Holmes's eyes narrowed. "You don't need me to buy you a ticket, I'm sure."
Loo Chan's heavy lids blinked rapidly. "I do need you to get me out of Egypt. Alexandria, Port Said, the canal are all . . . the expression is 'bottled up,' I believe. There is no warrant for me in England, but had I tried to book passage I would have been in custody in a minute. Something about my passport, no doubt."
Holmes shot a quick look at Orloff. "He could be put aboard at Port Tewfik," said the security agent.
"What you ask can be done." Holmes let this hang in the air.
"I do not know, Mr. Holmes, Chu San Fu's plans regarding Egypt. I could tell you about the money he has spent of late in a number of Mid East countries, but I suspect you know more about that than I do."
"One thing. In Berlin. The Mannheim tablets?"
"I negotiated for them. Another of those rare items that Chu San Fu added to his collection."
"What happened?"
"He did not sell them when he disposed of his collection. They were stolen property, so he could not have put them on the market anyway. But he seemed to attach great importance to them."
The sleuth appeared disappointed. "You do have something?"
"I hope so." The Oriental shrugged. "As you know, part of my duties were associated with Chu San Fu's collection. There is a bit of guesswork involved in art objects. I developed the habit of attending estate sales and even disposal-of-property sales involving the belongings of unknowns. If their background was colorful."
Holmes exhibited interest as the Chinaman continued. "I picked up the notebook of an explorer, Puzza, an Italian who had been with Giovanni Balzoni in Egypt. It had entries regarding certain escapades of the incredible Balzoni. One page contained letters without meaning that Chu San Fu found intriguing. Then, two years ago, he referred to it once as 'the gateway to the past.' The notebook has been by his side ever since."
"You have it?"
"No, but I have a copy of the strange message that my employer found so interesting."
"Which you will give me if you can flee Egypt for Macao."
Loo Chan indicated this was so. There was a lengthy pause, and the Oriental seemed to feel the need of some explanation.
"Last night, Doctor Watson used words that I had refused to consider. Now I agree with him." His slanting eyes turned towards me. "It's time to get out."
"Done," said Holmes.
Loo Chan removed a piece of paper from his inner pocket, passing it to the detective. After regarding it for a moment, Holmes gave a signal to Orloff, who took the Chinaman from the room and out of our lives. What the waiting Colonel Gray thought of that arrangement, I did not learn until later.
As the door closed, I voiced a thought tentatively.
"This could be bait of some sort?"
"No more than a ten percent possibility." Holmes was studying the message. "Loo Chan knows that if he has played us false, the Dutch authorities can pick him up in Macao. I'm inclined to consider this coded message as genuine. The timetable is right. It was two years ago that Chu's attention was caught by it. An idea could have been born in his mind at that time. One thing surprises me: the utter simplicity of the code."
Holmes rose and spread the paper on an end table, allowing me to view it by his side.
DW WKH IHHW RI WKH VLALWK UDPHWHV OLHV WKH ERB LQ HWHUQDO HKVH XQNQRZQ WR NXUQD DQGDOPDPXQ VRQ RI WKH KHUHWLF KHHYDGHGGRRP
"Simplicity, Holmes? You jest."
"This cipher might present problems but for the spacing, which is revealing. Consider the first line. There are seven combinations of letters. Six in the second line. We can assume they represent words."
"I don't see how that helps."
"Regard the same two lines, old fellow. There are three identical three-letter combinations. WKH. Surely that indicates the word 'the' to you. Three letters and oft-used. I can almost decipher this standing here, but let me hazard a guess. This associate of Balzoni—"
"Puzza was his name."
"Also an Italian. I assume this is a substitution cipher. One letter in place of another. Now if you were an Italian and were going to put something in code, playing a game with yourself perhaps, is it not reasonable that you should think of a Roman hero like the first Caesar?"
Not being able to interpret the thoughts of others with Holmes's facility, I didn't know what I would have done.
"I suppose that makes sense," I said.
"It is an historical fact that Julius Caesar encrypted his messages from Gaul by substituting letters three places farther on in the alphabet. D for A and E for B. Now let us test this with the three-letter combination of WKH. W becomes T and K is H. H represents the most used letter in the alphabet, which is E. The word is 'the' as we have already assumed. Just note the number of H letters in this message. We've solved it, Watson."
"We" had nothing to do with it, but if it made Holmes happy to put it that way, who was I to complain? When Wakefield Orloff returned to the room, the sleuth was seated, working on the cipher with a pen. It was so simple for him that he digested Orloff's report at the same time.
"Loo Chan will be on the train to Suez within the hour. I've arranged to have the train stop at a point along the Bitter Lakes. A boat will get him to the liner before it enters the Sweetwater Canal. No one will be the wiser, so we've kept our part of the bargain." The security agent regarded the silent Holmes thoughtfully. "Gray can bring a man from the code office if you wish."
Holmes waved one hand in an aimless gesture without meaning, and I took it from there.
"No need. Holmes has already deciphered it."
It is with joy that I report that Orloff's jaw dropped slightly.
"You do recall," I added with no little pride, "that Holmes's pamphlet on codes and secret writings is now required reading for the cipher division."
My moment of reflected glory was interrupted by the sleuth, who was regarding his handiwork with a frown.
"We may have broken one code and run into another. It would seem the late archeologist, Puzza, was of a whimsical nature."
Holmes allowed himself a small chuckle, and I suspected his humor was directed at himself.
"Our substitution key is correct, Watson, for the letters become words, but what we end up with is a rather clumsy rhyme. Let me read it to you:
"At the feet of the sixth Rameses
Lies the boy in eternal ease,
Unknown to Kurna and Al Mamun
Son of the heretic he evaded doom."
"The sixth Rameses I would assume is a pharaoh, but the rest means little to me."
Orloff offered no comment, so I made a suggestion.
"That Colonel Gray chap has been in Egypt for a devilishly long time and seems up on all these things."
"Capital idea, Watson!"
Orloff was already on his way to the hall and returned quickly with Gray.
"I didn't know what to do when you left with the Chinaman, Mr. Orloff, so I stayed at my post."
"Good thinking, Colonel," said Holmes. "Loo Chan is of no further concern to us, but another problem has arisen that requires your expertise. Can you make anything out of this?"
Gray read through the message Holmes handed him and then read through it again in the manner of the military. "Better say nothing than say it wrong." is an army byword. It produces accuracy, but has a stultifying effect on inventiveness.
"Well, sir," Gray finally said, stroking his moustache, "would this be in reference to a tomb, perhaps?"
"Very possibly. What prompted you to consider that?"
We were all clustered round the message on the table and Gray, quite delighted to be the center of attention, indicated certain words as he spoke.
"At the feet of the sixth Rameses could mean at the base of a statue of Rameses Sixth, of course. Thank God it isn't Rameses Second. There is no end to statues of him. The reference to 'boy' evades me, but Kurna and Al Mamun certainly indicate a tomb."