CHAPTER XVITHE THIRTEENTH LETTER
Guy Trenholmraised his head. “May I keep this little paper in my safe?” he asked, taking it up. “I will return it at any time should you require it.”
Miriam snapped her locket shut and slipped it inside her gown.
“The paper is far safer with you than with me,” she replied, and sat quietly in her chair until Trenholm returned from placing it in a compartment of his safe. “It is incredible that Paul Abbott should have been the American soldier to whom Uncle Dmitri intrusted the diamond.”
“But not impossible,” retorted Trenholm. “And the law of chance brought you to his bedside just before his death. How was it you failed to recognize him?”
“I never really saw the American soldier’s face.” She sat back in a more comfortable position, conscious, for the first time, of complete fatigue. Recounting the tragic death of her Russian relatives and her own suffering, even to Trenholm’s sympatheticears, was a severe strain. “We had no window in our hovel; only the faint light from a candle. I believe he wore a beard, but I was too ill to care, at the moment, what he looked like. My uncle trusted him and that was enough. Five years have passed since then.”
“I understand,” exclaimed Trenholm sympathetically, then with a tenaciousness which was part of the man, he added: “Was there nothing familiar about Paul’s appearance?”
She shook her head. “No. I have no doubt that illness had changed his appearance, Mr. Trenholm, to some extent. But with the Paltoff diamond far from my thoughts, and looking upon Mr. Abbott simply as a patient, if he had seemed even vaguely familiar I would have attributed it to the same feeling one has in passing a stranger in the street whom one might have met somewhere. You know the sensation.”
Trenholm nodded in agreement. “Have you made no effort to trace the Paltoff diamond?”
“I was desperately ill for months, Mr. Trenholm; and it was fully a year before I regained anything like my old strength. There was no one I could rely upon—no one in whom I had confidence. I tried, however, to interest one man, a lawyer,” her lips tightened, “that experience taught me a lessonI shall never forget.” She turned scarlet and for the first time dropped her eyes before Trenholm’s glance. She missed the sudden hot wrath which kindled in his eyes; a second later and he had himself in hand again.
“Can you describe the diamond, Miss Ward?” he asked. “And tell me its value?”
“It is a diamond of astonishing purity, of about forty-nine carats, and has an extraordinary play and brilliance,” answered Miriam. “Though much smaller in size than other world-famous diamonds, it is claimed by experts to be an absolutely flawless gem. I believe it is worth in the neighborhood of $200,000 and possibly more.”
A low whistle escaped Trenholm. “A frightful invitation to crime!” he ejaculated.
“And Boris Zybinn was in Canada and in communication with Paul Abbott,” pointed out Miriam slowly. “Mr. Trenholm, I know a little of the evil accomplished by that renegade Russian. There is some significance in those letters of his to Mr. Abbott, innocent as they may appear. I willneverbelieve otherwise!”
Trenholm leaned forward and, picking up the letters, laid them in Miriam’s hands. “Read them over carefully,” he begged. “I am open to conviction.But look here, Miss Ward, why didn’t Zybinn come down to Abbott’s Lodge and visit Paul and then steal the diamond? He might have done that without arousing suspicion. Why write letters about it?”
“Possibly he feared arrest and extradition for a former crime if he came into the United States,” suggested Miriam, and Trenholm straightened up abruptly.
“There may be something in that idea,” he admitted. “Read the letters aloud, Miss Ward.”
Obediently Miriam opened first one and then another. Except for the precision of the language used, none were out of the ordinary. Each letter began: “My dear Abbott,” and closed with the conventional, “Yours sincerely,” and the signature, “Boris Zybinn.” The contents of each referred only to agriculture. Miriam dropped the last one in her lap with a despondent gesture; then her expression brightened.
“You haven’t looked at the unopened letter,” she exclaimed. “See, you have left it there on the table.”
Trenholm picked up the envelope and examined it carefully. “It is just like the others in appearance,” he declared. “It must have come several daysbefore Paul’s murder,” examining the postmark. “Corbin, however, can answer that question.”
“I wonder why Mr. Abbott did not read it?”
“Too ill, perhaps—especially if he judged the letter unimportant.”
Trenholm hunted about on his table until he found a letter opener and, using it dextrously, succeeded in raising the flap without breaking the seal. Taking care not to crease or otherwise mar the envelope, he drew out the folded sheet and read aloud the brief message it contained:
Sunnymeade FarmToronto, CanadaJanuary 22, 1923
Dear Abbott:
Sorry to learn that you are not well. Perhaps a change may do you good. Why not run up here for a week or two? I will be very happy to put you up if the Nashs are not at their place.
Chisholm says the two grays are seventeen hands and entirely sound. Would advise offer of a thousand for the pair.
Yours in haste,Boris Zybinn.
Trenholm tossed down the letter in disgust. “Nothing to that!” he exclaimed. “They have fine horses in Canada, and Paul purchased several last year, and sold them at a good figure to one of ourneighbors. What is it, Miss Ward?” observing her changed expression.
Without answering, Miriam pulled her chair around so that she sat facing the table. Picking up the letters she spread each one, with its envelope, before her, and slowly counted them.
“Eleven,” she explained, “and this burnt envelope is twelve, and this last letter makes a total of thirteenunimportantletters.”
“What then?” asked Trenholm, struck by her manner. Going around the table he stood looking over her shoulder.
“Have you noticed the postage?” she queried.
“Surely. They are Canadian stamps.”
“Isn’t postage from Canada three cents for first-class mail?”
“Yes.”
“Then why does each letter bearfive one-centstamps?” glancing swiftly upward. “Boris Zybinn must have known the correct postage required.”
“Perhaps he thought that his letters weighed more than one ounce.”
“If so, the postage would have been double, orsixcents,” she remarked quickly. “Five cents would not have covered it. Besides, I don’t believe that one of these letters weighs over an ounce.”
Trenholm reached over and picked up his letterscales. “Try one,” he suggested, and, as she did so, “Not quite one ounce. Try the next.”
Miriam laid each letter on the scales, first putting it back in its proper envelope; not one was above one ounce in weight!
“They all come under the three-cent postage rate,” she exclaimed. “Any one writing as many as thirteen letters to one correspondent would have found out that fact, especially a person living in Canada.”
Trenholm considered Miriam and then the letters in silence for a minute. Picking up the thirteenth letter, which Miriam had brought to him unopened that afternoon, he took out the sheet of paper and held the envelope up to the light and studied it intently. As he lowered it, Miriam caught sight of his face and sprang to her feet.
“You have found something?”
“Yes, thanks to your persistency!” And she colored warmly at the enthusiasm in his voice and manner. “See here!” and Trenholm again held the envelope up to the light and at an angle so that she could see it as well as he. “The edges of the stamps appear cut in a wedge shape in certain places, and there are several pinholes through two of the stamps. The cuts do not appear to result from the careless tearing off of the stamps from the sheet, and consequentdamage to the perforations, but are apparently made with scissors.”
“You are right,” agreed Miriam. “And when the letter has no light behind it, they do not show at all against the white ground of the envelope. Is it a code?”
Trenholm twirled his mustache in perplexity. “The cuts appear at irregular intervals,” he replied. “They seem to be hastily made and are not absolutely uniform. I wonder—” he broke off abruptly, stood in thought for several seconds, then going over to the book shelves which lined one of the walls, searched about until he located several books and carried them back to the table where Miriam stood examining the thirteenth envelope.
“Strangely enough,” he explained, “Paul’s father gave me his stamp collection—a fine one—as Paul never had the craze for collecting stamps even as a boy, and being a human magpie I keep everything bestowed upon me,” with a quick boyish smile which softened wonderfully his usually self-repressed expression. “I hope luck is with me and I still have tucked inside one of these albums a perforation gauge.”
“A what?”
“Perforations, Miss Ward, have a definite position on each stamp with relation to one another,though they may be irregular on two separate stamps,” went on Trenholm. “In other words, the distance between perforations is always the same, though they may vary a fractional part of a line in their position at the corners.”
“And the gauge,” she prompted, as he paused.
“Is used to measure the number of perforations to the inch,” Trenholm spoke slowly, to be sure that she understood his meaning. “By applying a perforation gauge to the edge of a stamp, if the position of one perforation is known, that of all the others will be indicated.”
Trenholm paused and opened one of the stamp albums. He turned the pages rapidly, and found the stamp he wanted, but no gauge. Taking up the other album he shook it over the table. A small shower of loose stamps, several odd envelopes and a piece of bristol board fell on the table. With a relieved exclamation, Trenholm clutched the perforation gauge, brushing the stamps aside.
“Here is a Canadian stamp of the same issue,” he said. “Paul wrote me when he was last in Canada, and I kept the stamp. Let’s see—”
Miriam waited with absorbed attention while he applied the gauge to the stamp. When he looked up his eyes were shining.
“The stamp has exactly fifty-two perforations,” he announced. “Can it be a coincidence or a—”
“A what?”
He looked at her without speaking for a moment. “The number is just twice that of the letters of the alphabet.” Trenholm drew in his breath. “I have come to your way of thinking, Miss Ward. It must be a code, and it may be that two alphabets are registered on each stamp, the cuts corresponding to the letters according to the number of the particular perforation affected, counting from one corner of the stamp.”
Miriam, who had been following his explanation with close attention, nodded her head wisely.
“I see,” she broke in. “That would explain any irregularity in the cuts, because for coding it would be sufficient to indicate the perforation intended to be cut, without making a mark of a definite character, and with this gauge of yours the number of the perforation which has been cut would be recognized at once.”
“Exactly,” he answered. “Without a gauge there would be great difficulty in determining the number of the perforation, because the cut might seem to create new indentations if carelessly made.” Trenholm stopped and took up the envelope of the thirteenthletter and applied his gauge to the left-hand stamp, and Miriam, pencil in hand, assisted him.
Trenholm counted clockwise. “Five perforations are damaged,” he declared, “numbers 8, 20, 23, 27, 30. Now, if the code is based on a double alphabet, these would become 8, 20, 23, 1, 3, or the letters H, T, W, A, C. How are the letters to be arranged, Miss Ward?”
She looked at her pad, where she had jotted down the letters as well as the figures. “There is only one vowel,” she said. “It must be one word. Then why use two alphabets?”
“Possibly because of the accidental chance that the stamp perforations count up to fifty-two,” replied Trenholm. “It would be convenient, in case of a word with many letters, to prevent destroying the appearance of the stamp by cutting too many indentations close to one another. Have you solved the first word?” as she checked an exclamation.
“Yes—‘watch.’”
“Good!” Trenholm’s eyes were bright with excitement. Looking again at the first stamp, he noticed that the first, third, and fifth letters of the words “watch” were indicated on the first alphabet, and the remaining letters on the second one.
Trenholm held up the envelope to the light again. “See, Miss Ward!” he exclaimed. “The stampon the extreme right has only four indentations, though the left-hand corner has been cut off.”
She studied the envelope in silence for a few seconds. “The letters are G and E in the first alphabet,” she pointed out. “They must be the odd letters of the word coded, and R and V in the second alphabet, corresponding to the even letters, but I can’t make any word out of them.”
“Suppose we call the cut of the left-hand corner of the stamp an A,” suggested Trenholm. “It may be a quick way to mark an indentation when a corner square was involved; though better care was used in the A of the second alphabet in the first stamp examined. What word have you now, Miss Ward?”
“Grave.”
Trenholm stared at her. “Grave,” he repeated, then, suppressing comment, went ahead decoding the message. “This center one appears the simplest,” he said. “Here the perforations cut are numbers 5, 12, 20, 5, 18, 20—odd letters, E, L, T; even letters, E, R, T. Got them down, Miss Ward?”
“They make the word—letter,” briefly, not glancing up. “Go ahead.”
“The next letters are E, I, T, for the odd, and E, H, N, R, for the even.” Trenholm laid down his perforation gauge and frowned. “The code seems to fail here,” he grumbled. “It has given four evenletters and only three odd. The other way around would be all right, but it is impossible to make a word with more even than odd letters.”
“Let me see the envelope.” Miriam put aside her pencil and carefully examined the stamps against the light. “Look, Mr. Trenholm, here are pinholes opposite some of the letters—two opposite the odd T, and one opposite the even H.”
“Probably they stand for repetitions of the same letters, in which case the letters would be: odd—E, I, T, T, T; even—E, H, H, N, R,” declared Trenholm. “But they don’t make sense.” He paused and looked at the stamps already decoded. “See here, the first letter in each word we have deciphered is on the side of the stamp which faces the left side of the envelope.”
“Oh, then that accounts for the apparently careless manner in which the stamps are stuck on the envelope,” said Miriam. “The only letter on the second stamp, which is indicated by a cut in the way you have just described, is T.”
“So our next word begins with T.” Trenholm took up a pencil and did some figuring on Miriam’s pad. “With so many T’s and H’s to use, suppose we start off with Th,” he began, “and the next letter is either E, I, or T. It must be one of the vowels. No, E is no good.” Trenholm ran his fingersthrough his hair until it stood upright. “We’ll take I, and here is an R available—by Jove—thirteenth!”
“So it is!” Miriam’s excitement was rising. “The words we have so far are, ‘watch thirteenth letter——grave.’”
“Now for the last stamp!” Trenholm took up gauge and pencil. “The odd letters are E, two I’s, one indicated by another pinhole, and S. The even letters are C, D, S, U. The position of the stamp shows that the first letter is S. Of the four even letters available for the next position, only the vowel can be used, making Su.” Trenholm paused and wrote rapidly several combinations of the available letters, then looked up with a low exclamation—“Suicides.”
“And the completed message then stands—‘Watch thirteenth letter suicides grave,’” repeated Miriam. “What do you make of it, Mr. Trenholm?”
“Nothing—now,” he admitted frankly. “We know the code. Help me decipher these other eleven envelopes and the burnt one. Fortunately the stamps on it are intact.”
Half an hour later Miriam and Trenholm sat back in their chairs and looked at each other. The latter took up one of the pads they had used.
“Here are the thirteen decoded messages, of five words each, concealed in the stamps on the thirteenenvelopes,” he stated. “Listen carefully, Miss Ward, and tell me what you make of them.”
Fear Paul suspicious of Betty.Unwise to trust her judgment.Judge her influence is waning.Is there any other woman?Last interview with Paul disastrous.He declines to return jewel.Do not lose your nerve.Believe he can prove nothing.Does not guess your motive.Situation growing tense; money required.Learned hiding place changed often.Next time can tell definitely.Watch thirteenth letter; suicides grave.
Fear Paul suspicious of Betty.Unwise to trust her judgment.Judge her influence is waning.Is there any other woman?Last interview with Paul disastrous.He declines to return jewel.Do not lose your nerve.Believe he can prove nothing.Does not guess your motive.Situation growing tense; money required.Learned hiding place changed often.Next time can tell definitely.Watch thirteenth letter; suicides grave.
Miriam wrinkled her forehead in deep thought. “For whom were those messages intended, Mr. Trenholm?” she asked.
“For the man who later killed Paul Abbott,” he replied quietly.
“And he—”
“Is some one who was with Paul and had access to his mail, and so could read the code on these apparently innocent letters.” Trenholm rose suddenly and looked down at her. “It was a devilish scheme and devilishly carried out.”
“By Boris Zybinn’s confederate.” Miriam alsorose. “Have you any idea who that confederate is?”
Absently Trenholm took up his pipe and fingered it. “Some one who knew Paul intimately,” he said. “And who has been with him during the past few months, for the dates on these letters cover that period of time. But as to his identity—the coded messages give no clue.”
“That is true,” agreed Miriam. “Another question—When he murdered Paul Abbott did he secure the Paltoff diamond?”
Trenholm had located his tobacco pouch and filled his pipe mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere.
“Frankly,” he said slowly, “I am inclined to think he didn’t.”