Chapter X: The Stolen Manuscript

Captain Edmund Ducie came of a good family. His people were people of mark among the landed gentry of their county, and were well-to-do even for their position. Although only a fourth son, his allowance had been a very handsome one, both while at Cambridge and afterwards during the early years of his life in the army. When of age, he had come into the very nice little fortune, for a fourth son, of nine thousand pounds; and it was known that there would be "something handsome" for him at his father's death. He had a more than ordinary share of good looks; his mind was tolerably cultivated, and afterwards enlarged by travel and service in various parts of the world; in manners and address he was a finished gentleman of the modern school. Yet all these advantages of nature and fortune were in a great measure nullified and rendered of no avail by reason of one fatal defect, of one black speck at the core. In a word, Captain Ducie was a born gambler.

He had gambled when a child in the nursery, or had tried to gamble, for cakes and toys. He had gambled when at school for coppers, pocket-knives, and marbles. He had gambled when at the University, and had felt the claws of the Children of Usury. He gambled away his nine thousand pounds, or such remainder of it as had not been forestalled, when he came of age. Later on, when in the army, and on home allowance again, for his father would not let him starve, he had kept on gambling; so that when, some five years later, his father died, and he dropped in for the "something handsome," two-thirds of it had to be paid down on the nail to make a free man of him again. On the remaining one-third he contrived to keep afloat for a couple of years longer; then, after a season of heavy losses, came the final crash, and Captain Ducie found himself under the necessity of selling his commission, and of retiring into private life.

From this date Captain Ducie was compelled to live by "bleeding" his friends and connections. He was a great favourite among them, and they rallied gallantly to his rescue. But Ducie still gambled; and the best of friends, and the most indulgent of relatives, grew tired after a time of seeing their cherished gold pieces slip heedlessly through the fingers of the man whom it was intended that they should substantially help, and be lost in the foul atmosphere of a gaming-house. One by one, friend and relative dropped away from the doomed man, till none were left. Little by little the tide of fortune ebbed away from his feet, leaving him stranded high and dry on the cruel shore of impecuniosity, hemmed in by a thousand debts, with the gaunt wolf of beggary staring him in the face.

There was one point about Captain Ducie's gambling that redounded to his credit. No one ever suspected him of cheating. His "run of luck" was so uniformly bad, despite a brief fickle gleam of fortune now and again, which seemed sent only to lure him on to deeper destruction; it was so well known that he had spent two fortunes and alienated all his friends through his passion for the green cloth, that it would have been the height of absurdity to even suspect him of roguery. Indeed, "Ducie's luck" was a proverbial phrase at the whist-tables of his club. He was not a "turf" man, and had no knowledge of horses beyond that legitimate knowledge which every soldier ought to have. His money had all been lost either at cards or roulette. He was one of the most imperturbable of gamblers. Whatever the varying chances of the game might be, no man ever saw him either elated or depressed: he fought with his vizor down.

No man could be more aware of his one besetting weakness, nor of his inability to conquer it, than was Captain Ducie. When he could no longer muster five pounds to gamble with, he would gamble with five shillings. There was a public-house in Southwark to which, poorly dressed, he sometimes went when his funds were low. Here, unknown to the police, a little quiet gambling for small stakes went on from night to night. But however small might be the amount involved, there was the passion, the excitement, the gambling contagion, precisely as at Homburg or Baden; and these it was that made the very salt of Captain Ducie's life.

About six months before we made his acquaintance he had been compelled to leave his pleasant suite of apartments in New Bond Street, and had, since that time, been the tenant of a shabby bed-room in a shabby little out-of-the-way street. When in town he took his meals at his club, and to that address all letters and papers for him were sent. But of late even the purlieus of his club had become dangerous ground. Round the palatial portal duns seemed to hover and flit mysteriously, so that the task of reaching the secure haven of the smoking-room was one of danger and difficulty; while the return voyage to the shabby little bed-room in the shabby little street could be accomplished in safety only by frequent tacking and much skilful pilotage, to avoid running foul of various rocks and quicksands by the way.

But now, after a six weeks' absence in Scotland, Captain Ducie felt that for a day or two at least he was tolerably safe. He felt like an old fox venturing into the open after the noise of the hunt has died away in the distance, who knows that for a little while he is safe from molestation. How delightful town looked, he thought, after the dull life he had been leading at Stapleton. He had managed to screw another fifty pounds out of Barnstake, and this very evening, the first of his return, he would go to Tom Dawson's rooms and there refresh himself with a little quiet faro or chicken-hazard: very quiet it must of necessity be, unless he saw that it was going to turn out one of his lucky evenings, in which case he would try to "put up" the table and finish with a fortunate coup. But there was one little task that he had set himself to do before going out for the evening, and he proceeded to consider it over while discussing his cup of strong green tea and his strip of dry toast.

To aid him in considering the matter he brought out of an inner pocket the stolen manuscript of M. Platzoff.

While in Scotland, when shut up in his own room of a night, he had often exhumed the MS., and had set himself seriously to the task of deciphering it, only to acknowledge at the end of a terrible half-hour that he was ignominiously beaten. Whereupon he would console himself by saying that such a task was "not in his line," that his brains were not of that pettifogging order which would allow of his sitting down with the patience requisite to master the secret of the figures. To-night, for the twentieth time, he brought out the MS. He again read the prefatory note carefully over, although he could almost have said it by heart, and once more his puzzled eyes ran over the complicated array of figures, till at last, with an impatient "Pish!" he flung the MS. to the other side of the table, and poured out for himself another cup of tea.

"I must send it to Bexell," he said to himself. "If anyone can make it out, he can. And yet I don't like making another man as wise as myself in such a matter. However, there is no help for it in the present case. If I keep the MS. by me till doomsday I shall never succeed in making out the meaning of those confounded figures."

When he had finished his tea he took out his writing desk and wrote as under:

"MY DEAR BEXELL,--I have only just got back from Scotland after an
absence of six weeks. I have brought with me a severe catarrh, a
new plaid, a case of Mountain Dew, and a MS. written in cipher. The
first and second of these articles I retain for my own use. Of the
third I send you half-a-dozen bottles by way of sample: a judicious
imbibition of the contents will be found to be a sovereign remedy
for the Pip and other kindred disorders that owe their origin to a
melancholy frame of mind. The fourth article on my list I send you
bodily. It has been lent to me by a friend of mine who states that
he found it in his muniment chest among a lot of old title deeds,
leases, etc., the first time he waded through them after coming
into possession of his property. Neither he nor any friend to whom
he has shown it can make out its meaning, and I must confess to
being myself one of the puzzled. My friend is very anxious to have
it deciphered, as he thinks it may in some way relate to his
property, or to some secret bit of family history with which it
would be advisable that he should become acquainted. Anyhow, he
gave it to me to bring to town, with a request that I should seek
out someone clever in such things, and try to get it interpreted
for him. Now I know of no one except yourself who is at all expert
in such matters. You, I remember, used to take a delight that to me
was inexplicable in deciphering those strange advertisements which
now and again appear in the newspapers. Let me therefore ask of you
to bring your old skill to bear in the present case, and if you can
make me anything like a presentable translation to send back to my
friend the laird, you will greatly oblige

"Your friend,

"E. DUCIE."

The MS. consisted of three or four sheets of deed-paper fastened together at one corner with silk. The prefatory note was on the first sheet. This first sheet Ducie cut away with his penknife and locked up in his desk. The remaining sheets he sent to his friend Bexell, together with the note which he had written.

Three days later Mr. Bexell returned the sheets with his reply. In order properly to understand this reply it will be necessary to offer to the reader's notice a specimen of the MS. The conclusion arrived at by Mr. Bexell, and the mode by which he reached them, will then be more clearly comprehensible.

The following is a counterpart of the first few lines of the MS.:

253.12 59.25 14.5 96.14 158.49 1.29 465.1 28.53

4 1 6 10 4 12 9 1
-----------------------------------
16.36 151.18 58.7 14.29 368.1 209.18 43.11 1.31 1.1
-----------------------------------
11 3 9 8
29.6 186.9 204.11 86.19 43.16 348.14 196.29 203.5

4 5 10 6 1 5 6 2
186.9 1.31 21.10 143.18 200.6 29.40 408.9 61.5

5 9 4 8 3 12 11 4
209.11 496.1 24.24 28.59 69.39 391.10 60.13 200.1
2 6 4 1 10 11 5 3

The following is Mr. Bexell's reply to his friend Captain Ducie:

"MY DEAR DUCIE,--With this note you will receive back your
confounded MS., but without a translation. I have spent a good deal
of time and labour in trying to decipher it, and the conclusions at
which I have arrived may be briefly laid before you.

1. Each group of three sets of figures represents a word.

2. Each group of two sets of figures--those with a line above and a
line below--represents a letter only.

3. Those letters put together from the point where the double line
begins to the point where it ceases, make up a word.

4. In the composition of this cryptogram _a book_ has been used as
the basis on which to work.

5. In every group of three sets of figures the first set represents
the page of the book; the second, the number of the line on that
page, probably counting from the top; the third the position in
ordinary rotation of the word on that line. Thus you have the
number of the page, the number of the line, and the number of the
word.

6. In the case of the interlined groups of two sets of figures, the
first set represents the number of the page; the second set the
number of the line, probably counting from the top, of which line
the required letter will prove to be the initial one.

7. The words thus spelled out by the interlined groups of double
figures are, in all probability, proper names, or other uncommon
words not to be found in their entirety in the book on which the
cryptogram is based, and consequently requiring to be worked out
letter by letter.

8. The book in question is not a dictionary, nor any other work the
words of which come in alphabetical rotation. It is probably some
ordinary book, which the writer of the cryptogram and the person
for whom it is written have agreed upon beforehand to make use of
as a key. I have no means of judging whether the book in question
is an English or a foreign one, but by it alone, whatever it may
be, can the cryptogram be read.

"Now, my dear Ducie, it would be wearisome for me to describe, and
equally wearisome for you to read, the processes of reasoning by
means of which the above deductions have been arrived at. But in
order to satisfy you that my assumptions are not entirely fanciful
or destitute of sober sense, I will describe to you, as briefly as
may be, the process by means of which I have come to the conclusion
that the book used as the basis of the cryptogram was not a
dictionary or other work in which the words come in alphabetical
rotation; and such a conclusion is very easy of proof.

"In a document so lengthy as the MS. of your friend the Scotch
laird there must of necessity be many repetitions of what may be
called 'indispensable words'--words one or more of which are used
in the composition of almost every long sentence. I allude to such
words as _a_, _an_, _and_, _as_, _of_, _by_, _the_, _their_,
_them_, _these_, _they_, _you_, _I_, _it_, etc. The first thing to
do was to analyse the MS. and classify the different groups of
figures for the purpose of ascertaining the number of repetitions
of any one group. My analysis showed me that these repetitions were
surprisingly few. Forty groups were repeated twice, fifteen three
times, and nine groups four times. Now, according to my
calculation, the MS. contains one thousand two hundred and
eighty-three words. Out of those one thousand two hundred and
eighty-three words there must have been more than the number of
repetitions shown by my analysis, and not of one only, but of
several of what I have called 'indispensable words.' Had a
dictionary been made use of by the writer of the MS. all such
repetitions would have been referred to one particular page, and to
one particular line of that page: that is to say, in every case
where a word repeated itself in the MS. the same group of numbers
would in every case have been its _valeur_. As the repetitions were
so few I could only conclude that some book of an ordinary kind had
been made use of, and that the writer of the cryptogram had been
sufficiently ingenious not to repeat his numbers very frequently in
the case of 'indispensable words,' but had in the majority of cases
given a fresh group of numbers at each repetition of such a word. I
might, perhaps, go further and say that in the majority of cases
where a group of figures is repeated such group refers to some word
less frequently used than any of those specified above, and that
one group was obliged to do duty on two or more occasions, simply
because the writer was unable to find the word more than once in
the book on which his cryptogram was based.

"Having once arrived at the conclusion that some book had been used
as the basis of the cryptogram, my next supposition that each group
of three sets of numbers showed the page of the book, the number of
the line from the top, and the position of the required word in
that line, seemed at once borne out by an analysis of the figures
themselves. Thus, taking the first set of figures in each group, I
found that in no case did they run to a higher number than 500,
which would seem to indicate that the basis-book was limited to
that number of pages. The second set of figures ran to no higher
number than 60, which would seem to limit the lines on each page to
that number. The third set of figures in no case yielded a higher
number than 12, which numerals, according to my theory, would
indicate the maximum number of words in each line. Thus you have at
once (if such information is of any use to you) a sort of a key to
the size of the required volume.

"I think I have now written enough, my dear Ducie, to afford you
some idea of the method by means of which my conclusions have been
arrived at. If you wish for further details I will supply them--but
by word of mouth, an it be all the same to your honour; for this
child detests letter-writing, and has taken a vow that if he reach
the end of his present pen-and-ink venture in safety, he will never
in time to come devote more than two pages of cream note to even
the most exacting of friends: the sequitur of which is, that if you
want to know more than is here set down you must give the writer a
call, when you shall be talked to to your heart's content.

"Your exhausted friend,

"GEO. BEXELL."

Captain Ducie had too great a respect for the knowledge of his friend Bexell in matters like the one under review to dream for one moment of testing the validity of any of his conclusions. He accepted the whole of them as final. Having got the conclusions themselves, he cared nothing as to the processes by which they had been deduced: the details interested him not at all. Consequently he kept out of the way of his friend, being in truth considerably disgusted to find that, so far as he was himself concerned, the affair had ended in a fiasco. He could not look upon it in any other light. It was utterly out of the range of probability that he should ever succeed in ascertaining on what particular book the cryptogram was based, and no other knowledge was now of the slightest avail. He was half inclined to send back the MS. anonymously to Platzoff, as being of no further use to himself; but he was restrained by the thought that there was just a faint chance that the much-desired volume might turn up during his forthcoming visit to Bon Repos--that even at the eleventh hour the key might be found.

He was terribly chagrined to think that the act of genteel petty larceny, by which he had lowered himself more in his own eyes than he would have cared to acknowledge, had been so absolutely barren of results. That portion of his moral anatomy which he would have called his conscience pricked him shrewdly now and again, but such pricks had their origin in the fact of his knavery having been unsuccessful. Had his wrong-doing won for him such a prize as he had fondly hoped to gain by its means, Conscience would have let her rusted spear hang unheeded on the wall, and beyond giving utterance now and then to a faint whisper in the dead of night, would have troubled him not at all.

It was some time in the middle of the night, about a week after Bexell had sent him back the papers, that he awoke suddenly and completely, and there before him, as clearly as though it had been written in letters of fire on the black wall, he saw the title of the wished-for book. It was the book mentioned by Platzoff in his prefatory note: _The Confessions of Parthenio the Mystic_. The knowledge had come to him like a revelation. How stupid he must have been never to have thought of it before! That night he slept no more.

Next morning he went to one of the most famous bookdealers in the metropolis. The book inquired for by Ducie was not known to the man. But that did not say that there was no such work in existence. Through his agents at home and abroad inquiry should be made, and the result communicated to Captain Ducie. Therewith the latter was obliged to content himself. Three days later came a pressing note of invitation from Platzoff.