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“There are no vowels,” I pointed out.

“Not necessary.” Holmes scribbled on a notepad and handed it to me. “Can you read that?”

He had written HLMSNDWTSN. “Holmes and Watson,” I said.

“Precisely.”

I stared back at the page of filled squares. “Without the key is it hopeless?”

“I won’t concede that, doctor. It is only the pressure of time that worries me. At least we do start with some advantages.”

“I can see none, Holmes, absolutely none.”

Holmes tapped the top left and bottom right of the page. “We know that this is a personal message from the American president to the German chancellor. Since the first two letters here are PM and the last WW, surely it is probable that these stand for Prince Max and Woodrow Wilson.”

“That is not much.”

“There are other assumptions that we can, I think, safely make. For instance, since the prince is fluent in English and the president not in German, almost surely the language used is English. Also, though the two are naturally of the highest political status, they are amateurs in the employment of codes. Therefore the device selected is apt to be simple.

“Further, even sending such pages as this between them is becoming increasingly difficult to arrange safely: Count Hoffenstein will not be the only spy on the watch along the route. Therefore the same code will most probably have been meant for all their covert communications, meaning that ample space will have been allowed. You will note that the last three lines of the squares on this page have the consonants interspersed in regular alphabetical order, from B to X. That almost surely indicates that the message is contained in only the first eight lines.

“We ’re not beaten yet, doctor. Not while we both have work to do.”

With that I certainly agreed, though heaving a deep sigh at our chances of success. I returned to the prince, who was struggling to get out of bed, and administered a small dose of morphine.

Though this quickly quietened him, he still had periods in which his whole body jerked, his eyes fluttered uneasily, and he would cry out thickly, “Where … where … where …” as long as he could find breath. These symptoms ceased after the second injection, but his breathing became increasingly strained, his face even more flushed, his skin burning. He was, for good or ill, nearing the crisis of his illness.

Hans was invaluable during these hours, doing unquestioningly whatever I bade. Even when, all else seeming to be failing, I turned to that simple nursery remedy of alternating hot and cold fomentations high on the chest and low on the back, for an hour at a time.

When not actively engaged in such tasks, Hans stretched out at the foot of his master’s bed, alert to the smallest move or sound. I dozed in a chair by the fire; if my waking thoughts were on my patient, those in my moments of haze were filled with an endless parade of consonants.

Concede that the secret message began with “Prince Max,” yet what words or words was hidden within bfdrcstcn that completed the first line? Certainly nowhere in the message had I been able to decipher either the Kaiser’s name or title, and yet I would have expected that Queen Victoria’s deluded grandson would be a major topic of such a message.

For, as long as he refused to accept the reality of Germany’s sure defeat, and as long as the officer corps retained their steadfast devotion to their oath of loyalty (how praiseworthy a trait had only the man and the cause been worthy!), the war would continue, for weeks, even months. Literally buckets of blood would pour forth in every dressing station across the front, and that would be only from those who survived long enough to be brought to such medical oases.

Sometime toward evening I went back into the office to tell Holmes of the prince’s continuing struggle: like the world, he was in but not yet through the darkest hour. I found Holmes still seated at the desk, still frowning down at that page of lettered squares, and above him swirled the blue smoke of his pipe. I returned to the bedside.