“Doctor Mather has photostatic copies of this message,” remarked the detective. “Perhaps you would like to take one with you, Mynheer Vaart. I know that I can rely upon you to keep it out of sight; if you have a chance to work on it while you are in Chicago, you might strike the key.”
“Ah, yess,” came the reply, with a nod. “If I could haff one copy of this goaded message, I might haff time to solf it, yess. Off course, since it iss not solfed by Doctor Mather, it may be that it can not be solfed by me.”
“I don’t know about that,” returned Mather, dryly. “Freak codes like this one are very, very tricky. Perhaps, through over-concentration, I may have passed by a simple key to the solution. Here is a copy, Mynheer Vaart. I shall be pleased to have your cooperation in this difficult task.”
IT was eleven o’clock when Mynheer Hansel Vaart shook hands with Detective Joe Cardona at the entrance to the Grand Central Station. The Hollander waddled into the huge terminal. Joe Cardona returned to headquarters. Shortly after midnight, he decided to leave for the night.
Smiling to himself, Joe pictured Mynheer Hansel Vaart aboard the midnight limited, pondering over the cryptic message which Doctor Lucas Mather had given him. Joe felt sure that the methodical Dutchman would work steadily upon the absorbing problem.
Cardona would have been surprised had he known where the copy of the message lay at present. It was not in the possession of Mynheer Hansel Vaart aboard the midnight limited, for no such passenger had boarded the Chicago-bound train.
The copied message was tucked safely in the pocket of a tuxedo jacket worn by a personage who looked amazingly like Lamont Cranston, the globe-trotting millionaire. The message was resting for the present; for its holder was engaged in playing chess with Howard Norwyn, fugitive from justice, in the smoking room of a New Jersey mansion.
The Shadow had played a clever part. He had gained the message which Professor Langwood Devine had received before his death. The Shadow knew that there would be time to work upon its solution.
That task would begin upon the morrow. In the meantime, returned to his guise of Lamont Cranston, the master sleuth was concerned with his game of chess. His gambits and his checks were too much for Howard Norwyn’s defense. The blacks — moved by the long fingers of The Shadow — were picking off the whites that Norwyn handled.
There was something prophetic about this friendly match. Pawns and rooks were The Shadow’s quarry to-night.
Beginning with the morrow, he would plan moves to capture living men. Like pieces on a chess board, the members of Crime Incorporated awaited the entry of The Shadow into their game.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SHADOW SOLVES
A LIGHT was burning in The Shadow’s sanctum. Those bluish rays had been glaring steadily for a space of many hours. Hands, unwearied despite their constant task, were inscribing characters upon a sheet of paper.
The Shadow, like Doctor Lucas Mather, had struck a Tartar in the block-formed message. He knew, through experience, why the cryptogram expert had been willing to admit that the strange symbols might be meaningless.
The Shadow, himself, might have accepted that very conclusion had he not been present in Devine’s room when the old professor had received the message. To Devine, this page had been quite readable.
The Shadow was sure that the solution of the code depended upon some simple key. Yet the vital point was absent.
The pencil poised above the scrawled sheet. Keen eyes focused themselves beyond, to the center of the table, where the photostatic message lay blue-tinged beneath the light. The Shadow’s hand reverted to the simple circled code which Doctor Mather had so easily deciphered. The pencil, moved by steady fingers, inscribed a blank circle.
Spaces! This blocked message, like the circled one, was solid. There must be some allowance for space between the words. That might prove the one point of similarity between the easy code and this difficult one.
The Shadow had looked for characters that might mean spaces. He had found none; but he was thinking of spaces in a different light. Why characters for spaces when spaces already existed? If certain spaces in this coded message could be designated as blanks, they would serve their natural use.
With his thought, The Shadow began to study the message between the symbols, instead of viewing the actual characters themselves. He was looking for some little touch that would point to separations. He was comparing each character with the one that followed it. Suddenly, he struck the point he wanted.
Wherever a character showed a projecting line at the bottom, on the right, the one that followed it showed a projecting tab to the left. These coincidences occurred at intervals through the message, in a manner that could well signify spaces.
It was from this clue that The Shadow commenced a reasoning process that brought him to an amazing deduction. One point gained, he forged ahead until he discovered the weak spot in the code — a detail which the writer had never realized as an existing weakness.
The Shadow had begun by studying what he believed was a sample word.
At the left was a symbol with a lower tab to the left. At the right was a symbol with a lower tab to the right. There were seven characters in all. Did the lower tabs, alone, represent space indications, thus leaving a word of seven letters; or did the end characters depend entirely upon their tabs, thus being total blanks with five letters between?
The Shadow sought the answer in the code itself. He found a combination that intrigued him.
Each of these four characters, according to The Shadow’s belief, had a space indication. Therefore the entire symbols could not be spaces. Two spacers might come together; one at the end of a word; the next at the beginning of a word; but not four.
Therefore, The Shadow reasoned, each symbol must be a letter. The tabs alone were the pointers to spaces. In brief, the two central characters were the letters of a two-letter word.
It was then that The Shadow’s hand poised above the paper. A full minute passed. From hidden lips came a soft, whispered laugh of understanding. The Shadow had struck upon a factor that another might have overlooked.
SUPPOSING that the two central symbols constituted the letters of a two-letter word, each with a space-pointing tab, what would the writer have done had he chosen to inscribe a word of only one letter? Where could it have gone? Only in one spot — between those central characters.
That, however, would force the existing characters into being nothing more than ordinary spaces — something which The Shadow had already reasoned they could not be. The Shadow’s eyes burned toward the blank spot between the tantalizing symbols. The laugh that followed was the final answer.
The space itself bore the message! Such was The Shadow’s verdict. Letters depended upon the relationship of one character to the next. These block — like figures were doubled symbols.
The Shadow’s eyes gazed steadily upon the coded photostat while his hand inscribed the first four characters as they actually appeared.
Then The Shadow rewrote those same symbols in a new formation; he spread them apart to make their meaning plain.
The first character — a lone half at the left — was merely a blank indication. The second and third were each halves of the original blocks that had stood at one and two. They represented a letter.
The same with the next pair of symbols; and the next; until the isolated half character that stood alone, its bottom tab pointing to the right. It was a spacer.
The Shadow had discovered a three-letter word. He did not pause with it for the present. His keen, deductive brain was working upon a clue which he had gained at Professor Langwood Devine’s — the name in the sailing list which The Shadow had so readily observed.