Читать книгу The Chinese Jar - Fergus Hume - Страница 5

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Fanks was not the man to let grass grow under his feet. He knew from experience the value of time, and the importance of securing traces of a crime while they were still fresh. In the present instance the presumed murder had taken place, strictly speaking, on Friday morning, the inquest on Monday afternoon, and it was now Tuesday night. By setting his quick wits to work he had already, within this short period, hit on a clue likely to solve the mystery, and, on leaving Crate, went to his club in order to follow it up by finding the cipher.

As has before been stated, Fanks was a man of good family, and followed the profession of a detective, as one for which he was particularly adapted by nature. At the same time he was unwilling to cut himself off entirely from the station in life he was entitled to occupy by virtue of his birth, so solved the problem by leading a double existence. In Scotland Yard he was known solely as Octavius Fanks, the clever detective; but in clubland he assumed the rôle of Octavius Rixton, idler and man-about-town. By good fortune and much dexterity he succeeded in keeping these two characters distinctly apart, and no one ever identified Rixton with Fanks, or Fanks with Rixton. In this latter character he often heard remarks about his detective self which amused him mightily, and were not without their uses, seeing they enabled Fanks to benefit through the experiences of Rixton. The members of that aristocratic club, The Chesterfield, would have been horrified had they known of his real profession, but so cleverly had Rixton concealed his identity with Fanks, that no one dreamed of connecting the gentleman of leisure and the expert detective. It was as well that this ignorance prevailed, for many of the club’s members would have felt uncomfortable had they known how conversant was Mr. Octavius Rixton with the secrets of their lives. Asmodeus, unroofer of houses, is a peculiarly detestable fiend.

On his way to the club the detective dropped into his chambers, and there doffed the tweed suit of Fanks for the evening dress of Rixton. He went up his stairs a somewhat negligently attired individual, and came down a West-end masher, though his face was too clever, and his conversation too brilliant to successfully enable him to ape that character. At The Chesterfield he made an excellent dinner, then ordering himself some strong coffee, went to work on his enigma. What he wanted to discover in the first instance was the special newspaper in which the cipher would probably appear. His imagination assisted him to select the right one at the outset of his search.

“This man,” argued Fanks to himself, “this man was a gentleman—I could tell that from his appearance. His friends and relations, being of good social standing, probably take in the Morning Post, that being the aristocratic organ peculiarly affected by the gentry. If, therefore, he wanted to communicate with a member of his family, or with a friend in his own rank of life, he would certainly advertise in that paper. Good! Let us look at the Morning Post.

Selecting a file of that newspaper, he carefully examined the numbers, dating backwards from the day of the murder. As he surmised, the cipher duly appeared in the agony column, and he found both the request for a meeting and the affirmative reply thereto. On examining the cipher—solved by using Poe’s key—he also discovered sufficient evidence to show him that he was right in his conjecture concerning the presence of a second person, but who that person was he could not guess. The ciphers both ended with the same name—at least he assumed it was a name—but beyond the fact that it appeared to be a Chinese appellation, he was unable to fathom its meaning. The name was “Tu Soh.”

The puzzling out of this problem afforded him employment for the whole evening, but by the time he went to bed he was as far off guessing the meaning of “Tu Soh” as ever. It appeared to be Chinese, but whether it referred to a man, a thing, an event, or a religion, he could not make up his mind. Ultimately he wrote a letter on the subject to an omniscient friend of his, who knew all kinds of stray facts, and, having posted this, went to bed at midnight.

Next morning he slipped into the clothes of Fanks and went off to the office of the Morning Post, where he procured copies of the newspapers in which the ciphers had appeared. Armed with these credentials of his astuteness, he sought out Crate, whom he was fortunate enough to find at his lodgings in Fleet Street.

“Halloo, Mr. Fanks,” cried Crate, when he saw his rival, “have you given it up?”

“On the contrary, I am more convinced than ever that I am right.”

Crate, who was busy with his breakfast, laid down his knife and fork to stare in astonishment at his visitor.

“What!” he ejaculated, in a sceptical tone, “is all that nonsense you told me yesterday true?”

“A goodly part of it,” replied Fanks, taking a chair and producing his newspapers. “I have found those ciphers.”

“Same kind as are in that book?”

“Precisely! Here they are.”

After glancing at the cryptographs, Crate resumed his breakfast with a grunt of discontent, being genuinely disappointed at the success achieved by Fanks. Much as he would have liked to have disbelieved the information, he could not doubt the evidence of his own eyes. The ciphers were assuredly there, set forth in the same characters as were in the book of Poe’s, shown to him by Fanks on the previous day.

“How do I know you did not insert these yourself?” he said doubtfully, with a cunning look in his little eyes.

“Look at the dates,” rejoined Fanks, exasperated by this obstinate blindness, “the murder took place, on the twentieth of June. The first of these papers is dated the fourteenth, the second is published on the eighteenth of the same month. Considering these ciphers appeared before the crime was committed, you can hardly accuse me of playing such a trick. I do not pretend to be a prophet.”

Crate, unwilling as he was to be convinced, could not but admit the force of this reasoning, and, having finished his breakfast, concealed his chagrin at being baulked by closely examining the cryptographs.

“What can you make out of this jumble?” he asked irritably.

“I can make sense out of it. It is perfectly easy to do so, for Poe gives the key to its solution in his story of ‘The Gold Bug.’ Look at this.”

He pointed to the longer cipher of the two which was published on the fourteenth of June, and ran as follows:—

“I can’t make top or tail of it,” growled Crate crossly, after a vain endeavour to extract a meaning out of this confusion.

“Probably not, seeing you are holding it upside down, said Fanks dryly; “as a matter of fact it is not a difficult cipher. Even without a key I could have solved it but as all these symbols have their alphabetic equivalents in Poe’s story, the solution is easy. Shall I tell you at once what this cipher means, or explain the solution in detail?”—

“Explain it—if you can,” replied Crate, still clinging to the belief that Fanks was trying to hoodwink him with pretended knowledge.

“Nothing can be easier, but you must give your closest attention to my explanation, else you may lose the meaning. Now these symbols stand for letters of the alphabet, and to what letter each corresponds we must find out.

Crate began to grow interested in the discussion. Curiosity is the most powerful of passions, and he was intensely curious to know in what way Fanks had worked out this apparently insoluble riddle. He fancied he would have but to listen to a clear explanation from Fanks, in which belief he was quite wrong. Fanks had no intention of doing all the work, and forthwith submitted Crate to a close examination, so that he might clearly understand the difficulties of cipher-reading. Drawing his chair close to that of Crates, he produced a pencil and a sheet of paper in order to set forth the explanation in the clearest fashion.

“What letter occurs most frequently in the English language?” asked Fanks in an inquisitorial manner.

“S,” responded Crate, after a few moments’ consideration.

“By no means. S is of comparatively rare occurrence.. Vowels predominate most. Now the field to select from is narrowed by that statement. What vowel occurs most frequently?”

“A.”

“No.”

“E.”

“Yes! You could scarcely fail to have hit it in the long run. If ‘e’ had failed you would have tried ‘i,’ and so on through the vowels. Now ‘e’ occurring most frequently in the English language it naturally follows that the symbol of which it is an equivalent occurs oftenest in this cipher.

“8 is most prominent in the cipher.”

“Good! ‘8,’ as you see, occurs seven times. Assuming, therefore, that ‘e’ is the correlative, let us set it down as follows:

That will be enough, as there are no more eights. Now the predominating word in which ‘e’ usually occurs is ‘the.’ See then if you can pick it out by taking the two symbols preceding 8. You can, of course, leave out the double eight as we want ‘the’ not ‘thee.’ ”

Crate took the first three symbols that came to hand and set out ; 9 8 as “the.”

“That must he wrong,” said Fanks, quickly; “for, assuming ; to be ‘t’ and ‘9’ to mean ‘h,’ if you read from the beginning of the cipher you set ‘h e e t h e,’ which means nothing. Try again.”

Crate wrote; 4 8 as ‘t h e.’

“You can see by this,” explained Fanks, “that ; stands for ‘t,’ as it occurs twice in such close proximity to ‘8.’ Let us therefore assume for the present that it is so, and set it down. Give me the pencil.”

Fanks set down the letters thus, leaving blanks for the undiscovered ciphers—. e e t. e. tt h e, e e., e.

“Now then,” he resumed, pausing for a moment. “What word can you form by adding one letter to ’e et?”’

“Feet.”

“If that were so, ‘9 8’ would mean ‘f e,’ which is absurd. Guess again.”

“Fleet! Greet! Sheet!”

“All words with two letters before ’e e t.’ Confound it, Crate, you are stupid. As the cipher is a message, can’t you guess the missing letter?”

“‘M’ meet.”

“Of course. ‘9’ stands for ‘m,’

‘9 8 8; 98’ means ‘meet me.’ There, you see, we have the clue to the solution of the problem. We have discovered so much, and also that 4 indicates ‘h.’ It is no use explaining further, as anyone could now work out the cipher. We know, however, that, the meeting was for Thursday night, so see if you can pick out those words.”

“I don’t know that the meeting was for Thursday night.”

“Yes, you do,” cried Fanks, exasperated by his stupidity. “Good heavens, man, use your brains a little. The victim was certainly found dead on Friday morning, but if, as I suspect, the meeting was arranged for midnight, the words used would surely be ‘Thursday night.’”

“Yes, it might be so.”

“It is so, I tell you. Go on! Find out Thursday night. There is a ‘t h’ and an ‘h t.’ Remember the symbols of ‘t h e,’ and work it out on that basis.”

“I suppose I have to find; ‘4’ or ‘4—”

Fanks snatched the paper from the hands of this incapable individual with an ejaculation of anger.

“The idea of you calling yourself a detective. You know absolutely nothing. You see no further than your nose. Can’t you solve a simple problem like this?”

“I don’t call it simple!”

“Because you have no brains. See! I shall write out the symbols and their equivalent letters. Then you may be able to get the idea of the cipher into your thick head.”

Crate greatly resented this plain speaking, but Fanks, silencing him by a peremptory gesture, wrote out his explanation:

“Now see if you can fill up the blank.”

“9 stands for ‘m,’” ruminated Crate slowly, “6 for ‘i,’ but what is the cross?”

“Can’t you guess! What letter is required to complete the word ‘mi—night?’”

“‘D,’ midnight.”

“Wonderful,” exclaimed Fanks, jeeringly. “You have actually found out something. Now by taking these letters you can easily work out the rest of the problem. No? It is no use your trying, Crate, I don’t want to be here all day. This is the meaning of the ‘cryptograph.’”

He wrote:

“Meet me at the Needle Thursday midnight, Tu Soh.”

“Oh!” cried Crate, opening his eyes to their widest extent, “so that is the meaning. But how do you know this refers to the Embankment Obelisk?”

Fanks suppressed a strong inclination to swear.

“What other monument in London is termed the ‘Needle’ save that Obelisk?”

“I suppose you are right,” said Crate, giving in with an envious sigh; “it is certainly wonderful how you have worked out the cipher. No doubt some person did meet the dead man at Cleopatra’s Needle on the night in question, but this does not argue a crime.”

“Seeing that the victim was found dead immediately after the meeting, that he died of poison, that there was no bottle, phial or cup in his possession to carry the poison, and many other evidences, I think it does argue a crime.”

“And what does ‘Tu Soh’ mean?” asked Crate, abandoning one objection to fix on another; “it means nothing.”

“It must mean something, else it would not be there. The cipher-writer would waste neither time nor money in putting in useless words. What it means I know not, at the present moment, but I shall find out.”

“Do you attach much importance to it?”

“So much importance that I believe that the whole secret of the crime is contained in those twice repeated words.”

“What do you mean by twice repeated?”

“Look at this second cipher,” said Fanks, reading it out aloud—

which means, ‘Yes! Tu Soh.’ The person for whom the cipher was intended replies that he will come to the meeting-place, and repeats in his cryptograph the strange words ‘Tu Soh.’ Both of them must have attached some significance to these words, and therefore each in his turn used them.”

“Are the words English?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Might it not be the phonetic spelling for Madame Tussaud?”

Fanks looked at him derisively.

“Why use phonetic spelling in a cipher? Why put an enigma inside an enigma?—“No: ‘Tu Soh’ does not mean Tussaud. It is Chinese.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I have a strong suspicion that it is so.”

“On what grounds?”

“I haven’t got any special grounds. The words sound to me to be of the Chinese tongue, and therefore I assume for the present that they are so. I may be wrong, but I shall know their meaning to-day.”

“Who can inform you of their meaning?”

“A friend of mine called Mankers. He knows everything; that is, while ignorant of every-day things, he is acquainted with all kinds of recondite knowledge. ‘Tu Soh’ belongs to this category, so he may know the meaning of the word.”

“The word!”

“Why not?” said Fanks, calmly putting the newspapers in his pocket; “it may be one word Tusoh, or two words Tu Soh. I am quite ignorant of its meaning.”

“It can’t be Chinese, at all events,” contradicted Crate, who had no grounds for making this captious remark.

“It may not be Chinese, certainly. As I tell you, I have no reason for such a belief other than the sound of the word or words. But why are you certain it is not Chinese?”

“No English person would use the Chinese language.”

“I don’t know so much about that. There is a story attached to these talismanic words. They were not used by the murderer and his victim without some reason.”

“Well!” said Crate, tired of this discussion, “it seems to me that you are not much further on than you were before.”

“There I disagree with you. I have succeeded in establishing the reason of the book of Poe’s tales being in the pocket of the dead man. Moreover I have proved that he corresponded in cipher with an unknown person, who promised to meet him on the night appointed. I think all this does away with your idea of suicide.”

“It complicates matters, certainly. But these ciphers don’t give you the names of either the murderer or his victim, so I don’t see how you are going to identify the one or the other.”

“It is a difficult task, certainly, but I hope to identify them by finding out the meaning of ‘Tu Soh.’”

“And how are you going to find out the meaning?”

“I hope Mankers will do that. I expect a note from him to-day. Even if he does not know himself, he may put me on the track of some person better informed.”

“I wish you all success!” said Crate, who was now, against his will, beginning to believe in Fanks. “When shall I see you again?”

“As soon as I have found out the meaning of ‘Tu Soh.’ ”