XVIITHE CIPHER LETTER
Irksomethough it was to be compelled to do fruitless watching in a vacant office, there was nothing to do but stick at it. What Paquita might be up to was a mystery, but I knew that until we heard from Riley we could have only the most slender chance to locate her in the big city.
It was perhaps half an hour later when, to my relief, Kennedy returned, bringing with him a strange man. I looked at him inquiringly.
“You’re just wasting time here, Walter,” Craig explained. “I’ve got one of the Secret Service men here in the city to relieve you of your job. But I very much suspect that, after what happened last night, whoever had that place across the hall is through and would rather lose the detectaphone receiver than risk being caught.”
“Have you had any word from Riley?”
“Not a word. I’m getting anxious,” he replied, turning to the new man and instructing him what to do.
Kennedy was eager to get back, in case there might be a hasty call about Paquita. I could see, too, that he was convinced that we were baffled, at least as far as discovering who had been using the detectaphone was concerned.
We returned quickly to Hastings’s office, which was still deserted, and there, as we waited nervously, Kennedy drew forth the cipher and began to study it again, but this time on an entirely different line, following his own scientific principles, which he had laid down after investigating the work of other expert decipherers.
My hopes rose momentarily when we heard footsteps in the hall and the door was burst open. It was, however, merely a messenger-boy.
“Telegram for Mr. Kennedy,” he shouted, penetrating even the sacred inner office of Hastings.
Craig tore open the yellow envelope, read the message, and tossed it over to me. It was from Burke at Westport.
“Wireless operators at Seaville Station,” it read, “report strange interference. May be in reference to telautomaton. Will keep you advised if anything happens.”
The possibility of a new twist to events was very fascinating, though I did not understand it. I was just about to question Kennedy aboutthe telautomaton when the door opened again. This time it was Hastings himself.
“Has there been any word?” he asked, eagerly.
“Nothing so far,” replied Craig. “You came on the express, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he replied, his face wearing a puzzled expression. “I don’t quite understand what is going on.”
“What in particular?” queried Craig, seeing that there was something on Hastings’s mind.
“Why, Shelby, of course,” he answered. “Some change has taken place in him. He’s not like the Shelby I used to know. Yesterday he came in to town. He was on the train again to-day. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Johnson Walcott was on the train, too. He noticed it—called my attention to it, as a matter of fact. I saw some of the younger men, too. Shelby as a regular commuter is a joke to them. But it’s more than a joke, I’m thinking. Shelby never came near Wall Street—or Broad Street—before. But now they tell me he seems to be taking an active interest in the Maddox Munitions stock on the curb. I don’t understand it.”
“Could he be trying to put through some deal?” I inquired, hastily. “Perhaps he’s trying to get the control his brother would have had.”
“I don’t doubt that he has some such scheme,”agreed Hastings. “But—well, what do you say, Kennedy? Doesn’t it look suspicious, so soon afterward? It may be real ambition, now. He may have changed. But—”
Hastings’s “but” meant volumes.
Just then the telephone rang and the lawyer answered it, handing the instrument over to Kennedy.
We listened eagerly. It was the first long-delayed report of Paquita from Riley, and as Kennedy pursued the one-sided conversation that we heard I gathered that, far from clearing up things, the actions of Paquita had further muddled them.
Hastings glanced at me and shook his head sagely, whispering, “That’s a clever and a dangerous woman: When she looks most innocent is the time to be wary.”
I tried to pay no attention to his banal remarks, but still was unable to follow, from what I heard, the course of the report from Riley.
Finally it seemed as if Kennedy were cut off in the middle of a remark or that Riley had hung up suddenly. Kennedy jiggled the hook but was unable to get any one back again, though Central tried for some time.
“What was it?” I asked, keenly interested.
“I’m afraid she’s putting one over on usagain,” commented Kennedy as he hung up the receiver.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Why, it’s evidently a purposeless visit to the city, as nearly as I can make out. Riley followed her in—had no difficulty. In fact, he thinks that she knew she was being followed before they reached the turnpike from Westport.”
“Where did she go after she got here?” I asked, hoping that at last there was some clue that might lead to the “gang” which Burke suspected, but which I was almost tempted to believe was mythical.
“Just stopped at her city apartment,” returned Craig. “There wasn’t any telephone handy and Riley was afraid to leave her for fear she might come out and get away before he could get back. It was very early. When it came time for the offices to open she made a call at her theatrical agents again. After that she came down-town. She wasn’t far away from us here. This will interest you, Mr. Hastings.”
Hastings needed no prompting. He was already interested.
“Riley found her talking to a clerk in a brokerage house—Dexter & Co. You know them?”
“Slightly. I wonder what that can mean.”
“Perhaps something to do with Shelby—atleast Riley thinks so. It was while she was talking to the clerk that he got his first chance to telephone me. What cut him short was that he could see from the telephone booth that she was starting away. He had to go, but he did get time to say that he had just seen Shelby Maddox enter the same building, though Shelby didn’t see Paquita.”
“Did she see him?”
“I suppose so. That must have been why she went away so quickly. I suppose she didn’t want to be seen.”
“What can that girl be up to now?” considered Hastings. “You may just rest assured that it is something devilish.”
“Any word from Sanchez?” I asked, remembering my own experience the time I had tried to trail Paquita.
“Nothing so far,” replied Kennedy. “Riley was looking for him, but hasn’t seen a trace of him. Except for the visit down-town, Paquita seems to be just going about as though giving Riley something to do. He thinks it’s mighty strange she doesn’t try to throw him off. Really, she seems to want to be shadowed.”
“How can that be?”
Kennedy shrugged. “I don’t know. Riley promised to call up the next chance he got.”
“Why not go over to Dexter’s?” suggested Hastings.
“She can’t be there,” returned Kennedy. “If she was, Riley would have had a chance to make a second call. Therefore I reason that she must have gone away after she had seen the clerk and when Shelby appeared. I think I’ll stay here awhile, until I hear again—especially as I have nowhere else to go,” he decided, pulling out the cipher from his pocket again. “We may hear some more about Shelby and his schemes.”
Kennedy had now fallen into an earnest study of the peculiar cryptogram which we had discovered.
“I suppose you’ve noticed that there’s no figure above five in it,” he remarked to me, looking up for an instant from several sheets of paper which he was covering with a hopeless jam of figures and letters.
“I had not,” I confessed. “What of it?”
“Well, I’ve tried the numbers in all sorts of combinations and permutations. They don’t work. Let me see. Suppose we take them in pairs.”
For several moments he continued to figure and his face became continuously brighter.
“There are six pairs of 33’s,” he remarked, almost to himself. “Now, it’s well known thatthe letter ‘e’ is the most commonly used letter. That’s the starting point usually in working out a cipher. Wait—there are eight ‘15’s’—that must be ‘e.’ Yes, the chances are all for it. Now what letter is 33, if any?”
He appeared to be in a dream as he recalled from his studies of cryptograms what were the probabilities of the occurrence of the particular letters. Suddenly he exclaimed:
“Perhaps it’s ‘n’—let’s see.”
Hastily he wrote down some letters and numbers in the following order—“25enne1454.”
He looked at it for a moment, and then his face registered the dawn of an idea.
“By George!” he exclaimed, “we don’t have to go any further! I have it. It’s my own name—Kennedy. Let me see how that works. I believe it’s the system we call—”
Kennedy was again interrupted by the entrance of the messenger-boy with another telegram. He tore it open and, as I expected, it was a second message from Burke.
“Seaville Station has reported interference to Government. Just received orders Washington to take up investigation. Not wireless messages that interfere. Some mystery. When can you come out?”
Kennedy read and reread the message. Toneither Hastings nor myself did it convey any idea upon which we could build. But to Kennedy, seemingly, it suggested a thousand and one things.
It was evident that the appeal from Burke had moved Kennedy very much. Paquita had lured us into town, but I cannot say that it was giving us much to show for our pains.
“What do you suppose that message can mean?” I questioned. “What does Burke mean about the telautomaton?”
“I can’t say at this distance. There must be more to it than he has put into the telegram. But at least it is possible that the men at the station have stumbled over some attempt to use the wireless in testing out the little model. It’s pretty hard to tell. Really, I wish I was out there. A clue like this interests me much more than our little adventuress.”
Kennedy had scarcely laid down the message from Burke when the telephone tinkled again. He seized the receiver expectantly. By his excitement I could see that it was Riley again.
“Yes, Riley,” we heard him answer. “Where are you now?”
The conversation was rapid-fire. As Kennedy hung up his face showed considerable interest.
“That woman is just making sport of Riley,”exclaimed Kennedy, hotly, facing us in perplexity.
“Why, what is she doing?”
“Seems to be aimlessly driving about the city. I’ll bet she is just laughing at him. I wonder what the game may be?”
“Where is she now?”
“Up-town again. I suppose that we could jump up there and probably catch Riley somewhere, by keeping in touch with this office, if both of us kept calling up here. But what good it would do I can’t see. I’m disappointed. This thing has degenerated into a wild-goose chase.”
His eye fell on the telegram from Burke, and I knew that the two things had placed Kennedy in a dilemma. If he might have been in two places at once, he would have been satisfied. Should he drop everything and go to Burke or should he wait for Riley?
“We’ll let the cipher decide,” concluded Kennedy, turning to the scribbled papers before him.
“What is the cipher system?” I asked, mechanically, my head rather in a whirl at the fast-crowding events.
“Don’t you understand?” he cried, almost gleefully, working at the solution of the secret writing. “I’ve got it! How stupid of me beforenot to think of it. Why, it’s the old checkerboard cipher again!”
Quickly he drew on paper a series of five squares horizontally and five vertically and filled them in with the letters of the alphabet, placing I and J in the same square, thus using twenty-five squares. Over the top he wrote the numbers to 5 and down the side he did the same, as follows:
“Do you see?” he cried, eagerly. “The letter ‘e’ is in the first row, the fifth letter—15. The letter ‘n’ is the third letter in the third row—33. Why, it’s simple!”
It might have been simple to him now, but to Hastings and myself, as Kennedy figured the thing out, it was little short of marvelous. For all we could have done it, I suppose the blank scrap of paper would still have been a hidden book.
We were crowded about Kennedy, eagerly watching what his deciphering might yield, whenthe office-boy announced, “Mr. Shelby Maddox to see you, Mr. Hastings.”
Kennedy quickly covered the papers on which he was writing with some others on the desk, just as Shelby entered.
“Is Kennedy here?” cried Shelby. “Oh—I thought maybe you might be. They told me that you’d gone early to the city.”
Our greeting was none too cordial, but Shelby either did not notice it or affected not to do so.
“I wanted to ask you about that kidnapping,” he explained. “You see, I wasn’t about when they found Mito, and it wasn’t until later that I heard of it and the attempt on Winifred. What do you suppose, Mr. Kennedy, was the reason? Who could have wanted to carry her off?”
Kennedy shrugged. “So far I haven’t been able to give a final explanation,” he remarked, keenly.
“Then the kidnappers got away clean?” asked Shelby.
“It was very clever,” temporized Kennedy, “but I would hardly say that there is no clue.”
Shelby eyed Craig keenly, as though he would have liked to read his mind. But Kennedy’s face did not betray whether it was much or little that he knew.
“Well,” added Shelby, “all I’ve got to say is that some one is going to get into trouble if anything happens to that girl.”
I was listening attentively. Was this a bluff, or not? From the expression on Hastings’s face one would have said that he was convinced it must have been Shelby himself who kidnapped her. I wondered whether it was wholly interest in Winifred that prompted Shelby’s visit and inquiry.
“At any rate,” he went on, “you’ll all be watching now against a repetition of such a thing, won’t you? I don’t need to remind you, Kennedy, of your promise when I talked to you before?”
Craig nodded. “I’ll give you a square deal, Mr. Maddox,” returned Craig. “Of course I can’t work for two people at once. But I shall do nothing for any client that I am not convinced is perfectly right. You need not fear for Miss Walcott as long as I can protect her.”
Maddox seemed to be relieved, although he had found nothing that pointed to the origin of the attack. Or was it because of that?
He glanced at his watch uneasily. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, rising. “I had a few minutes and I thought I’d drop in and see you. I mustkeep an appointment. Thank you for what you have said about Winifred.”
As he withdrew I shot a hasty glance at Craig. Should I follow him? Kennedy negatived.
Apparently not even the intrusion of Shelby had got out of his mind either the dilemma we were in or the hidden message that he seemed on the point of reading.
“An engagement,” commented Hastings, incredulously. “Since when has Shelby had important engagements? More than likely it is something to do with this Paquita woman.”
There was no mistaking the opinion that Hastings had of the youngest scion of the house of Maddox. Nor was it unjustified. Shelby’s escapades had been notorious, though I had always noticed that, in the aftermath of the stories, Shelby was quite as much, if not more, sinned against than sinning. Young men of his stamp are subject to many more temptations than some of the rest of us. If Shelby were coming through all right, I reflected, so much the greater credit for him.
Kennedy either shared my own feelings toward Shelby or had decided that he was not at present worth considering to the delay of something more important.
I looked over his shoulder, fascinated, as hefell to work again immediately on the cipher with the same zest which he had displayed before Shelby’s interruption.
Rapidly Kennedy translated the figures into letters and, as each word was set down on paper, became more and more excited.
Finally he leaped up and seized his hat.
“Confound her!” he exclaimed, “that explains it all! Look!”
Hastings and I read what he had written:
“KENNEDY MUST BE KEPT IN NEW YORK UNTIL WE FINISH HERE.”