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Chapter Twenty Eight
Describes certain Curious Events
Has it never struck you that this twentieth century of ours is the essential age of the very young girl?
Supreme to-day reigns the young woman between the age of – well say from sixteen to twenty – who dresses her hair with a parting and a pigtail, wears short skirts, displays a neat ankle, and persists in remaining in her teens. Grumpy old fossils tell us that this species is a product of an advanced state of civilisation which insists that everything must be new, from a dish of pèches à la Melba to the tint of that eternal hoarding in front of Buckingham Palace. One can only suppose that they are correct. Ours is a go-ahead age which scoffs at the horse, and pokes fun at the South-Eastern Railway, which forsakes Saturday concerts for football, yet delights in talking-machines.
Is it any wonder therefore that the statuesque beauty and the skittish matron of a year ago no longer finds herself in demand for supper-parties, Sandown or Henley? No, she must nowadays stand aside, and watch the reign of her little sister who dashes off from the theatre to the Savoy in a motor-brougham still wearing her ribbon bow on her pigtail, much as she did in the schoolroom.
The young of certain species of wild fowl are termed “flappers,” and some irreverent and irascible old gentleman has applied that term to the go-ahead young miss of to-day. Though most women over twenty-one may attempt to disguise the fact, it is plain that the young girl just escaped from the schoolroom now reigns supreme. Her dynasty is at its zenith. She is the ruling factor of London life. Peers of the realm, foreign potentates, hard-bitten soldiers from the East, magnates from Park Lane all hurry to her beck and call. The girl in the pigtail and short skirt rides over them all roughshod. And what is the result of all this adulation upon the dimple-faced little girl herself? In the majority of cases, I fear it results in making her a stuck-up, blasé and conceited little prig, for she nowadays takes upon herself a glory and exalted position to which she is entirely unsuited, but which she has been taught to consider hers by right.
Gwen Griffin was a perfect type of the very young girl, courted, petted and flattered by all the men of her acquaintance. Having no mother to forbid her, she was fond of going motor-rides and fond of flirtation, but through it all she had, fortunately, never developed any of those objectionable traits so common in girls of her age. She had managed to remain quite simple, sweet and unaffected through it all, and six months before, when she had found the man she could honestly love, she had cut her male friends and entered upon life with all seriousness.
A week had gone by, and Frank had called every evening. Once he had taken her to dine at the Carlton, and on to the theatre afterwards, for now they had, by tacit though unspoken consent, agreed that all bygones should be bygones.
Often he felt himself wondering what had been the real cause of her mysterious absence from home, yet when such suspicions arose within him, he quickly put them aside. How could he possibly doubt her love?
The Doctor was back again at Horsford, leading the same rural uneventful life as before, but daily studying everything that had any possible bearing upon the assertion of Professor Holmboe.
Frank came down to visit Lady Gavin one day, and as a matter of course was very soon seated with the ugly little man in his cottage home.
Diamond, over a cigar, was relating the result of his most recent studies, and lamenting that they were still as far from obtaining a knowledge of the actual cipher as ever.
“Yes,” murmured the young man with a sigh, “I’m much afraid that old Haupt will get ahead of us – even if he has not already done so. How is it that you can’t get your friend Mullet to assist us further?”
“He has left London, I believe. He disappeared quite suddenly from his rooms, and curiously enough, has sent me no word.”
“You hinted once that he’s a ‘crook.’ If so, he may have fled on account of awkward police inquiries – eh?”
“Most likely. Yet it’s strange that he hasn’t sent me news of his whereabouts.”
“Not at all, my dear Doctor,” responded the other. “If a man is in hiding, it isn’t likely that he’s going to give away his place of concealment, is it?”
“But he trusts me – trusts me implicitly,” declared Diamond.
“That may be so. But he doesn’t trust other persons into whose hands his letter might possibly fall. The police have a nasty habit of watching the correspondence of the friend of the man wanted, you know.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Mr Farquhar,” said the Doctor, with a heavy expression upon his broad brow. “The more I study the problem of the treasure of Israel, the more bewildered I become,” he went on. “Now as regards the original of the Old Testament, it is not all written in Hebrew, I find. Certain parts are in Aramaic, often erroneously called Chaldee. (From Daniel, ii, 4, to vii, 28; Ezra iv, 8, to vi, 18; vii, 11 to 26; and Jeremiah x and xi.) Again, we have a difficulty to face which even Professor Griffin had never yet mentioned to me. It is this. On the very lowest estimate, the Old Testament must represent a literary activity of fully a thousand years, and therefore it is but reasonable to suppose that the language of the earlier works would be considerably different from that of the later; while, on other grounds, the possible existence of local dialects might be expected to show itself in diversity of diction among the various books. But, curiously enough – though I am handicapped by not being acquainted with the Hebrew tongue – all the authorities I have consulted agree that neither of those surmises find much verification in our extant Hebrew text.”
“I’ve always understood that,” Frank remarked. “Yes. I’ve been reading deeply, Mr Farquhar. Curiously enough the most ancient documents and the youngest are remarkably similar in the general cast of their language, and certainly show nothing corresponding in the difference between Homer and Plato, or Chaucer and Shakespeare. Though we know that the Ephraimites could not give the proper (Gileadite) sound of the letter shin in Shibboleth, (Judges, xii 8) yet all attempts to distinguish dialects in our extant books have failed.”
“I think,” said Farquhar, “that such remarkable uniformity, while testifying to the comparative stability of the language, is in part to be explained by the hypothesis of a continuous process of revision and perhaps modernising of the documents, which may have gone on until well into our era.”
“Exactly,” remarked the Doctor, “yet in spite of this levelling tendency there appear to remain certain diversities, particularly in the vocabulary, which have not been eliminated, and these serve to distinguish two great periods in the history of the language, sometimes called the gold and silver ages, respectively, roughly separated by the return from the exile. To the former belong, without doubt, the older strata in the Hexateuch, and the greater prophets; to the latter, almost as indubitably, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes and Daniel, all of which use a considerable mixture of Aramaic of Persian words. Then, the great question for us is whether the ancient text of Ezekiel preserved in St. Petersburg is an original, or a modernised version. If the latter, much of the cipher, perhaps all, must have been destroyed!”
“I quite follow your argument, my dear Diamond,” Farquhar replied, “but has not Holmboe established to his own satisfaction that the cipher still exists in the manuscript in question? He has, therefore, proved it to be an exact copy of the original – if not the original itself.”
“Experts all agree that it cannot be the original,” declared the Doctor. “It is quite true that Holmboe alleges that the cipher exists, and gives quotations from it. Yet now that I have been reading deeply I have become a trifle sceptical. I’m anxious for Griffin to discover the key number, and prove it for himself. Personally, I entertain some doubt about the present text of Ezekiel being the actual text of the prophet.”
“That can only be proved by the test of the cipher,” was Farquhar’s reply. “If you accept any part of the dead man’s declaration, you must surely accept the whole.”
“I have all along accepted the whole – just as Griffin accepts it.”
“Then why entertain any doubt in this direction? The Professor has never mentioned it, which shows us that there is no need why we should query it.”
“Yes, but may not the fact of the text having been modernised be the reason of Griffin’s non-success in discovering the key number?”
“Holmboe discovered it,” remarked the other, “therefore, I see no reason why Griffin – with Holmboe’s statement before him and in addition that scrap of manuscript which evidently relates to the key – should not be equally successful.”
“Ah!” sighed the ugly little man whose fidgety movements showed his increasing anxiety, “if we could but know what the old German was doing – or in what direction he is working.”
“He’s not back at his own home. I received a telegram from our Leipzig correspondent only yesterday. His whereabouts is just as mysterious as that of your friend Mullet. By the way – would he never tell you who were the principals in this opposition to us?”
“No, he has always steadily refused.”
“Some shady characters, perhaps – men whom he is compelled to shield, eh?”
“I think so,” answered the Doctor. “I wanted him to stand in with us, but he’s a strange fellow, for though he promised to help me, he refused to participate in any part of the profit.”
“Has some compunction in betraying his friends, evidently,” laughed Frank. “I’m very anxious to meet him. He promised to call on Griffin, but has never done so.”
“He’s been put on his guard, and cleared out, that’s my candid opinion. ‘Red Mullet’ is a splendid fellow, but a very slippery customer, as the police know too well. He’s probably half-way across the world by this time. He’s a very rapid traveller. I’ve sometimes had letters from him from a dozen different cities in as many days.”
“To move rapidly is always incumbent upon the adventurer, if he is to be successful in eluding awkward inquiry. He never writes to the child, I suppose?” Frank asked, as Aggie at that moment passed the window.
“Oh, yes, very often. But he always encloses her letter to me. He never gives his address to her, for fear, I suppose, that it should fall into other hands. I wired to his rooms in Paris a week ago, but, as yet, have received no response. His rooms in London are closed. I was up there on Thursday. Why he keeps them on when he’s away for years at a time, I can never understand.”
“Probably sub-lets them, as so many fellows do,” Farquhar suggested, “yet it’s unfortunate we can’t get into touch with him.”
“Miss Griffin is acquainted with him – I wonder if she knows his whereabouts?” remarked Diamond quite innocently.
“She knows him!” Frank echoed in surprise. “Are you quite sure of that?”
“Quite. She told me so.”
“How could she know a man who is admittedly an outsider?” asked Frank.
“My dear Mr Farquhar,” he laughed, “your modern girl makes many undesirable acquaintances, especially a pretty go-ahead girl of Miss Griffin’s type.”
Frank bit his lip. This friendship of Gwen’s with the man Mullet annoyed him. What could she possibly know of such a man? He resolved to speak to her about it, and make inquiry into the circumstances of their acquaintance.
He must warn her to have nothing to do with a man of such evil reputation, he thought. Little did he dream that this very man whom the world denounced as an outsider had stood the girl’s best and most devoted friend.
He walked back along the village street to the Manor, and dressed for dinner, his mind full of dark forebodings.
What would be the end? What could it be, except triumph for those enemies, the very names of whom were, with such tantalising persistency, withheld.
Half an hour after he had left the Doctor’s cottage the village telegraph-boy handed Aggie a message which she at once carried to her foster-father.
He tore it open, started, read it through several times, and then placed it carefully in the flames.
Then he hurriedly put on his boots, overcoat and hat, and went forth, explaining to his wife that he was suddenly called on urgent business to London.
That evening, just before ten o’clock, a short dark figure could have been seen slinking along by the railings of Berkeley Square, indistinct in the night mist, which, with the dusk, had settled over London.
The man, though he moved constantly up and down to keep himself warm, kept an alert and watchful eye upon the big sombre-looking mansion opposite – the residence, as almost any passer-by would have told the stranger, of Sir Felix Challas, the anti-Semitic philanthropist.
Over the semicircular fanlight a light burned brightly, but the inner shutters of the ground floor rooms were closed, while the drawing-room above was lighted.
Time after time the silent watcher passed and repassed the house, taking in every detail with apparent curiosity, yet ever anxious and ever expectant.
The constable standing at the corner of Hill Street eyed the dwarfed man with some suspicion, but on winter nights the London streets, even in the West End, abound with homeless loafers.
The Doctor, wearing a shabby overcoat several sizes too large for him and a felt hat much battered and the worse for wear, watched vigilantly and with much patience.
He saw a taxi-cab drive up before Sir Felix’s and a rather tall, good-looking man in opera hat and fur-lined coat descend and enter the house. The cab waited and ten minutes later the visitor – Jim Jannaway it was – was bowed out by the grave-faced old butler, and giving the man directions, was whirled away into Mount Street, out of sight.
“I suppose that’s the fellow!” murmured the ugly little man beneath his breath, as he stood back in the darkness against the railings opposite. Hardly had the words escaped his lips when a hansom came from the direction of Berkeley Street, and pulling up, an old, rather feeble white-bearded man got out, paid the driver, and ascending the steps rang the bell.
He was admitted without question, and the door was closed behind him.
“Erich Haupt, without a doubt,” remarked the Doctor aloud. “Why has he returned to London? Has he made a further discovery, I wonder. The description of him is exact.”
For half an hour he waited, wondering what was happening within that great mansion.
Then Jim Jannaway suddenly returned, dismissed his “taxi,” and was admitted. All that coming and going showed that something was in the wind.
“Red Mullet” had given him due warning from his hiding-place. His telegram had been despatched from Meopham, which he had discovered was a pleasant Kentish village, not far from Gravesend. He was evidently in concealment there.
Just before eleven o’clock another hansom turning out of Hill Street in the mist, pulled up before the house, and he watched a dark figure alight from it.
Notwithstanding the dim light he recognised the visitor in an instant. The figure was that of a tall, dark-eyed girl.
“Good Heavens!” he gasped, staring across the road, rigid. “Mullet was right! He was not mistaken after all! By Jove – then I know the truth! We are betrayed into the hands of our enemy!”
And as the Doctor stood there he was entirely unaware that he, in turn, was being watched from the opposite pavement – and by a woman!
Chapter Twenty Nine
Which Solves a Problem
That day had been an eventful one at Pembridge Gardens. Indeed, the event of the great scholar, Arminger Griffin’s life had occurred.
It happened in this way. The January morning had been so dark that he had been compelled to use the electric light upon his study table, and during the whole morning he had been engaged upon that same futile task – the problem of the cipher.
With the Hebrew text of Ezekiel open before him, and sheets of manuscript paper upon the blotting-pad, he had been absorbed for hours in his cabalistic calculations which, to the uninitiated, would convey nothing. They appeared to be elementary sums of addition and subtraction – sums consisting of ordinary numericals combined with letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
And curiously enough, in a back bedroom in the Waldorf Hotel, in Aldwych, the white-bearded old German, Erich Haupt, who only the previous night had returned from the Continent, sat making almost similar calculations. Before him also he had a copy of the Hebrew Bible, and was taking sentences haphazard from Ezekiel xix, the lamentation for the Princes of Israel under the parable of the lion’s whelps taken in a pit.
Early in the morning he had rung up Sir Felix on the telephone beside the bed, announcing his arrival, and obtaining an appointment for later in the day.
Both scholars, unknown to each other, were busy upon the same problem, each hoping for success and triumph over the other.
Through weeks and weeks Griffin, seated in his big, silent, rather gloomy study, had tried and tried again, yet always in vain. He was a calm, patient man, knowing well that in cryptography the first element towards success is utmost patience.
It was noon. The fog had not lifted, and Bayswater was plunged in the semi-darkness of the London “pea-souper.”
Gwen was out. She was trying on a new evening frock at Whitley’s – a dainty creation in pale blue chiffon ordered specially for a dance which Lady Duddington was giving in Grosvenor Street in a few days’ time.
Alone, his grey head bent on the zone of shaded light upon the big writing-table, the Professor had ever since breakfast time been putting a new cipher theory to the test.
All the thirty odd numerical ciphers known to the ancients he had applied to certain chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, but each one in vain. The result was mere chaos. The ancients employed numerous methods of cryptography besides the numerical cipher, among them being the use of superfluous words where the correspondents agreed that only some of the words, at equal distances apart, was necessary to form the message; by misplaced words; by vertical and diagonal reading; by artificial word grouping; by transposing the letters; by substitution of letters; or by counterpart tabulations with changes at every letter in the message, according to a pre-arranged plan.
All these, however, he had, in face of the reading of the scrap of the manuscript of the dead discover of the secret, long ago dismissed.
He held the firm opinion – perhaps formed on account of that crumpled paper found at the Bodleian – that the cipher was a numerical one, and based upon some variation of the numerical value of the “wâw” sign, or the number six.
He now fully recognised how very cleverly old Erich Haupt had endeavoured to put him off the scent. The German was a very crafty old fellow, whose several discoveries, though not altogether new, had evoked considerable interest in academic circles in Europe. He was author of several learned studies in the Hebrew text, as well as the renowned work upon the Messianic Prophecies, and without a doubt now that he had possessed himself of the dead professor’s discovery he intended to take all the credit to himself. Indeed it was his intention to pose as the actual discoverer.
Continuing his work in silence and without interruption Griffin had been making a long and elaborate calculation when, very soon after the little Sheraton clock upon the mantelshelf had chimed noon, he started up with a cry of surprise and stared across at the long old-fashioned bookcase opposite.
Next moment his head was bent to the paper before him, as he rapidly traced numerals and Hebrew characters, for he wrote the ancient language as swiftly as he wrote English.
“Yes!” he whispered, as though in fear of his own voice. “It actually bears the test – the only one that has borne it through a whole sentence! Can it be possible that I have here the actual key?” For another half-hour he remained busy with his calculations, gradually evolving a Hebrew character after each calculation until he had written a line. Then aloud he read the Hebrew to himself, afterwards translating it into English thus:
”…the house of Togarmah, of the north quarters…”
The old man rose from his chair, pale and rigid, staring straight through the window at the yellow sky.
“At last!” he gasped to himself. “Success at last! Holmboe’s secret is mine —mine!”
He was naturally a quiet man whom nothing could disturb, but now so excited had he become that his hand shook and trembled and he was unable to trace the Hebrew characters with any degree of accuracy.
He walked to the window, and looked out into the foggy road below.
He, Arminger Griffin, though Regius Professor, had, in the course of that brief hour, become the greatest Hebrew scholar in Europe, the man who would announce to the world the most interesting discovery of the age!
He gazed around that silent restful room, like a man in a dream. His success hardly seemed true. Where was Haupt, he wondered? Would his ingenuity and patience lead him to that same goal whereby he could read the hidden record?
Pausing at his table he recalculated the sum upon the sheet of paper. No. He had made no mistake. There was the decipher in black and white, quite clear and quite intelligible!
He stretched his arms above his head, and standing upon the hearthrug before the blaring fire, reflected deeply.
The declaration of the dead professor was true, after all. The cipher did exist in Ezekiel, therefore there was little doubt that the treasure of Israel would be discovered through his instrumentality.
Haupt fortunately did not possess any of that manuscript which was evidently a written explanation of the mode of deciphering the message. Hence he would not be aware that the “wâw” sign formed the basis of calculation necessary. But he, Arminger Griffin, had elucidated a problem of which bygone generations of scholars had never dreamed, and Israel would, if the secret were duly kept, recover the sacred relics of her wonderful temple.
His face was blanched with suppressed excitement. How should he act?
After some pondering he resolved to make no announcement to Diamond or to Farquhar, both of whom he knew were away in the country, until he had made a complete decipher of the whole of the secret record.
He intended to launch the good news upon them as a thunderclap.
“They both regard me as a ‘dry-as-dust’ old fossil,” he laughed to himself. “But they will soon realise that Arminger Griffin has patience and ability to solve one of the most intricate problems ever presented to any scholar. We can now openly defy our enemies – whoever they are. Before midnight I shall be in possession of the whole of the secret record contained in the book of the Prophet, and if I do not turn it to advantage it will not be my fault. That man Mullet evidently fears to call upon me. Ah! his friends little dream that I have solved the problem – that success now lies in my hands alone.”
Crossing again to the table he slowly turned over the folios of the text of Ezekiel which he had been using, glancing at it here and there.
Then he touched the electric bell, and Laura, the tall, dark-haired parlour-maid, answered.
“Is Miss Gwen in?” he inquired.
“No, sir. She’s not yet returned.”
“When she comes, please say I wish to see her at once.”
“Very well, sir,” was the quiet response of the well-trained maid who, by the expression upon her master’s face, instantly recognised that something unusual had occurred.
She glanced at him with a quick interest, and then retired, closing the door softly after her.
The Professor, reseating himself at his table, pushed his scanty grey hair off his brow, and again readjusting his big round spectacles settled down to continue his intensely interesting work of discovery.
“Holmboe says that the cipher exists in nine chapters,” he remarked aloud to himself. “I wonder which of the forty-eight chapters he alludes to! Now let’s see,” he went on, slowly turning over the leaves of the Hebrew text, “the book of Ezekiel’s prophecy is divided into several parts. The first contains chapters i-xxiv, which are prophecies relating to Israel and Judah, in which he foretells and justifies the fall of Jerusalem. The second is chapters xxv-xxxii, containing denunciations of the neighbouring nations; the third is chapters xxxiii-xxxix, which gives predictions of the restitution and union of Judah and Israel, and the last, chapter xl-xlviii, visions of the ideal theocracy and its institutions. Now the question is in which of those parts is hidden the record?”
The few words of the cipher which he had been able to read were continued in chapter xxiv, beginning at verse 6; “Wherefore thus saith the Lord God; Woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose scum is therein, and whose scum not gone out of it! bring it out piece by piece; let no lot fall upon it. For her blood is in the midst of her; she set it upon the top of a rock; she poured it not upon the ground, to cover it with dust,” etc, down to the end of verse 27. If those twenty-two verses only contained eight words of the hidden record, then it was apparent that the Professor had a greater task before him than he imagined.
Gwen, in emerging from Whiteley’s into Westbourne Grove, had met a young naval officer she knew. He was home on leave, therefore she had strolled leisurely with him down Queen’s Road and along Bayswater Road, in preference to taking a cab. A couple of years before, when she was still a mere girl and he only an acting sub-lieutenant, they had been rather attached to each other. He was, of course, unaware of her engagement to Frank Farquhar, and she did not enlighten him, but allowed him to chatter to her as they walked westward. His people lived in Porchester Terrace, and he had lately been at sea for a year with the Mediterranean Fleet, he told her.
The yellow obscurity was now rapidly clearing as, at the corner of Pembridge Gardens, he raised his hat and with some reluctance left her.
Then she hurried in, just as the luncheon gong was sounding, and had only time to take off her hat and coat to be in her place at table. Her father was most punctual at his meals. He believed in method at all times, and carried method and the utmost punctuality into all his daily habits.
When he entered the dining-room the girl saw, from his preoccupied expression, that something had occurred.
She, however, made no inquiry before the servant, while he on his part, though bursting with the good news, resolved to keep his information until they had had their meal and retired into the study together.
Then he would explain to her, and show her the amazing result.
Therefore she chatted merrily, telling him how sweet her new gown looked, and gossiping in her own sweet engaging way – with that girlish laughter and merriment which was the sunshine of the old scholar’s otherwise dull and colourless existence.
Little did she dream, he thought, as he sat at table, of the staggering announcement which he was about to make to her.
He had solved the problem!
