The Sleuth of St. James Street [67]
The man expected to see a lot of queer signs and figures; but instead he found a simple trade's message, as it seemed to him. P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight steamer Don Carlow from N. Y. Have the bill of lading handed over to our agent to check up. "Well," said the jewel dealer, "somebody's going to ship nine hundred horses. Where's the mystery?" The Baronet shrugged his big shoulders. "The mystery," he said, "is everywhere. It's before and after and in the body of this message. There's hardly anything to it but mystery." "Who sent it?" said Hargrave. "That's one of the mysteries," replied the Baronet. "Ah!" said the jewel dealer. "Who received it?" "That's another," he answered. "At any rate," continued Hargrave, "you know where you got it." "Right," replied the Baronet. "I know where I got it." He took three newspapers out of the pocket of his big tweed coat. "There it is," he said, "in the personal column of three newspapers - today's Times printed in London; the Matin printed in Paris; and a Dutch daily printed in Amsterdam." And there was the message set up in English, in two sentences precisely word for word, in three news papers printed on the same day in London, Paris and Amsterdam. "It seems to be a message all right," said Hargrave: "But why do you imagine it's a cipher?" The Baronet looked closely at the American jewel dealer for a moment. "Why should it be printed in English in these foreign papers," he said, "if it were not a cipher?" "Perhaps," said Hargrave, "the person for whom it's intended does not know any other language." The Baronet shrugged his shoulders. "The persons for whom this message is intended," he said, "do not confine themselves to a single language. It's a pretty well-organized international concern." "Well," said Hargrave, "it doesn't look like a mystery that ought to puzzle the ingenuity of the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of the metropolitan police." He nodded to Sir Henry. "You have only to look out for the arrival of nine hundred horses and when they get in to see who takes them off the boat. The thing looks easy." "It's not so easy as it looks," replied the Baronet. "Evidently these horses might go to France, Holland or England. That's the secret in this message. That's where the cipher comes in. The name of the port is in that cipher somewhere." "But you can, watch the steamer," said Hargrave, "the Don Carlos." The Baronet laughed. "There's no such steamer!" He got up and began to walk round the table. "Nine hundred horses," he said. "This thing has got to stop. They're on the sea now, on the way over from America: We have got to find out where they will go ashore." He stopped, stooped over and studied the message which he had written out and which also lay before him in the three newspapers. "It's there," he said, "the name of the port of arrival, somewhere in those two sentences. But I can't get at it. It's no cipher that I have ever heard of. It's no one of the hundred figure or number ciphers that the experts in the department know anything about. If we knew the port of arrival we could pick up the clever gentleman who comes to take away the horses. But what's the port - English, French or Dutch? There are a score of ports." He struck the paper with his hand. "It's there, my word for it, if we could only decode the thing." Then he stood up, his face lifted, his fingers linked behind his back. He crossed the room and stood looking out at the thin yellow fog drifting over Piccadilly Circus. Finally he came back, gathered up his papers and put them in the pocket of his big tweed coat. "There's one man in Europe," he said, "who can read this thing. That's the Swiss expert criminologist, old Arnold, of Zurich. He's lecturing at the Sorbonne in Paris. I'm going to see him." Then he went out. Now that, as has been said, is how the thing began. It was the first episode in the series of events that began to go forward on this extraordinary night. One will say that the purchasing agent for a great New York jewel house ought