Dr. Fell puffed out his cheeks. "We certainly can't do that," he agreed. "Sit down. There's something we've got to tell you."
While the doctor was pouring out stiff drinks at the sideboard, he told Sir Benjamin everything that had happened that afternoon. During the recital, Rampole was watching the girl's face. She had not spoken much since Dr. Fell had begun to explain what lay behind the Starberths; but she seemed to see peace.
Sir Benjamin was flapping his hands behind his back. His damp clothes exhaled a strong odour of tweed and tobacco.
"I don't doubt it, I don't doubt it," he grumbled. "But why did you have to be so confoundedly long about telling this? We've lost a lot of time.- Still, it doesn't alter what we've got to face-that Herbert's the only one who could be guilty. Inquest said so."
"Does that reassure you?"
"No. Damn it. I don't think the boy's guilty. But what else can we do?"
"No trace of him yet?"
"Oh, he's been reported everywhere; but they haven't found him. In the meantime, I repeat, what else can we do?"
"We can investigate the hiding-place Anthony made, for one thing."
"Yes. If this infernal cipher, or whatever it is… Let's have a look. I suppose we have your permission, Miss Starberth?"
She smiled faintly. "Of course — now. But I am inclined to think Dr. Fell has been overconfident. Here's my own copy."
Dr. Fell was seated spread out in his favourite armchair, his pipe glowing and a bottle of beer beside him. With white hair and whiskers, he could have made a passable double for Father Christmas. He watched benignly as Sir Benjamin studied the verses. Rampole's own pipe was drawing well, and he sat back comfortably on the red sofa where, in an, unobtrusive way, he could touch Dorothy's hand. With his other hand he held a drink. Thus, he reflected, there were all the requisites of life.
The chief constable's horsy eyes squinted up. He read aloud:
Slowly he read the lines again, in a lower voice. Then he said with heat:
"Look here, this is nonsense!"
"Ah!" said Dr. Fell, like one who savours a rare bouquet of wine.
"It's just a lot of crackbrain poetry―" "Verse," corrected Dr. Fell.
"Well, it certainly isn't any cryptogram, whatever it is.
Have you seen it?"
"No. But it's a cryptogram, all right."
The chief constable tossed the paper across to him.
"Righto, then. Tell us what it means. `How called the dwellers of Lyn-dun; Great Homer's tale of Troy?' It's a lot of rubbish… Hold on, though!" muttered Sir
Benjamin, rubbing his cheek. "I've seen those puzzles in the magazines. And I remember in the stories — you take every other word, or every second word, or something — don't you?"
"That won't work," said Rampole, gloomily. "I've tried all the combinations of first, second, and third words. I've tried it as an acrostic, down the whole four verses. The first letters give you 'Hgowatiwiowetgff.' With the last letters you produce 'Nynyfrdrefstenen.' The last one sounds like an Assyrian queen.
"Ah," said Dr. Fell, nodding again.
"In the magazines―" began Sir Benjamin.
Dr. Fell settled himself more deeply into his chair, blowing an enormous cloud of smoke.
"By the way," he observed, "I have a quarrel to pick with those puzzles in the magazines and illustrated papers. Now, I'm very fond of cryptograms myself. (Incidentally, you will find behind you one of the first books on cipherwriting: John Baptist Porta's De Furtivis Literarum Notis, published in 1563.) Now, the only point of a good cryptogram is that it should conceal something which somebody wanted to keep a secret in the first place. That is, it is really a piece of secret writing. Its message should be something like, `The missing jewels are hidden in the archdeacon's pants,' or, 'Von Dinklespook will attack the Worcestershire Guards at midnight.'-But when these people in the illustrated papers try to invent a cryptogram which will baffle the reader, they don't try to baffle you by inventing a difficult cryptogram at all. They only try to baffle you by putting down a message which nobody would ever send in the first place. You puzzle and swear through a gigantic mass of symbols, only to produce the message: `Pusillanimous pachyderms primarily procrastinate procreative prerogatives.' Bah!" stormed the doctor. "Can you imagine an operative of the German secret service risking his life to get a message like that through the British lines? I should think that General Von Googledorfer would be a trifle nettled when he got his dispatch decoded and found that cowardly elephants are in the habit of putting off any attempt to reproduce their species."
"That isn't true, is it?" inquired Sir Benjamin, with interest.
"I'm not concerned with the natural history of the statement," returned the doctor, testily; "I was talking about cryptograms." He took a long pull at his beer-glass, and went on in a more equable tone:
"It's a very old practice, of course. Plutarch and Gellius mention secret methods of correspondence used by the Spartans. But cryptography, in the stricter sense of substituting words, letters, or symbols, is of Semitic origin. At least, Jeremiah uses it. A variant of this same simple form is used in Caesar's 'quarta elementorus littera,' where―"
"Put look at the blasted thing!" exploded Sir Benjamin, picking up Rampole's copy from the hearth and slapping it. "hook here, in the last verse. It doesn't make sense. `The Corsican was vanquished here, Great mother of all sin.' if that means what I think it does, it's a bit rough on Napoleon."
Dr. Fell took the pipe out of his mouth. "I wish you'd shut up." he said, plaintively. "1 feel like lecturing, I do. I was going on from Trithemius to Francis Bacon, and then―"
"I don't want to hear any lecture," interposed the chief constable. "I wish you'd have a look at the thing. I don't ask you to solve it. But stop lecturing and just look at it."
Sighing, Dr. Fell came to the centre table, where he lighted another lamp and spread the paper out before him. The pipe smoke slowed down to thin, steady puffs between clenched teeth.
"H'm." he said. There was another silence.
"Wait a bit." urged Sir Beniamin, holding up his hand as the doctor seemed about to speak. "Don't begin talking like a damned dictionary, now. But do you see any lead there?"
"I was about to ask you," replied the other, mildly, "to pour me out another bottle of beer. However, since you mention it… the old-timers were children to, our modern cryptographers; the war proved that. And this one, which was written in the late eighteenth or early
nineteenth century, shouldn't be so difficult. The rebus was a favorite form then; it isn't that, I know. But it's a bit more difficult than the ordinary substitution cipher Poe was so fond of. It's something like a rebus, only…"
They had gathered round his chair and were bending over the paper. Again they all read the words: