arrange them king, eight, knave, queen, ace, seven, nine, ten, then the diamonds, and afterwards the other two suites. Then see what you make of it.”
Assisted by Reggie, I proceeded to again resort the cards into suites, and to arrange them according to the rhyme in four columns of eight each upon the table, the suites as he suggested, in alphabetical order.
“At last!” shouted Reggie, almost beside himself with joy. “At last! Why, we’ve got it, old chap! Look! Read the first letter on each card straight down, one after the other? What do you make it spell?”
All three of us were breathless – old Hales apparently the most excited of all – or perhaps, he had been misleading us and pretending ignorance.
I had, as yet, only placed the first suite, the clubs, but they read as follows: —
King. B O N T D R N N C R O A U I T
Eight. E I T Y G O J T A E N N W N H
Knave. T N H J E N T Y N D J O I D E
Queen. W T E S J T H F D T O L L T C
Ace. E W J I W H E O E H N D L H R
Seven. E H L X H E F U F E E E F E O
Nine. N E E P E F I R E R W O I O S
Ten. T R F A R I F J N E I N N L S
“Why!” I cried, staring at the first intelligible word I had discovered. “The first column commences ‘Between.’”
“Yes, and I see other words in the other columns!” cried Reggie, excitedly snatching some of the cards from me in his excitement, and assisting me to rearrange the other suites.
Those moments were among the most breathless and exciting of my life. The great secret which had brought Burton Blair all his fabulous wealth was about to be revealed to us.
It might render me a millionaire as it had already done its dead possessor!
At last the cards being all arranged in their proper order, the eight diamonds, eight hearts and eight spades beneath the eight clubs, I took a pencil and wrote down the first letter on each card.
“Yes!” I cried, almost beside myself with excitement, “the arrangement is perfect. Blair’s secret is revealed!”
“Why, it’s some kind of record!” exclaimed Reggie. “And it begins with the words ‘Between the Ponte del Diavolo!’ That’s Italian for the Devil’s Bridge, I suppose!”
“The Ponte del Diavolo is an old mediaeval bridge near Lucca,” I explained quickly, and then I recollected the grave-faced Capuchin, who lived in that silent monastery close by. But at that moment all my attention was given to the transcript of the cipher, and I had no time for reflection. The letter “J” was inserted sometimes in place of a space, apparently in order to throw the lettering out, and so conceal it from any chance solution.
At length, after nearly a quarter of an hour, for certain of the faded letters on the cards were almost obliterated, I discovered that the decipher I had scribbled was a strange record as follows: – “Between the Ponte del Diavolo and the point where the Serchio joins the Lima on the left bank, four hundred and fifty-six paces from the foot of the bridge, where the sun shines only one hour on the fifth of April and two hours on the fifth of May, at noon, descend twenty-four foot-holes behind where a man can defend himself against four hundred. There two big rocks one on each side. On one will be found cut the figure of an old ‘E.’ On the right hand go down and you will find what you seek. But first find the old man who lives at the crossways.”
“I wonder what it all means!” remarked Reggie, who, turning to old Mr Hales, added, “The latter indicates you,” whereat the old fellow laughed knowingly, and we saw that he knew more of Blair’s affairs than he would admit.
“It means,” I said, “that some secret is concealed in that narrow, romantic valley of the Serchio, and these are the directions for its discovery. I know the winding river where through ages the water has cut deeply down into a rocky bed full of giant boulders and wild leaping torrents and deep pools. Of the pointed Ponte del Diavolo are told many quaint stories of the devil building the bridge and taking for his own the first living thing to pass over it, which proved to be a dog. Indeed,” I added, “the spot is one of the wildest and most romantic in all rural Tuscany. Strange, too, the Fra Antonio should live in the monastery only three miles from the spot indicated.”
“Who is Fra Antonio?” asked Hales, still gazing upon the cards thoughtfully.
I explained, whereupon the old fellow smiled, and I felt certain that he recognised in the monk’s description one of Blair’s friends of days bygone.
“Who actually wrote this record?” I inquired of him. “It was not Blair, that’s plain.”
“No,” was his reply. “Now that it has been legally left to you by our friend, and that you have succeeded in deciphering it, I may as well tell you something more concerning it.”
“Yes, do,” we both cried eagerly with one breath.
“Well, it happened in this way,” explained the thin old fellow, pressing down the tobacco hard into his long clay. “Some years ago I was serving as first mate on the barque Annie Curtis of Liverpool, engaged in the Mediterranean fruit trade and running regularly between Naples, Smyrna, Barcelona, Algiers and Liverpool. Our crew was a mixed one of English, Spaniards and Italians, and among the latter was an old fellow named Bruno. He was a mysterious individual from Calabria, and among the crew it was whispered that he had once been the head of a noted band of brigands who had terrorised that most southern portion of Italy, and who had only recently been exterminated by the Carabineers. The other Italians nicknamed him Baffitone, which in their language is, I believe, Big Moustache. He was a hard worker, drank next to nothing, and was apparently rather well educated, for he spoke and wrote English quite well, and further he was always worrying everybody to devise ciphers, the solution of which he would set himself in his leisure to puzzle out. One day, on a religious feast, made excuse by the Italians for a holiday, I found him in the forecastle writing something on a small pack of cards. He tried to conceal what he was doing, but, my curiosity aroused, I detected at once how he had arranged them, and the very fact told me what a remarkably ingenious cipher he had discovered.”
The old man paused for a moment, as though he hesitated to tell us the whole truth. Presently when he had lit his pipe with a spill, he resumed, saying —
“I left the sea, came back to my wife here, and for fully six years saw nothing of the Italian until one day, looking well and prosperous in a suit of brand new clothes and a new hard hat, he called upon me. He was still on the Annie Curtis, but she was in dry dock, and therefore he was, he said, having a bit of a spree ashore. He remained here with me for two days, and with his little camera, evidently a fresh acquisition he snapshotted every conceivable object, including this house. Before he went away he took me into his confidence and told me that what had been suspected of him on board the Annie Curtis was true, that he was none other than the notorious Poldo Pensi, the brigand whose daring and ferocity had long been chronicled in Italian song and story. He had, however, since the breaking up of his band, become a reformed character, and rather than profit by certain knowledge that he had obtained while an outlaw, he worked for his living on board an English ship. The knowledge, he said, was obtained from a certain Cardinal Sannini of the Vatican whom he had held to ransom, and was of such a character that he might become a rich man any day he wished, but having regard to the fact that the Government had offered a large reward for his capture either dead or alive, he deemed it best to conceal his identity and sail the seas. But he told me, here in this room, as we sat smoking together the night before he departed, that the secret was on record, but in such a manner that any one discovering it would not be able to read it without possessing the key to the cipher.”
“Then he left it on these cards!” I cried, interrupting.
“Exactly. The secret of Cardinal Sannini, obtained by the notorious outlaw Poldo Pensi, whose terrible band ravaged half Italy twenty-five years ago, and who compelled Pope Pius IX himself to pay tribute to them, is written here – just as you have deciphered it.”
“Is this man Pensi dead?” I inquired.
“Oh yes, he died and was buried at sea, somewhere off Lisbon, before Burton Blair came into possession of the cards. The secret, I ascertained, was wrung from Cardinal Sannini, who, while on his way across the wild, inhospitable country between Reggio and Gerace was seized by Pensi and his gang, taken up to their stronghold – a small mountain village about three miles from Nicastro – and there held prisoner, a large ransom being about to be demanded of the Holy See. For certain reasons, it seemed, the wily old Cardinal in question did not desire that the Vatican should be made aware of his capture, therefore he made it a condition of his release that he should reveal a certain very remarkable secret – the secret written upon the cards – which he did, and in exchange for which Pensi released him.”
“But Sannini was one of the highest placed Cardinals in Rome,” I exclaimed. “Why, at the death of Pio Nono, he was believed to be designed as his successor to the Pontificate.”
“True,” remarked the old man, who seemed well versed in all the recent history of St. Peter’s at Rome. “The secret divulged by the Cardinal is undoubtedly one of very great value, and he did so in order to save his own reputation, I believe, for from what the outlaw told me, they had discovered that he was in the extreme south in direct opposition to the Pope’s orders, and in order to stir up some religious ill-feeling against Pio Nono. Hence Sannini, so trusted by His Holiness, was compelled at all hazards to keep the facts of his capture an absolute secret. Pensi related how, before releasing the Cardinal, he went himself in secret to a certain spot in Tuscany, and ascertained that what the great ecclesiastic had divulged was absolutely the truth. He was then released, and given safe escort back to Cosenza, whence he took train back to Rome.”
“But how came Burton Blair possessed of the secret?” I inquired eagerly.
“Ah!” remarked the old fellow, showing the palms of his hard brown hands, “that’s the question. I know that upon these very cards, Poldo Pensi, the ex-brigand of Calabria, inscribed the Cardinal’s directions in English. Indeed you will note that the wording betrays a foreigner. Those faded capital letters were traced by him on board the Annie Curtis, and he certainly held the secret safely until his death. What he told me I never divulged until – well, until I was compelled to by Burton Blair on that night when he recognised this house from Poldo’s photograph, and re-discovered me.”
“Compelled you!” Reggie exclaimed. “How?”
Chapter Twenty One
“Worse than Death.”
The tall old fellow looked at me with his grey eyes and shook his head.
“Burton Blair knew rather too much,” he answered evasively. “He had, it seemed, been raised to chief mate of the Annie Curtis, when I left her, and Poldo, the man who had held dukes and cardinals and other great men to ransom, worked patiently under him. Then after a bad go of fever Poldo died, and strangely enough gave – so Blair declared – the pack of cards with the secret into his hands. Dicky Dawson, however, who was also on board as bo’sun, and who had lived half his life on Italian brigs in the Adriatic, declares that this story is untrue, and that Blair stole the little bag containing the cards from beneath Poldo’s pillow half an hour before he died. That, however, may be the truth, or a lie, yet the facts remain, that Poldo must have let out some portion of his secret in the delirium of the fever and that the little cards passed into Blair’s possession. Three weeks after the Italian’s death, Blair, on landing at Liverpool, carrying with him the cards and the snap-shot photograph, set out on that very long and fatiguing journey up and down all the roads in England, in order to find me, and learn from me the key to the secret of the outlaws which I held.”
“And when at last he found you, what then?”
“He alleged solemnly that Bruno had given it to him as a dying gift, and that his reason for seeking me was because the old outlaw had, before he died, requested to see the photograph from his sea-chest, and looking upon it for a long time, had said to himself reflectively in Italian, ‘There lives in that house the only man who knows my secret.’ For that reason Blair evidently secured the picture after the Italian’s death. On arrival here he showed me the cards, and promised me a thousand pounds if I would reveal the Italian’s confidences. As the man was dead, I saw no reason to withhold them, and in exchange for a promise to pay the amount I told him what he wanted to know, and among other matters explained the rearrangement of the cards, so that he could decipher them. The key to the cipher I had learnt on that festival when I had discovered Poldo writing upon a pack of cards a message, evidently intended for the Cardinal himself at Rome, for I have since established the fact that the outlaw and the ecclesiastic were in frequent but secret communication prior to the latter’s death.”
“But this man Dawson must have profited enormously by the revelation made by Blair,” I remarked. “They seem to have been most intimate friends.”
“Of course he profited,” Hales replied. “Blair, possessing this remarkable secret, went in deadly fear of Dicky, the bo’sun, who might declare, as he had already done, that he had stolen it from the dying man. He was well aware that Dawson was an unscrupulous sailor of the very worst type, therefore he considered it a very judicious course, I suppose, to go into partnership with him and assist in the exploration of the secret. But poor Blair must have been in the fellow’s hands all through although it is plain that the gains Blair made were enormous, while those of Dicky have been equal, although it seems probable that the latter has lived in absolute obscurity.”
“Dawson feared to come to England,” Reggie remarked.
“Yes,” answered the old man. “There was a rather ugly incident in Liverpool a few years ago – that’s the reason.”
“There is no negative evidence regarding the actual gift of the pack of cards to Blair by this reformed outlaw, is there!” I inquired.
“None whatever. For my own part I believe that Poldo gave them to Blair together with instruction to return ashore and find me, because he had showed him many little kindnesses during repeated illnesses. Poldo, on giving up his evil ways, had become religious and used to attend sailors’ Bethels and missions when ashore, while Blair was, as you know, a very God-fearing man for a sailor. When I recollect all the circumstances, I believe it was only natural that Poldo should give the dead Cardinal’s secret into the hands of his best friend.”
“The spot indicated is near Lucca in Tuscany,” I remarked. “You say that this outlaw, Poldo Pensi, had been there and made an investigation. What did he find?”
“He found what the Cardinal had told him he would find. But he never explained to me its nature. All he would tell was that the secret would render its possessor a very wealthy man – which it certainly did in Blair’s case.”
“The connexion of the Church between the late Cardinal Sannini and Fra Antonio, the Monk of Lucca, is strange,” I observed. “Is the monk, I wonder, in possession of the secret? He certainly had some connexion with the affair, as shown by his constant consultations with the man Dawson.”
“No doubt,” remarked Reggie, turning over the little cards idly. “We’ve now got to discover the exact position of both men, and at the same time prevent this fellow Dawson from obtaining too firm a hold on Mabel Blair’s fortune.”
“Leave that to me,” I said confidently. “For the present our line of action is quite clear. We must investigate the spot on the bank of the Serchio and discover what is hidden there.” Then turning to Hales, I added, “In the record it is, I notice, distinctly directed ‘First find the old man who lives at the house by the crossways.’ What does that mean? Why is that direction given?”
“Because I suppose that when the record was written upon these cards I was the only other person having any knowledge of the Cardinal’s secret – the only person, too, possessing the key to the cipher.”
“But you affected ignorance of all this at first,” I said, still viewing the old fellow with some suspicion.
“Because I was not certain of your bona-fides,” he laughed quite frankly. “You took me by surprise, and I was not inclined to show my hand prematurely.”
“Then you have really told us all you know?” Reggie said.
“Yes, I know no more,” he replied. “As to what is contained at the spot indicated in the record, I am quite ignorant. Remember that Blair has paid me justly, even more than he stipulated, but as you are well aware he was a most reserved man concerning his own affairs, and left me in entire ignorance.”
“You can give us no further information regarding this one-eyed man who seems to have been Blair’s partner in the extraordinary enterprise?”
“None, except that he’s a very undesirable acquaintance. It was Poldo who nicknamed him ‘The Ceco.’”
“And the monk who calls himself Fra Antonio?”
“I know nothing of him – never heard of any such person.”
It was upon the tip of my tongue to inquire whether the old man had a son, and if that son’s name was Herbert, recollecting, as I did, that tragic midnight scene in Mayvill Park. Yet, fortunately perhaps, I was prompted to remain silent, preferring to conceal my knowledge and to await developments of the extraordinary situation.
Still a fierce, mad jealousy was gnawing at my heart. Mabel, the calm, sweet girl I loved so well, and whose future had been entrusted to me, had, like so many other girls, committed the grievous error of falling in love with a common man, rough, uncouth, and far beneath her station. Love in a cottage – about which we hear so much – is all very well in theory, just as is the empty-pocket-light-heart fallacy, but in these modern days the woman habituated to luxury can never be happy in the four-roomed house any more than the man who gallantly marries for love and foregoes his inheritance.
No. Each time I recollected that young ruffian’s sneers and threats, his arrogance and his final outburst of murderous passion, which had been so near producing a fatal termination to my well-beloved, my blood boiled. My anger was aflame. The fellow had escaped, but within myself I determined that he should not go scot-free.
And yet, when I recollected, it seemed as though Mabel were utterly and irresistibly in that man’s power, even though she had attempted defiance.
We remained with Hales and his wife for another hour learning few additional facts except from a word that the old lady let drop. I ascertained that they actually had a son whose name was Herbert, but whose character was none too good.
“He was in the stables at Belvoir,” his mother explained when I made inquiry of him. “But he left nearly two years ago, and we haven’t seen him since. He writes sometimes from various places and appears to be prospering.”
The fellow was, therefore, as I had surmised from his appearance, a horsekeeper, a groom, or something of that kind.
It was already half-past seven when we arrived back at King’s Cross, and after a hasty chop at a small Italian restaurant opposite the station, we both drove to Grosvenor Square, in order to explain to Mabel our success in the solution of the cipher.
Carter, who admitted us, knew us so well that he conducted us straight upstairs to the great drawing-room, so artistically lit with its shaded electric lights placed cunningly in all sorts of out-of-the-way corners. Upon the table was a great old punch-bowl, full of splendid Gloire de Dijon roses, which the head gardener sent with the fruit from the house at Mayvill daily. Their arrangement was, I knew, by the hand of the woman whom for years I had secretly admired and loved. Upon a side table was a fine panel photograph of poor Burton Blair in a heavy silver frame, and upon the corner his daughter had placed a tiny bow of crape to honour the dead man’s memory. The great house was full of those womanly touches that betrayed the sweet sympathy of her character and the calm tranquillity of her life.
Presently the door opened, and we both rose to our feet, but instead of the bright, sunny-hearted girl with the musical voice and merry, open face, there entered the middle-aged bearded man in gold-rimmed glasses, who was once the bo’sun of the barque Annie Curtis of Liverpool, and afterwards had been the secret partner of Burton Blair.
“Good-evening, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, bowing with that forced veneer of polish he sometimes assumed. “I am very pleased to welcome you here in my late friend’s house. I have, as you will perceive, taken up my quarters here in accordance with the terms of poor Blair’s will, and I am pleased to have this opportunity of again meeting you.”
The fellow’s cool impudence took us both entirely aback. He seemed so entirely confident that his position was unassailable.
“We called to see Miss Blair,” I explained. “We were not aware that you were about to take up your residence here quite so quickly.”
“Oh, it is best,” he assured us. “There are a great many matters in connexion with Blair’s wide interests that require immediate attention,” and as he was speaking, the door again opened and there entered a dark-haired woman of about twenty-six, of medium height, rather showily dressed in a black, low-cut gown, but whose countenance was of a rather common type, yet, nevertheless, somewhat prepossessing.
“My daughter, Dolly,” explained the one-eyed man. “Allow me to introduce you,” and we both gave her rather a cold bow, for it seemed that they had both made their abode there, and taken over the management of the house in their own hands.
“I suppose Mrs Percival still remains?” I inquired after a few moments, on recovering from the shock at finding the adventurer and his daughter were actually in possession of that splendid mansion which half London admired and the other half envied – the place of which numerous photographs and descriptions had appeared in the magazines and ladies’ journals.
“Yes, Mrs Percival is still in her own sitting-room. I left her there five minutes ago. Mabel, it seems, went out at eleven o’clock this morning and has not returned.”
“Not returned,” I exclaimed in quick surprise. “Why not?”
“Mrs Percival seems to be very upset. Fears something has happened to her, I think.”
Without another word I ran down the broad staircase with its crystal balustrade and, tapping at the door of the room, set apart for Mrs Percival, and announcing my identity, was at once allowed admittance.
The instant the prim elderly widow saw me she sprang to her feet in terrible distress, crying —
“Oh, Mr Greenwood, Mr Greenwood! What can we do? How can we treat these terrible people? Poor Mabel left this morning and drove in the brougham to Euston Station. There she gave Peters this letter, addressed to you, and then dismissed the carriage. What can it possibly mean?”
I took the note she handed me and tremblingly tore it open, to find a few hurriedly scribbled lines in pencil upon a sheet of notepaper, as follows: —
“Dear Mr Greenwood, – You will no doubt be greatly surprised to learn that I have left home for ever. I am well aware that you entertain for me as high a regard and esteem as I do for you, but as my secret must come out, I cannot remain to face you of all men. These people will hound me to death, therefore I prefer to live in secret beyond the reach of their taunts and their vengeance than to remain and have the finger of scorn pointed at me. My father’s secret can never become yours, because his enemies are far too wily and ingenious. Every precaution has been taken to secure it against all your endeavours. Therefore, as your friend I tell you it is no use grinding the wind. All is hopeless! Exposure means to me a fate worse than death! Believe me that only desperation has driven me to this step because my poor father’s cowardly enemies and mine have triumphed. Yet at the same time I ask you to forget entirely that any one ever existed of the name of the ill-fated, unhappy and heart-broken Mabel Blair.”
I stood with the open, tear-stained letter in my hand absolutely speechless.