“In my room at the Skyview Plaza,” laughed Delka.
“Yes,” nodded Jollister, “and I was to stay there. A telephone call came in eventually; the man there with me answered it and told me to call here. Then he went out while I was making the call.”
“And you talked with me,” completed Releston. “I told you to wait for Delka and Cardona.”
“Which I did,” asserted Jollister. “And I can assure you, senator, that I had no knowledge of Wesdren’s evil doings. I knew nothing about the concrete and the steel panels in the strong room. I merely saw the plans and approved them. Wesdren himself ordered the installation.”
“That fact,” declared Releston, solemnly, “would never have been recognized if Wesdren had triumphed.”
He looked about at the others.
“All the crooked business would have been laid to Jollister.”
“He’d have been the fall guy, all right,” commented Joe Cardona. “It would have left Wesdren sitting pretty. Working everything through Clink. None of the outfit knew who was in back of it.”
“Absolutely none,” assured Releston. “Hamilton has quizzed those ruffians whom we found bound and gagged in the garage. They mentioned Clink Huron as their header. No one else. Incidentally, that secret door that covered the garage stairway would have been difficult to uncover if it had not been opened.”
“Another piece of workmanship,” snorted Vic Marquette, “that would have been laid to you, Jollister.”
The telephone began to ring. The senator answered it; his eyebrows lifted in surprise. Then he hung up.
“THE police have just located a large touring car,” he informed. “They received a mysterious call telling them to look in a parking lot on M Street. Two men were in the car. One has been identified as a crook called Cooler Caplan. He is dead.
“The other identity will interest you. The second man was alive, but bound and gagged. He and his companion were doubtless the ones deputed to seize Jollister. And the man who is alive is none other than Parker Cady.”
Exclamations of elation from Cardona and Delka. Vic Marquette chuckled from his chair. Cady might be small-fry; but he was wanted. This capture was excellent news.
“And here, Delka,” remarked Senator Releston, “is something which I found in Wesdren’s desk. It appears to be the cipher to a code. Examine it if you wish.”
Releston unfolded a sheet of paper and placed it on the desk. Delka approached and studied the chart. It read:
8 12 7 2 4 6 1 11 3 10 5 9 13
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
20 22 17 21 24 26 18 16 23 25 15 19 14
The Scotland Yard man drew two sheets of paper from his pocket. They were the messages that he had received through Cady. Delka compared them with the chart. He began to nod; then looked puzzled.
The others watched him for a few minutes; then saw him pound the desk.
“I’ve fathomed it!” exclaimed Delka. “Jove! It is perplexing, even when one has the cipher, yet absurd in its simplicity. Look, senator. Observe those numbers above and below the letters.”
“Eight stands for, A,” remarked Releston, “and twenty must signify N.”
“Not exactly,” corrected Delka. “Eight means either A or N; and twenty likewise.”
“Then how can you tell A from N?”
“By the number which follows it. Look. If I wish to write A, I put down the number twenty. Now I must modify that, to aid the reader — and, incidentally, to confuse the expert. So I put five after twenty.”
“Why five, Delka?”
“Because it is below thirteen. I could use six, seven, ten — it does not matter. Any number below thirteen means that twenty stands for A — not for N.”
“And if you chose to write N. You could use either eight or twenty?”
“For the letter, yes. But after it I should have to place a number above fourteen, to signify that my first symbol was N, and not A.”
Delka spread out the first message. He took a sheet of paper and began to decipher.
“TEN could be J or W. The number that follows it, twenty-one, gives us W. Eight, with a three following.
That is A in preference to N. One means G or T; twenty-two after it proves that it is T. Seventeen — C or P — is proven as C, because of the modifying number, five. Last of all we have eleven, followed by six. H — not U. The word is W-A-T-C-H.”
“Go on,” suggested Releston.
Delka put down S; then Q. He looked puzzled; snapped his fingers.
“I see something else,” he stated. “A space was needed after the word Watch. To indicate the space, the writer merely used a repetition of a figure. For H, you see, he used eleven, followed by six. So he used another six to signify the end of a word.”
“So I begin again with twenty-two, followed by twenty-one. That is the letter O. Here comes U; then T. O-U-T. Two twenty-fives together — the latter is a spacer. The next word is F-O-R. Then comes” — he chuckled — “this is amusing — my name: Delka. Wait, I shall decode the entire message.
Delka worked swiftly as he consulted the chart. He finished his task and tossed the paper to the senator.
Releston read:
WATCH OUT FOR DELKA HE MAY HAVE ESCAPED FROM THE ZOUAVE GIVE
REPLY TO BELL BOY STATING ALL PLANS
Delka was working on the second message. He decoded it. This one stated:
WE MUST MEET TONIGHT IF POSSIBLE COME TO WESDREN GARAGE AND
USE INNER STEPS
“The whole case was in my grasp!” exclaimed Delka. “Wesdren thought surely I was Barthue. He had the steps open, waiting for me. He must have been in the strong room.”
“Ready to make plans when you showed up,” declared Marquette, to whom Releston had passed the message. “But you didn’t arrive. You were out with me, Delka.”
“And when Wesdren got tired waiting,” added Cardona, who was standing beside Vic, “he closed up shop and began to be suspicious about you being Jed Barthue.”
“That stuff I wrote gave him final proof,” said Delka. “I merely jotted down numbers at random, to make Cady think I was preparing an answer. I knew Marquette was coming to the hotel. So I stalled along.”
“And Cady dug the rigmarole from the wastebasket,” added Marquette. “Well, Delka, that was one bluff that proved a boomerang.”
“I fancied myself a code expert,” said Delka. “This one, however, stumped me. You know, now that I know all about it, I see where I should have begun. The writer showed a bit of carelessness in each note.
“Here, in the first message, he used the number four as a modifier: then as a space; then to begin the first letter of the next word. In the second message, he made the same error with the number three.
“Good starting points, those. They showed that this was no ordinary code. You know, I was spending all my spare time trying to decipher these messages. But I failed. Actually, I don’t believe that any one—”
DELKA paused. His lips pressed firmly. He looked toward Vic Marquette; the wounded operative was smiling. Joe Cardona was also wise in his expression; and Delka detected a smile on the lips of Senator Releston. Only Jollister was not in the know.
Delka knew the answer. The Shadow had found these messages and had copied them. Furthermore, The Shadow had solved then. The whole sequence was plain. From the information in the second message, The Shadow had paid a secret visit to Wesdren’s old, unoccupied garage. There he had found the door left open for Delka, as Jed Barthue.
The Shadow had not entered then; but he had used that passage afterward. He had been here in this house. Watching its occupants and its visitors, he had sized the situation; he had ferreted into the schemes of Caleb Wesdren.