The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [42]
The letters were all brought to the Club and read aloud, and as the days passed the sense of tension became less acute, giving way to a general feeling that the drama had become prosaic.
“They are bound to reduce their price. Meanwhile the girl is safe enough,” pronounced Major Lepperidge, voicing authoritatively what had long been unspoken in the minds of the community.
The life of the town began to resume its normal aspect—administration, athletics, gossip; the American missionary’s second ear arrived and attracted little notice, except from Mr. Youkoumian, who produced an ear trumpet which he attempted to sell to the mission headquarters. The ladies of the colony abandoned the cloistered life which they had adopted during the first scare; the men became less protective and stayed out late at the Club as heretofore.
Then something happened to revive interest in the captive. Sam Stebbing discovered the cypher.
He was a delicate young man of high academic distinction, lately arrived from Cambridge to work with Grainger in the immigration office. From the first he had shown a keener interest than most of his colleagues in the situation. For a fortnight of oppressive heat he had sat up late studying the texts of Prunella’s messages; then he emerged with the startling assertion that there was a cypher. The system by which he had solved it was far from simple. He was ready enough to explain it, but his hearers invariably lost hold of the argument and contented themselves with the solution.
“. . . you see you translate it into Latin, you make an anagram of the first and last words of the first message, the second and last but one of the third when you start counting from the centre onwards. I bet that puzzled the bandits . . .”
“Yes, old boy. Besides, none of them can read anyway . . .”
“Then in the fourth message you go back to the original system, taking the fourth word and the last but three . . .”
“Yes, yes, I see. Don’t bother to explain any more. Just tell us what the message really says.”
“It says, ‘DAILY THREATENED WORSE THAN BREATH.’
“Her system’s at fault there, must mean ‘death’; then there’s a word I can’t understand—PLZGF, no doubt the poor child was in great agitation when she wrote it, and after that TRUST IN MY KING.”
This was generally voted a triumph. The husbands brought back the news to their wives.
“. . . Jolly ingenious the way old Stebbing worked it out. I won’t bother to explain it to you. You wouldn’t understand. Anyway, the result is clear enough. Miss Brooks is in terrible danger. We must all do something.”
“But who would have thought of little Prunella being so clever . . .”
“Ah, I always said that girl had brains.”
VI
News of the discovery was circulated by the Press agencies throughout the civilized world. At first the affair had received wide attention. It had been front page, with portrait, for two days, then middle page with portrait, then middle page halfway down without portrait, and finally page three of the Excess as the story became daily less alarming. The cypher gave the story a new lease on life. Stebbing, with portrait, appeared on the front page. Ten thousand pounds was offered by the paper towards the ransom, and a star journalist appeared from the skies in an aeroplane to conduct and report the negotiations.
He was a tough young man of Australian origin and from the moment of his arrival everything went with a swing. The colony sunk its habitual hostility to the Press, elected him to the Club, and filled his leisure with cocktail parties and tennis tournaments. He even usurped Lepperidge’s position as authority on world topics.
But his stay was brief. On the first day he interviewed Mr. Brooks and everyone of importance in the town, and cabled back a moving “human” story of Prunella’s position in the heart of the colony. From now onwards to three millions or so of readers Miss Brooks became Prunella. (There was only one local celebrity whom he was unable to meet. Poor Mr. Stebbing had “gone under” with the heat and had been shipped back to England on sick