CHAPTER VIII.
What is a cryptogram? asked the Pupil.
It is a cipher, replied the Sage.
What is a cipher? persisted the Pupil.
It is naught, answered the Sage.
Is there a cryptogram in this book? asked the Pupil.
If there be, a Sage alone will find it. It should explain aught that may seem irrelevant.—The Wisdom of Shacabac.
Now it happened that, some days before, a guard came unto the tent of Shacabac, leading a tattered remnant of humanity, who had been found crawling toward the spring in dire distress. After allowing him to slake his thirst, and being unable to obtain from him any coherent explanation of his forlorn condition, the guard brought him before Shacabac. The Sage, after bidding his body-servants to relieve the stranger of his valuables, asked him how he came to be in such woful plight. The outcast replied in the Lingua Franca dialect: “Truly, because I could not resist the inducement of a free ride from Nhulpar to Ubikwi; but the people of my caravan deserted me in the wilderness two days since, and I have been in sore straits to reach this oasis.”
“And what was thy business in Ubikwi?” asked the Sage.
“None whatever,” replied the stranger; “but it was a free ride,—have I not told thee so?—and of course I went along.”
Struck by this remarkable explanation, the Sage asked, “Of what country art thou?” and the enfeebled one, lifting his head proudly, replied, “I am an American.” “Nay,” responded Shacabac, “thou art more likely to prove erelong that thou dost belong to a yet more numerous race,—that of the deadheads.”
Nevertheless, he was so moved by the piteous condition of the stranger that he allowed him to join the caravan and lead a pack-camel every day during the rest of the march. And the Sage wrote upon his tablets this precious aphorism: “The free lunch is for the thirsty, not for the hungry.”
A happy thought now occurred to Shacabac, and he said:—
“The two-headed Snake is a beautiful instrument of justice; but, if your Highness will pardon her slave for offering a suggestion, I think that the penalty is a trifle too short-lived. The crime deserves a more prolonged punishment.”
“That is true,” rejoined Kayenna; “but, unfortunately, we omitted to bring the Court Torturer with us on this journey, and we can ill afford to waste precious time in mere diversion. Nevertheless, if you think of any device which may serve to enliven the noon hour of rest, do not hesitate to speak. I feel in a kindly mood toward all the world at present, and would not rob so true a friend as yourself of any innocent pleasure.”
Thus encouraged, Shacabac proposed that the stranger whom the caravan had picked up by the oasis of Rhi should be sent for, and interrogated concerning the criminal jurisprudence of his outlandish country beyond the Western Ocean.
Kayenna was pleased to look graciously upon the suggestion, and immediately despatched a slave in search of the stranger, who promptly appeared at the entrance of the pavilion of state.
Great was the surprise of Shacabac on beholding the transformation which had occurred in the appearance of the man, but a few days agone the most forlorn outcast in all the land. From the rich folds of his jewelled turban to the red tips of his Levantine slippers, the whilom vagrant was attired in splendid raiment, and bore himself with that dignity which in Occidental lands marks the owner of sumptuous apparel. Shacabac, whose keen eyes took note of all things, quickly recognized the habiliments before him.
“Amrou’s turban,” he said to himself, making a mental inventory, “Cassim’s slippers, and Selim’s caftan! That is the scimitar of Sokum, resting in the sash of Tippoo, the Congo porter, beside, as I live, the yataghan which I myself did foolishly wager but yester eve on the fall of an idle card! An this keep on, the rascal will own the whole caravan ere we reach Nhulpar.”
For, by some necromancy known to his barbarian countrymen, the stranger had learned to control the fortuitous movements of inanimate pieces of pasteboard, so that they fell ever as he listed, but always contrary to the wishes of the true believer, who vainly challenged fate on what seemed a certain result. Allah alone knoweth how such prodigies are permitted to come to pass.
Stifling his anger at this last outrage, because of Kayenna’s presence, he bade the stranger kneel at the feet of her Highness, and affably addressed him as follows:—
“Dog of an unbeliever and scum of the saliva of jackals, her most gracious Highness deigns to ask of thee in what way do thy obscene countrymen punish a knave guilty of high treason against the mockery which they miscall a government.”
Whereunto the outcast replied, “Which?”
“It is not a question of Which or of What,” said Shacabac, severely, “but of How. In what way do the misguided infidels of your country treat their desperate criminals? for I suppose that not all of them are permitted to escape justice, and flee to more blessed lands, wherein they are enabled to despoil the followers of the Prophet.”
“In grave cases,” said the stranger, after a moment’s reflection, “when the accused has neither friends nor money nor influence, he is subjected to preliminary torture at the hands of what we call the Interviewers. Often he is present in person during the ordeal; but that is largely optional with him, and wholly so with them. In practice it has been found that the most satisfactory interviews are conducted in the absence of the subject. It is a matter of taste and convenience. The real ordeal begins when the prisoner is subjected to the Process of Lor.”
“And what is that?” asked Kayenna and Shacabac, as with one breath.
“It is a complicated process,” was the answer, “but highly instructive. In the first place, the judge, or Cadi, as you would call him, orders twelve men, who know nothing about the case,—otherwise they would not be selected,—to be arrested and imprisoned until the guilt or innocence of the accused can be established. Absolute ignorance of the question is the prime essential governing the selection of the twelve; but total ignorance of everything constitutes the ideal qualification of what we call a ‘juror.’ The less the jurors know or are capable of knowing, the greater the probability that they will speedily agree upon a verdict. It is a very wise and ancient provision of Lor,” added the stranger, reverently; “for, if it were something foolish and new-fangled, it would seem impossible that any twelve men of intelligence could agree unanimously upon a question so intricate as those which are usually brought before our juries. Happily, however, the jurors are not supposed to be intelligent; and, consequently, they nearly always agree upon a matter concerning which any two of them would scarcely be found in accord outside of the sacred jury-room.”
“But, when they have agreed,” interposed Kayenna, who had a mind for things concrete, “what happens to the criminal?”
“Oh, the criminal!” responded the stranger: “he is put under restraint at the beginning of the proceedings, as are the witnesses also, if there be any; but that depends upon whether or not they be able to furnish securities for their appearance in court.”
“It is a strange system, this administration of Lor, as you call it,” said Kayenna, not without some suspicion that the stranger was indulging in romance; “but tell me in a word, does it never punish anybody?”
“Does it?” ejaculated the stranger. “Well, I should say it does. It punishes everybody,—the jurors, the judge, the witnesses, the people who have to hear or read the proceedings of the court, the citizens who have to pay for all the business. Why, even the prisoner himself is sometimes punished, and always more or less annoyed by the procrastination and uncertainty of the whole affair. There are times in the life of such a man when he almost feels that Lor itself is a failure. Of course, he has his consolation, such as it is, in the flowers and sweetmeats and love-poems sent to him by non-resident members of Female Asylums for the Feeble-minded, once he is found guilty of a dazzling crime; but what are flowers or candy or poetry to a man who feels that he is losing time which might be homicidally valuable to himself and society, under different circumstances?”
The stranger spoke with some heat, as one who might have himself experienced the sad uncertainty of Lor; but Kayenna, with her logical mind, brought him quickly back to the main point.
“You say,” said she, “that the criminal is sometimes punished. Describe the process of capital execution.”
“It varies,” responded the stranger, “in the different sections of my country. In some places the condemned is strangled: in others he is imprisoned ‘for life,’ but usually pardoned after a few years. In the State where I last dwelt they have introduced the fashion of electrocution; that is to say, of killing the victim by electricity.”
“And how is that done?” queried Kayenna, always interested in anything savoring of novelty.
“I fear I cannot explain it clearly without the aid of a Brush generator or a dynamo of some kind, and I do not see anything of the sort hereabout. But your Highness no doubt has often seen the effects of a thunder-storm whereby somebody was slain, in the twinkling of an eye as it were. It is thus that we destroy such of our criminals as outlive the Process of Lor.”
“What doth the knave mean?” asked Kayenna, with a frown, aside to Shacabac.
“It passeth my comprehension,” was the reply, “but I fear me the dog laugheth at our faces; for how can any man call down lightning from heaven to destroy his enemies?” Then, addressing the stranger, he asked sternly: “Hath this divinity of thine—this not very infallible Lor—command of the forces of nature, so that it can at will draw down the thunderbolt wherewith to smite its victims? Thy tale is wondrous strange. Her Highness would fain see a proof of it. Take out the culprit, guilty of high treason but yesterday, and let him be ‘electrocuted,’ as thou callest it, before our eyes. Say I not right?” he added, turning toward Kayenna.
“Thou sayest but what is right and just,” was the prompt response; “and I confess that I am interested in seeing the operation of this invention so strangely chanced upon by ignorant unbelievers. Go on, stranger. The victim is ready. Let us see thee electrocute him forthwith.”
But, as obedience to that command was wholly beyond the stranger and as he could not give a satisfactory or intelligible explanation of his inability to obey, Kayenna became exceedingly wroth; and, being moreover a good deal tired of his long and tedious disquisition on Lor, she settled the matter summarily by saying: “This stranger is an impostor who hath doubtless fled from the rude justice of his own country. Let him be cast, along with the traitor, into the cave of the two-headed Snake; and thus let there be an end to all knaves and liars!”
This sentence being communicated to the American, he fell at the feet of Kayenna, and begged as a dying request that his picture might be taken before execution. On being asked why he desired that such a crime against the law of Moses as well as of Mohammed should be perpetrated, he only answered, in a somewhat incoherent fashion, “so that it might appear in the papers.”
“But knowest thou not,” said Kayenna, sternly, “that it is forbidden by thy law, as by ours, to make a graven image or likeness of any living thing?”
“O Lord!” wailed the unhappy man, “surely a newspaper picture does not come under that head! But take me away,” he added despairingly. “People who never heard of electrocution cannot be expected to appreciate electrotypes.”
So he was borne to his dungeon; and in a short time four stalwart slaves thrust him, along with the condemned traitor, into the mouth of the cave of the horrible two-headed Snake, there to suffer the most cruel death ever conceived of by mortal mind.
But mortal mind erred, at least for once. On visiting the cave next morning, the executioners found not a trace of the two culprits, wherefore they supposed that the snake had despatched them promptly.
But the snake also was missing, and the closest search disclosed no explanation of his absence.
The mystery was partially solved when the caravan reached the capital of Nhulpar a few days later, and was confronted at the very gates of the city with flaming placards announcing that
THE GREAT AND ONLY WILKINS
ACKNOWLEDGED EMPEROR OF THE OPHIDIAN WORLD
WILL EXHIBIT
FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY
THE WONDROUS TWO-HEADED SNAKE
SECURED AT AN ENORMOUS EXPENSE FROM THE MENAGERIE
OF HER ROYAL HIGHNESS
KAYENNA THE GREAT
AND EXHIBITED BEFORE THE CROWNED HEADS OF ALL ASIA,
EUROPE, AND AFRICA
Prior to his Immediate Return to America