a month dragged slowly by. i saw dorothy daily, and we were happy in each other’s love. she had resumed her post of typewriter at an insurance office in moorgate street, and on her return home would generally spend each evening with me. robert usher continued to live with me in keppel street and proved a most entertaining companion, and philip reilly, bitterly disappointed, had also returned to the bank, while job seal had sailed from cardiff with his usual cargo of steam coal for malta.
worn out with all the confusion, we had all of us given up hope of ever discovering the treasure, and my chief regret was that we had played such havoc with the interior of caldecott manor. what the landlord’s claim for dilapidations would be i dreaded to think.
usher was, of course, a typical adventurer. his whole life had been spent upon the sea, and yet, curiously enough, his speech was never interlarded with nautical phrases like seal’s. some men, however long they are at sea, never become “salts,” and robert usher was one of them. over our pipes he often related to me his exciting adventures as slave in the interior of morocco, and times without number gave me vivid descriptions of the old seahorse as he found it held beneath the clear water by the ledge of rock. at first it had puzzled me greatly why the water had not entered the cabins when the flood closed over the vessel, but both seal and i recollected how, after hacking away the growth of weeds and shells from the deck, the men had found the hatches covered tightly with a kind of waterproof tarpauling, which had evidently been placed there by those on board to prevent the heavy sea that washed the decks from entering the cabins. the commander and his officers had closed themselves down tightly, trusting to the one officer and his men on deck to manage the ship, but, alas! they had all perished.
at first it had seemed utterly incredible that the ship had retained its buoyancy all those years, and that the water had never entered; yet it was evident that the decomposition of the bodies of those unfortunate victims had generated gases that had increased its buoyancy, and that, being held within the river bar, there were no waves to beat and break the thick, green glass of the tightly-secured windows. had the vessel sunk in deep water, the pressure of the latter would, of course, have broken the glass at once, but resting on that soft, sandy bed, only just submerged, it had been preserved quite intact through all those years, a tribute to the stability of the stout oak and teak of which our forefathers constructed ships in queen elizabeth’s day.
i introduced robert usher to the secretary of the royal geographical society, and he was invited to deliver a lecture before the fellows describing the interior of morocco, about which so very little is known even in these days. his wanderings in the anti-atlas and the jeb grus to figig, his captivity in aksabi and with the warlike riffs, and the information he gave regarding the power of the latter and the weakness of the sultan’s army were extremely interesting, and were afterwards printed in the journal of the society as a permanent record. his map of the sources of the muluya river, on jeb aiahin, in the great atlas, was of considerable value, and was afterwards marked on the map of morocco. it will, indeed, be found upon the revised maps of that country now published.
in the privacy of my sitting-room he related many stories regarding the man known as black bennett. as far as i could discover, the latter had led a curious double life for years. he possessed a small but comfortable house out at epping, where he posed as a retired sea captain, but now and then he would disappear, sometimes for a whole year, occupying his time in depredations on the sea. the common belief in england is that piracy is dead, but it was certainly not so a dozen years ago, when chinese waters were not watched by japanese and european war vessels as they now are. to commit acts of piracy in the yellow seas would nowadays be a difficult matter.
about harding, the man who had so cleverly copied the documents i had taken from the seahorse, usher told me a good deal. formerly a professor at cambridge, he had committed some fraud, and fearing arrest had, it seemed, escaped to sea. an adventurer of the same type as bennett, the pair became inseparable, and harding had assisted the former in many of his most daring schemes.
so the weeks went on, autumn drew to a close, and i began to glance at the lancet anxiously each week to ascertain where a locum tenens was wanted, for, even though compelled to go to the country and leave my love alone and at the mercy of that quartette of unscrupulous scoundrels, i saw myself compelled to earn my living.
i recollected that long and tantalizing list of gold and jewels in the vellum book which i had given again into mr. staffurth’s hands to re-examine, and sighed that they were not mine that i might marry dorothy and give her a fitting and comfortable home.
one day i received quite an unexpected visit from mr. staffurth. as soon as he entered my room i saw by his flushed cheeks and excited manner that something unusual had occurred. he had even forgotten to remove his big spectacles, as he always did before he went out.
“it’s briefly this,” he said in reply to my eager demand. “the day before yesterday, while going through that vellum book again, there were two things that struck me for the first time. the first you will recollect, namely, that in the covers and on various folios is written in brown ink, very faded, and at a different date than when the book was first compiled, the numerical three. there are no fewer than nine huge threes in different parts of the book, but none of them have anything whatever to do with the context. the mystery of that sign puzzled me. it seemed as though it were placed there with some distinct object, for each was carefully drawn, and so boldly that it was evidently intended to arrest attention.”
“i recollect quite distinctly,” i said, interested. “i pointed them out to you one day, but they did not then appear to strike you as curious.”
“no,” answered the old man, “i was too engrossed in deciphering the manuscript at the time. but the second discovery i have made is still more curious, for i find in the back of the cover, which, as you know, is lined with vellum, there is written in the same hand as that which penned the book itself the curious entry: ‘3eliz:43.5.213.’ at first i was much puzzled by it, but after a good deal of reflection i disposed of the threes at each end among those in the body of the book, and read the entry as a date, namely, the twenty-first day of may in the forty-third year of the reign of elizabeth, or 1591. this aroused my curiosity, and i lost no time in searching at the record office for any documents bearing that date. i spent all yesterday there, and at last my search among the indices was rewarded, for i found an entry which indicated something of interest preserved among the oblata rolls. i have seen it, and i want you to come to chancery lane and assist me in copying it.”
“when? now?” i cried in excitement.
“certainly. i have a cab at the door.”
on our drive staffurth told me little regarding his find, declaring that i should be allowed to inspect it in due course. you may, however, imagine my own state of mind, for i saw how highly excited the old expert was himself, although he strove not to show it.
arrived at the new record office, staffurth, who was well known there as a searcher, filled up a request form for no. 26,832 of the oblata rolls, and in due course an attendant handed to us at the desk, whereat we had taken seats, a small roll of rather coarse parchment, to which were attached three old red seals and a tablet bearing the catalogue number.
staffurth unrolled it before me and exhibited the three signatures at foot. they were those of “clement wollerton,” “john ffreeman,” and “bartholomew da schorno.”
my eager eyes devoured it. near the foot was sketched a strange device, very much like a plan, for in the centre of three unequal triangles was a small circle, and with them certain cabalistic signs.
“you see it is unfortunately in cipher,” staffurth pointed out. “but it no doubt has something to do with the treasure.”
“but we have the key,” i exclaimed. “it is written in the vellum book.”
he shook his white head, saying: “no. i have already tried it. our key is useless. this is entirely different.”
“it may be a copy of the document sold by knutton,” i cried. “possibly it has been placed among the government records for safety, in case the knuttons should lose the one entrusted to their care.”
“possibly,” was his answer. “but our key to the cipher gives us absolutely no assistance. what i want you to do is to copy it. take that pen and write down the letters at my dictation.”
i obeyed, and with care printed in capitals as he read them off as follows?—
hpsewxoqhwhpbarlheowc mrs owcwpasroobk lpc axhahbxho bow rso bowuac sop ksrsebbnk pua cjooalajofczxho okysop porcju o lp brripcpco balcjo olprollpo sb oo wrcrr xha cfa xh bsjsqom eclsxispbncxcmoholewxio ehobi ob lbs
there were some forty lines, all as utterly unintelligible as the extract given above. the parchment was yellow, and here and there were damp stains where the ink had faded until the deciphering of the capitals was a matter of some difficulty. but, with the practised eye of an expert, old mr. staffurth read off the rather difficult italian hand just as easily as a newspaper.
he showed me the great difference in the english hand in elizabeth’s day to the italian, and we concluded that it was in the autography of bartholomew da schorno himself. but, possessing no key to the cipher, neither of us was hopeful of reading the statement contained therein. i could not help thinking that the key in the vellum book would be of some use to us, but my friend was quite positive that it had nothing whatever to do with the present cryptic writing.
the crisp parchment was folded at the bottom, and through this fold three slits were cut, upon which pieces of parchment like broad tapes were threaded. upon each was a seal, one of them that of bartholomew, bearing the leopard rampant.
the curious device near the end of the document i copied as exactly as i could, and when, after staffurth had puzzled over the yellow screed for an hour, we were about to hand it back to the attendant, the assistant-keeper approached my friend and, greeting him, asked?—
“what do you find of interest in that roll, mr. staffurth? it has been in request by several people during the past day or two.”
“has any one else copied it?” i demanded breathlessly.
“yes. there were two men looking at it three days ago, and they took a copy.”
“can you describe them?” asked staffurth, dumfounded, for, like me, he feared that we had been again forestalled.
“they were fair, both of them. one was evidently well-versed in pal?ography. he was a thin, tall man, with a slight impediment in his speech.”
harding had been there, without a doubt!
“how did they discover it?” inquired staffurth.
“by the unusual name—italian, isn’t it? the roll is catalogued under that. you found it in the same manner, didn’t you?”
“yes,” the old expert responded. “but i suppose no one has ever discovered the key to the cipher?”
“no. lost centuries ago, i expect.”
“unless that document of knutton’s contains it,” i remarked to my friend.
“ah!” he gasped. “i never thought of that! this may be the absolute record with the plan, and the knutton parchment the key to the cipher.”
“if so, then we’ve lost it! we are too late,” i remarked, my heart sinking.
“professor campbell, of edinburgh, was much interested in it, and tried to make it out two years ago, but utterly failed,” was the assistant-keeper’s remark, and a few moments later, after we had handed the roll back to the attendant, he left us, and i returned with staffurth to his house in clapham.
well versed as staffurth was in the art of cryptic writing as practised during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, he utterly failed to decipher what i had copied. the signatures alone were in plain script—all the rest in cipher.
i took a copy of the document for myself, and through nearly a fortnight spent my leisure in trying, with the aid of the key in the vellum book, to decipher the first line, all, however, in vain. the cryptogram was a complicated one in any case. staffurth consulted two men he knew who were experts in such things, but both gave it up as a private cipher that could not be read without a key.
one night, however, while lying in bed reflecting, as all of us do when our minds are troubled, that oft-repeated numerical three suddenly occurred to me. could it be possible that it was the key to the cipher? this idea became impressed upon me, so i rose and, going into my sitting-room, lit my lamp, and there and then commenced to work upon it.
after several trials in taking three as the key-number, i at last made the experiment of taking c for a, and so on, writing the third letter from the one required. the alphabet i wrote then read as follows?—
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
cfiloruxadgjmpsvybehknqtwz
then, with my heart beating wildly, i turned to decipher the document, but even then i found it useless. indeed, i spent the remainder of that night in vainly trying to solve the puzzle.
that same afternoon i went to staffurth’s, told him of my inspiration, and showed him my alphabet. adjusting his big spectacles, he regarded it for a long time in silence, but i saw that, to him, mine was a new and rather striking idea. he took a sheet of paper and tried time after time to make sense of that first long line of bewildering capitals, acting upon the supposition that three was the number.
suddenly the old man cried excitedly, turning to me?—
“i’ve got it! at last! see! the golden number is three. your alphabet is the correct one, only the letters are reversed three by three. take these first six, and then reverse them. you have sp hxwe, which by aid of your alphabet reads: ‘on thys’——the secret, whatever it is, is ours—ours!”
