As We Forgive Them

“I have received information privately,” was his evasive answer. “But before proceeding further, I thought it best to call upon you, in order that we might from the outset thoroughly understand each other. I know that both of you have been Blair’s most intimate and kindest friends, while owing to certain somewhat curious circumstances I have been compelled, until to-day, to remain entirely in the background, his friend in secret as it were. I am also well aware of the circumstances in which you met, of your charity to my dead friend and to his daughter – in fact, he told me everything, for he had no secrets from me. Yet you on your part,” he continued, glancing at us from one to the other with that single blue eye, “you must have regarded his sudden wealth as a complete mystery.”

“We certainly have done,” I remarked.

“Ah!” he exclaimed quickly in a tone of ill-concealed satisfaction. “Then he has revealed to you nothing!”

And in an instant I saw that I had inadvertently told the fellow exactly what he most desired to know.

Chapter Thirteen

Burton Blair’s Secret is Revealed

“Whatever Burton Blair told me was in strictest confidence,” I exclaimed, resenting the fellow’s intrusion, yet secretly glad to have that opportunity of meeting him and of endeavouring to ascertain his intentions.

“Of course,” answered Dawson with a smile, his one shining eye blinking at me from behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “But his friendliness and gratitude never led him sufficiently far to reveal to you his secret. No. I think if you will pardon me, Mr Greenwood, it is useless for us to fence in this manner, having regard to the fact that I know rather more of Burton Blair and his past life than you ever have done.”

“Admitted,” I said. “Blair was always very reticent. He set himself to solve some mystery and achieved his object.”

“And by doing so gained over two millions sterling which people still regard as a mystery. There is, however, no mystery about those heaps of securities lying at his banks, nor about the cash with which he purchased them,” he laughed. “It was good Bank of England notes and solid gold coin of the realm. But now he’s dead, poor fellow; it has all come to an end,” he added with a slightly reflective air.

“But his secret still exists,” Reggie remarked. “He has bequeathed it to my friend here.”

“What!” snapped the man with one eye, turning to me in sheer amazement. “He has left his secret with you?”

He seemed utterly staggered by Reggie’s words, and I noted the evil glitter in his glance.

“He has. The secret is now mine,” I answered; although I did not tell him that the mysterious little wash-leather bag was missing.

“But don’t you know what that involves, man?” he cried, and having risen from his chair he now stood before me, his thin fingers twitching with excitement.

“No, I don’t,” I said, laughing in an endeavour to treat his words lightly. “He has left me as a legacy the little bag he always carried, together with certain instructions which I shall endeavour to act upon.”

“Very well,” he snarled. “Do just as you think fit, only I would rather you were left possessor of that secret than me – that’s all.”

His dismay and annoyance apparently knew no bounds. He strove hard to conceal it, but without avail. It was therefore at once plain that there was some very strong motive why the secret should not be allowed to fall into my possession. Yet his belief that the little sachet had already passed into my hands negatived my theory that this mysterious person was in any way connected with Burton Blair’s death.

“Believe me, Mr Dawson,” I said quite calmly, “I entertain no fear of the result of my friend’s kind generosity. Indeed, I can see no ground for any apprehension. Blair discovered a mystery which, by dint of long patience and almost superhuman effort, he succeeded in solving, and I presume that, possibly from a feeling of some little gratitude for the small help my friend and myself were able to render him, he has left his secret in my keeping.”

The man was silent for several moments with that single irritating eye fixed upon me immovably.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at last with impatience. “I see that you are in utter ignorance. Perhaps it is as well that you should remain so.” Then he added, “But let us talk of another matter – of the future.”

“Well?” I inquired, “and what of the future?”

“I am appointed secretary to Mabel Blair, and the controller of her affairs.”

“And I promised Burton Blair upon his deathbed to guard and protect the young lady’s interests,” I said, in a cold, calm voice.

“Then may I ask, now we are upon the subject, whether you entertain matrimonial intentions towards her?”

“No, you shall not ask me anything of the kind,” I blazed forth. “Your question is a piece of outrageous impertinence, sir.”

“Come, come, Gilbert,” Reggie exclaimed.

“There’s surely no need to quarrel.”

“None whatever,” declared Mr Richard Dawson, with a supercilious air. “The question is quite simple, and one which I, as the future controller of the young lady’s fortune, have a perfect right to ask. I understand,” he added, “that she has grown to be very attractive and popular.”

“Your question is one which I refuse to answer,” I declared with considerable warmth. “I might just as well demand of you the reason why you have been lying low in Italy all these years, or why you received letters addressed to a back street in Florence.”

His jaw dropped, his brows slightly contracted, and I saw my remark caused him some apprehension.

“Oh! and how are you aware that I have lived in Italy?”

But in order to mislead him I smiled mysteriously and replied —

“The man who holds Burton Blair’s secret also holds certain secrets concerning his friends.” Then I added meaningly, “The Ceco is well known in Florence and in Lucca.”

His face blanched, his thin, sinewy fingers moved again, and the twitching at the corners of his mouth showed how intensely excited he had become at that mention of his nickname.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “He has played me false, then, after all – he has told you that – eh? Very well!” And he laughed the strange hollow laugh of a man who contemplates revenge. “Very well, gentlemen. I see my position in this affair is that of an intruder.”

“To tell you the truth, sir, it is,” exclaimed Reggie. “You were unknown until the dead man’s will was read, and I do not anticipate that the young lady will care to be compelled to employ a stranger.”

“A stranger!” he laughed, with a haughty touch of sarcasm. “Dick Dawson a stranger! No, sir, you will find that to her I am no stranger. On the other hand you will, I think, discover that instead of resenting my interference, the young lady will rather welcome it. Wait and see,” he added, with a strangely confident air. “To-morrow I intend to call upon Mr Leighton, and to take up my duties as secretary to the daughter of the late Burton Blair, millionaire,” and laying stress on the final word, he laughed again defiantly in our faces.

He was not a gentleman. I decided that on the instant he had entered the room. Outwardly his bearing was that of one who had mixed with respectable people, but it was only a veneer of polish, for when he grew excited he was just as uncouth as the bluff seafarer who had so suddenly expired. His twang was pronouncedly Cockney, even though it was said he had lived in Italy so many years that he had almost become an Italian. A man who is a real born Londoner can never disguise his nasal “n’s,” even though he live his life at the uttermost ends of the earth. We had both quickly detected that the stranger, though of rather slim built, was unusually muscular. And this was the man who had had those frequent secret interviews with the grave-eyed Capuchin, Fra Antonio.

That he stood in no fear of us had been shown by the bold and open manner in which he had called, and the frankness with which he had spoken. He was entirely confident in his own position, and was inwardly chuckling at our own ignorance.

“You speak of me as a stranger, gentlemen,” he said, buttoning his overcoat after a short pause and taking up his stick. “I suppose I am to-night – but I shall not be so to-morrow. Very soon, I hope, we shall learn to know one another better, then perhaps you will trust me a little further than you do this evening. Recollect that I have for many years been the dead man’s most intimate friend.”

It was on the point of my tongue to remark that the reason of the strange clause in the will was because of poor Burton’s fear of him, and that it had been inserted under compulsion, but I fortunately managed to restrain myself and to wish the fellow “Good-evening” with some show of politeness.

“Well, I’m hanged, Gilbert,” cried Reggie, when the one-eyed man had gone. “The situation grows more interesting and complicated every moment. Leighton has a tough customer to deal with, that’s very evident.”

“Yes,” I sighed. “He has the best of us all round, because Blair evidently took him completely into his confidence.”

“Burton treated us shabbily, that’s my opinion, Greenwood!” blurted forth my friend, selecting a fresh cigar, and biting off the end viciously.

“He left his secret to me remember.”

“He may have destroyed it after making the will,” my friend suggested.

“No, it is either hidden or has been stolen – which is not at all plain. For my own part, I consider that the theory of murder is gradually becoming dispelled. If he had any suspicion that he had been the victim of foul play, he surely would have made some remark to us before he died. Of that I feel absolutely convinced.”

“Very probably,” he remarked, rather dubiously, however. “But what we have now to discover is whether that little bag he wore is still in existence.”

“The man Dawson was evidently in England before poor Blair’s death. It may have passed into his possession,” I suggested.

“He would, in all probability, endeavour to get hold of it,” Reggie agreed. “We must establish where he was and what he was doing on that day when Blair was so mysteriously seized in the train. I don’t like the fellow, apart from his alias and the secrecy of friendship with Blair. He means mischief, old chap – distinct mischief. I saw it in that one eye of his. Remember what he said about Blair giving him away. It struck me that he contemplates revenge upon poor Mabel.”

“He’d better not try to injure her,” I exclaimed fiercely. “I’ve my promise to keep to poor Burton, and I’ll keep it – by Heaven, I will! – to the very letter. She sha’n’t fall into the hands of that adventurer, I’ll take good care.”

“She’s in fear of him already. I wonder why?”

“Unfortunately she won’t tell me. He probably holds some guilty secret of the dead man’s, the truth of which, if exposed, might, for all we know, have the effect of placing Mabel herself outside the pale of good society.”

Seton grunted, lolled back in his chair, and gazed thoughtfully into the fire.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, after a brief silence. “I wonder whether that is so?”

On the following morning, as we were seated at breakfast, a note from Mabel was brought by a boy-messenger, asking me to come round to Grosvenor Square at once. Therefore without delay I swallowed my coffee, struggled into my overcoat, and a quarter of an hour later entered the bright morning-room where the dead man’s daughter, her face rather flushed by excitement, stood awaiting me.

“What’s the matter?” I inquired quickly as I took her hand, fearing that the man she loathed had already called upon her.

“Nothing serious,” she laughed. “I have only a piece of very good news for you.”

“For me – what?”

Without answering, she placed on the table a small plain silver cigarette-box, upon one corner of the lid of which was engraved the cipher double B, that monogram that was upon all Blair’s plate, carriages, harness and other possessions.

“See what is inside that,” she exclaimed, pointing to the box before her, and smiling sweetly with profound satisfaction.

I eagerly took it in my hands and raising the lid, peered within.

“What!” I cried aloud, almost beside myself with joy. “It can’t really be?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “It is.”

And then, with trembling fingers, I drew forth from the box the actual object that had been bequeathed to me, the little well-worn bag of chamois leather, the small sachet about the size of a man’s palm, attached to which was a thin but very strong golden chain for suspending it around the neck.

“I found it this morning quite accidentally, just as it is, in a secret drawer in the old bureau in my father’s dressing-room,” she explained. “He must have placed it there for security before leaving for Scotland.”

I held it in my hand utterly stupefied, yet with the most profound gratification. Did not the very fact that Blair had taken it off and placed it in that box rather than risk wearing it during that journey to the North prove that he had gone in fear of an attempt being made to obtain its possession? Nevertheless, the curious little object bequeathed to me under such strange conditions was now actually in my hand, a flat, neatly-sewn bag of wash-leather that was black with age and wear, about half-an-inch thick, and containing something flat and hard.

Within was concealed the great secret, the knowledge of which had raised Burton Blair from a homeless seafarer into affluence. What it could be, neither Mabel nor I could for a moment imagine.

Both of us were breathless, equally eager to ascertain the truth. Surely never in the life of any man was there presented a more interesting or a more tantalising problem.

In silence she took up a pair of small buttonhole scissors from the little writing-table in the window and handed them to me.

Then, my hand trembling with excitement, I inserted the point into the end of the leather packet and made a long sharp cut the whole of its length, but what fell out upon the carpet next instant caused us both to utter loud exclamations of surprise.

Burton Blair’s most treasured possession, the Great Secret which he had carried on his person all those years and through all those wanderings, now at last revealed, proved utterly astounding.

Chapter Fourteen

Gives an Expert Opinion

Upon the carpet at our feet lay scattered a pack of very small, rather dirty cards which had fallen from the little sachet, and which both of us stood regarding with surprise and disappointment.

For my own part I expected to find within that treasured bag of wash-leather something of more value than those thumbed and half worn-out pieces of pasteboard, but our curiosity was instantly aroused when, on stooping, I picked up one of them and discovered certain letters written in brown faded ink upon it, similar to those upon the card already in my possession.

It chanced to be the ten of diamonds, and in order that you may be able to the more clearly understand the arrangement of the letters upon them, I reproduce it here: —

“How strange!” cried Mabel, taking the card and examining it closely. “It surely must be some cipher, the same as the other card which I found sealed up in the safe.”

“No doubt,” I exclaimed, as, stooping and gathering up the remainder of the pack, I noticed that upon each of them, either upon the front or upon the back, were scrawled either fourteen or fifteen letters in a treble column, all, of course, utterly unintelligible.

I counted them. It was a piquet pack of thirty-one, the missing card being the ace of hearts which we had already discovered. By the friction of having been carried on the person for so long the corners and edges were worn, while the gloss of the surface had long ago disappeared.

Aided by Mabel I spread them all upon the table, utterly bewildered by the columns of letters which showed that some deep secret was written upon them, yet what it was we were utterly unable to decipher.

Upon the front of the ace of clubs was scrawled in three parallel columns of five letters each, thus: —

E H N

W E D

T O L

I E H

W H R

Again, I turned up the king of spades and found on the reverse only fourteen letters: —

Q W F

T S W

T H U

O F E

Y E

“I wonder what it all means?” I exclaimed, carefully examining the written characters in the light. The letters were in capitals just as rudely and unevenly drawn as those upon the ace of hearts, evidently by an uneducated hand. Indeed the A’s betrayed a foreign form rather than English, and the fact that some of the cards were inscribed on the obverse and others on the reverse seemed to convey some hidden meaning. What it was, however, was both tantalising and puzzling.

“It certainly is very curious,” Mabel remarked after she had vainly striven to construct intelligible words from the columns of letters by the easy methods of calculation. “I had no idea that my father carried his secret concealed in this manner.”

“Yes,” I said, “it really is amazing. No doubt his secret is really written here, if we only knew the key. But in all probability his enemies are aware of its existence, or he would not have left it secreted here when he set forth on his journey to Manchester. That man Dawson may know it.”

“Most probably,” was her reply. “He was my father’s intimate acquaintance.”

“His friend – he says he was.”

“Friend!” she cried resentfully. “No, his enemy.”

“And therefore your father held him in fear? It was that reason which induced him to insert that very injudicious clause in his will.”

And then I described to her the visit of the man Dawson on the previous night, telling her what he had said, and his impudent, defiant attitude towards us.

She sighed, but uttered no reply. I noticed that as I spoke her countenance went a trifle paler, but she remained silent, as though she feared to speak lest she should inadvertently expose what she intended should remain a secret.

My chief thought at that moment, however, was the elucidation of the problem presented by those thirty-two well-thumbed cards. The secret of Burton Blair, the knowledge of which had brought him his millions, was hidden there, and as it had been bequeathed to me it was surely to my interest to exert every effort to gain exact knowledge of it. I recollected how very careful he had been over that little bag which now lay empty upon the table, and with what careless confidence he had shown it to me on that night when he was but a homeless wanderer tramping the muddy turnpike roads.

As he had held it in his hand, his eyes had brightened with keen anticipation. He would be a rich man some day, he had prophesied, and I, in my ignorance, had then believed him to be romancing. But when I looked around that room in which I now stood and saw that Murillo and that Tintoretto, each of them worth a small fortune in themselves, I was bound to confess that I had wrongly mistrusted him.

And the secret written upon that insignificant-looking little pack of cards was mine – if only I could decipher it!

Surely no situation could be more tantalising to a poor man like myself. The man whom I had been able to befriend had left me, in gracious recognition, the secret of the source of his enormous income, yet so well concealed was it that neither Mabel nor myself could decipher it.

“What shall you do?” she inquired presently, after poring over the cards in silence for quite ten minutes. “Is there no expert in London who might find out the key? Surely those people who do cryptograms and things could help us?”

“Certainly,” was my answer, “but in that case, if they were successful they would discover the secret for themselves.”

“Ah, I never thought of that!”

“Your father’s directions in his will as to secrecy are very explicit.”

“But possession of these cards without the key is surely not of much benefit,” she argued. “Could you not consult somebody, and ascertain by what means such records are deciphered?”

“I might make inquiries in a general way,” I answered, “but to place the pack of cards blindly in the hands of an expert would, I fear, simply be giving away your father’s most confidential possession. There may be written here some fact which it is not desirable that the world shall know.”

“Ah!” she said, glancing quickly up at me. “Some facts regarding his past, you mean. Yes. You are quite right, Mr Greenwood. We must be very careful to guard the secret of these cards well, especially if, as you suggest, the man Dawson really knows the means by which the record may be rendered intelligible.”

“The secret has been bequeathed to me, therefore I will take possession of them,” I said. “I will also make inquiries, and ascertain by what means such ciphers are rendered into plain English.”

I had at that moment thought of a man named Boyle, a professor at a training-college in Leicester who was an expert at anagrams, ciphers, and such things, and I intended to lose no time in running up there to see him and ascertain his opinion.

Therefore at noon I took train at St. Pancras, and about half-past two was sitting with him in his private room at the college. He was a middle-aged, clean-shaven man of quick intelligence, who had frequently won prizes in various competitions offered by different journals; a man who seemed to have committed Bartlett’s Dictionary of Familiar Quotations to memory, and whose ingenuity in deciphering puzzles was unequalled.

While smoking a cigarette with him, I explained the point upon which I desired his opinion.

“May I see the cards?” he inquired, removing his briar from his mouth and looking at me with some surprise, I thought.

My first impulse was to refuse him sight of them, but on second thoughts I recollected that of all men he was one of the greatest experts in such matters, therefore I drew the little pack from the envelope in which I had placed them.

“Ah!” he exclaimed the moment he took them in his hand and ran quickly through them. “This, Mr Greenwood, is the most complicated and most difficult of all ciphers. It was in vogue in Italy and Spain in the seventeenth century, and afterwards in England, but seems to have dropped into disuse during the past hundred years or so, probably on account of its great difficulty.”

Carefully he spread the cards out in suits upon the table, and seemed to make long and elaborate calculations between the heavy puffs at his pipe.

“No!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t what I expected. Guess-work will never help you in this solution. You might try for a hundred years to decipher it, but will fail, if you do not discover the key. Indeed, so much ingenuity is shown in it that a writer in the last century estimated that in such a pack of cards as this, with such a cipher upon them, there are at least fully fifty-two millions of possible arrangements.”

“But how is the cipher written?” I inquired much interested, yet with heart-sinking at his inability to assist me.

“It is done in this way,” he said. “The writer of the secret settles what he wishes to record and he then arranges the thirty-two cards in what order he wishes. He then writes the first thirty-two letters of his message record, or whatever it may be, on the face or on the back of the thirty-two cards, one letter upon each card consecutively, commencing with the first column, and going on with columns two and three, working down each column, until he has written the last letter of the cipher. In the writing, however, certain prearranged letters are used in place of spaces, and sometimes the cipher is made still more difficult or a chance finder of the cards to decipher by the introduction of a specially arranged shuffle of the cards half-way through the writing of the record.”

“Very ingenious!” I remarked, utterly bewildered by the extraordinary complication of Burton Blair’s secret. “And yet the letters are so plainly written!”

“That’s just it,” he laughed. “To the eye it is the plainest of all ciphers, and yet one that is utterly unintelligible unless the exact formula in its writing be known. When that is ascertained the solution becomes easy. The cards are rearranged in the order in which they were written upon, and the record or message spelt off, one letter on each card in succession, reading down one column after another and omitting the letter arranged as spaces.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed fervently. “How I wish I knew the key.”