“The twelfth is almost as obscure,” concluded St. Hilary. “The figures holding out the bags are perhaps conquered Genoese offering ransom.”
“It is not very promising,” I confessed, “Have you any theory whatever as to the meaning of these scenes?”
“I have a dozen. But they are all equally impossible.”
“Let me hear one of them, at least,” I urged.
“Well, then, if I repeat to you the numbers 10, 4, 7, 21, 1, 10, 3, 40, of what do you at once think?”
“A cipher,” I cried eagerly.
“That is the theory that seems to me the most hopeful at present. The numbers I have mentioned are the figures of the different successive scenes. It is barely possible that these numbers, either alone or combined with other numbers, might bring us to the hiding-place of the casket. The trouble is that not every scene has figures in the background. The eighth, for instance. And in hours five and eleven, the backgrounds are so mutilated that, even if this theory were true, we should lack those numbers to make our cipher complete.”
“And yet the existence of a cipher seems the only possible way by which the riddle may be solved.”
“I believe that is true. There are twelve hours, that is, there are twelve different steps–twelve different links to the whole chain. Beginning at hour one, so many steps, paces, or what not, ought to bring us to hour two. There, beginning afresh, so many steps, paces, and so forth, again ought to bring us to hour three, and so on. Do you get the idea?”
“It sounds reasonable,” I replied thoughtfully. “But since two or three scenes are missing, I can not see much promise in this theory.”