In Jeopardy
occupancy. The alternative theory is that, granting certain conditions,
the lethal agent might enter the room and accomplish its deadly
purpose, and then immediately withdraw. Finally, this agency might be
human or purely mechanical in character. You see what I'm driving at.
From the first, I believed that the attack was delivered from without,
while Betty and Eunice held that it was what the police call an inside
job."
"And neither theory was wholly right nor wholly wrong," observed Betty.
"Perfectly," rejoined Warriner. "As usual, the truth lay in the middle
distance. Now you go on, Betty; this is your part of the story."
"My part of the story!" echoed Betty deprecatingly. "I'm not an author;
I'm merely the amanuensis, the typist, if you please."
"Mock modesty," proclaimed Warriner. "Even now we would still be
standing before a closed door were it not for Betty and her master-key."
"Yes, my master-key," scoffed Betty. "Only it doesn't seem very clever
of me to have carried it all these months without ever thinking to use
it."
"Perhaps you couldn't find your pocket," suggested Chalmers.
"Enough of this bush-beating and persiflage," I commanded severely.
"Will you go on and tell me, Betty?"
"Well," began my wife obediently, "we had been warned away from the
'Hundred,' but you were obstinate and wouldn't budge; you had to be
saved in spite of yourself.
"Of course I was right in going North immediately after the Midsummer
Night's ball at 'Powersthorp.' Little Hugh really needed the change, and
I wanted to be able to call at will on Chalmers for assistance in
working out my problem. I couldn't do so if I stayed on at the
'Hundred,' even by means of correspondence. I don't suppose, Hugh, that
I need to particularize any further in this direction?"
I mumbled something unintelligible, and, to add to my discomfiture,
Warriner actually laughed. Never mind; I deserved it all.
"I could feel reasonably easy in my mind," went on Betty, "since I knew
that the library had been dismantled and locked up. Besides, I had your
solemn promise that you would not attempt to enter it for any purpose."
"I forgot," I murmured.
"That sounds like honest penitence, and I can forgive you--now. But I
shall never be able to forget the afternoon your letter came with its
calm announcement that you had been in the room to see about the
damaged window; yes, and would probably have to go again.
"That letter reached Stockbridge at ten o'clock in the morning of
Thursday, the twenty-first. Fifteen minutes later an express train left
for New York, and Chalmers and I were the passengers on it, leaving
Hilda to follow with the nurse and the baby. At the first opportunity I
sent you a telegram. Did you receive it?"
My thoughts went back to the yellow telegraphic sheet clutched in John
Thaneford's black-knuckled hands, and held up before my helpless eyes.
"Yes, it came," I answered slowly, "but too late to be of any use."
"I was afraid of that," said Betty, "but we were leaving no stone
unturned. We were missing connections all the way down, and I knew that
the trap was ready for springing. And someone else knew it, too--John
Thaneford."
"But," I objected, "Eunice expressly says that John Thaneford did not
know the secret; except perhaps in part."
"What did he mean then by stupefying you with whiskey, and placing you,
bound and helpless, in the big swivel-chair?" put in Warriner.
I was silent.
"Finally," continued Warriner, "it seemed certain that something had
gone wrong with the working of the machinery, whatever it was. Whereupon
he started for you--you remember--with bare hands."
Ah, yes, I remembered.
"Unquestionably, Thaneford was carrying out a perfectly definite plan of
procedure. He knew what ought to have happened."
"But it didn't happen," I protested. "I'm here and very much alive."
"It did, and it didn't," retorted Warriner. "John Thaneford is dead."
"You mean--you mean----" I boggled.
"Yes, the Terror had entered the room; don't you recall how close I kept
to the wall when I was trying to reach you? But it had become a blind
Terror, and John Thaneford got in its way."
"But how and why?" I asked helplessly.
"Betty, it's your turn again," said Warriner, settling back in his
chair.
Chapter XXI
_A Lost Clue_
"Suppose we admit, for the sake of argument," began Betty "that John
Thaneford was in possession of the secret. Then everything points back
to his father, old Fielding, who certainly had all the brains of the
family. Last and most important, it was a secret which Mr. Thaneford,
senior, desired to impart to me; he did tell me all he could."
"The series of numbers, you mean? I recall them perfectly: 1-4-2-4-8.
And what then?"
"Do you remember the story of Christian and his fellow pilgrim, Hopeful,
imprisoned in Giant Despair's stronghold of Doubting Castle? After
languishing for a week or more in darkness and misery, Hopeful suddenly
bethinks him of a key which he has in his bosom, a key that will unlock
any door in the castle. The rest is easy.
"So, too, I had my key, but I had only used it once--to unlock the first
and most obvious door----"
"The combination of the safe," I interrupted.
"Precisely. It never occurred to either of us that it might be a
master-key to which all locks must yield. But so it was.
"Not that I learned to use it without a lot of trouble and
discouragement. It took months and months, and I only got it fully
working on the train trip down from Stockbridge.
"Of course, you have guessed that the whole story lay buried in that
leather-bound book belonging to Fielding Thaneford which we found in the
safe. I remembered all that you had told me about 'Le Chiffre
Indechiffrable,' but even granting that that particular cypher had been
employed, how was I ever to stumble upon the indispensable key-word, or
more likely, key-sentence?
"One day I had an inspiration. There was the series of numbers:
1-4-2-4-8. Considered as numbers merely they could be of no use, since
most cypher codes are built up on letters. But I might put the numbers
into their written word equivalents, thus: One-four-two-four-eight It
was certainly conceivable that these letters might form the
key-sentence; it would be all the more easily memorized since, in its
numerical form, it served as a combination to the safe.
"I had with me the magic square which you had made for me, and I began
very carefully to work out the problem according to your directions.
"The initial procedure was to put down my theoretical key-sentences,
thus:"
O N E F O U R T W O F O U R E I G H T
"Underneath I must write the cypher message, and half a dozen letters
would be enough to show if I were on the right track. I opened Mr.
Fielding Thaneford's old book, and copied down the first seven letters,
ranging them vertically under the key-letters. That gave me this
arrangement:"
O N E F O U R
Q W O T T U I
"Now the rule goes on to say that you must find the letter O in the top
horizontal column, and follow that column vertically downward until you
come to the first cypher letter, in this case Q. The letter at the
outside, left end of this second horizontal column, will be the first
letter of the original message.
"Well, I tried it, and got the letter B. The next pair yielded an I,
which was encouraging, as one would expect a vowel in this position. But
the third try gave me a J, and that was not so promising; then I got an
N and an E. So far my decoded message read: BIJNE; not very
enlightening. The next pair showed the letter U in both key-sentence and
cypher. Such a combination is impossible on our magic square, and I had
to put down a blank space. The final letter obtained was a Q, and the
complete result read: BIJNE-Q. Pure gibberish of course. I tried out a
few more pairs, and then gave up in disgust; my beautiful theory had
fallen to pieces.
"Just the same, I wasn't ready to give it up. I knew, right in my bones,
that old Mr. Thaneford had wanted to tell me something of supreme
importance at that last moment on his deathbed, when my hand lay in his
and I could feel the intermittent pressure of his fingers. It was
impossible that I should be mistaken about any of the figures, for he
went over the series three or four times; besides, they did open the
safe.
"I was still sure that the numbers meant something more than the mere
combination to an old strong-box that held nothing of any pecuniary
value. The real secret lay between the covers of that leather-bound
book, and I was certain that the old man had been desirous that I should
discover it. The Thanefords and the Hildebrands had not been friends for
a long while, although nobody knew just why. Probably, it was some
ancient grudge Or unforgiven wrong, and old Mr. Thaneford had done his
part in keeping it up. But now that he was sick and paralyzed and dying,
and especially since he and I had become friends of a sort, he was
willing to bury the hatchet. So he told all he could--you remember that
he couldn't speak--and he seemed to feel satisfied that I would find the
hint sufficient, that I would be clever enough to solve the puzzle.
"And surely it was a puzzle. My best guess had come a flivver, and I
didn't see how I could go a step further. Perhaps it was silly to attach
so much importance to what the old man had tried to tell me, but I had
an intuition that our future happiness and safety were bound up in those
crumbling leather covers.
"Time went on, and the solution was as far off as ever; at least
apparently. Little Hugh and I had come to Irvington for the winter; it
was close to Christmas, and I had the blues terribly. Just to think of
Christmas and that abyss lying between us! For I knew that you would not
come unless I called, and I could not send for you quite yet. Suppose
that the discovery of the secret should be close at hand; I might need
Chalmers to help out on some difficult scientific point.
"It is always the little things that show the way out. Hilda's weekly
letter had come, and I was reading it eagerly hoping to find some
mention of you. Now Hilda, poor dear! is an awful speller; she never
could learn to visualize words. As I read along I came on a word which
looked odd; then I saw that she had committed the careless
stenographer's error of spelling 'forty' with an u, thus: 'fourty.' Of
course, the pronunciation is the same in either case--and then it was
that I got my _big_ idea. Was it possible that the phonetic sounds in my
series of numbers might fit words of entirely different meaning than
their ordinary equivalents in letters? Let me try.
"1-4-2-4-8. Why, yes, 1 is 'one' and also 'won'; 4 is 'four' and also
'for'; 2 is 'two' and also 'too'--quick! let me get them all down. And
here was the result: Won--for--too--for--ate. You see that, in every
instance, the phonetic sound of the number can be represented exactly by
a word of entirely different meaning. But this peculiar quality in the
series, 1-4-2-4-8, would not be apparent at a casual glance, and the
figures could even be written down for future reference, or sent to a
distant correspondent, without any probability of that inner
significance becoming revealed. Very clever of Fielding Thaneford--that
is if my deductions were really correct!
"The first step was to set down the new key-sentence with the cypher
writing underneath. Here it is; this time using fifteen letters."
W O N F O R T O O F O R A T E
Q W O T T U I J X I S V A Z P
"Applying the decoding rule I got the following in my first six tries:"
T H A N E C
"You can imagine how excited I was. If my theory were correct the next
four letters should be OURT, completing the word 'Thane Court,' Eureka!