The more I looked at them the more they seemed to be “dragged in by the heels.” I didn’t think that one with knowledge of hidden treasure, conveying its hiding place to some one else, would have taken the trouble to declare the truth of his statement by oath. Nor was such a pious beginning, on the part of that iniquitous murderer and cut-throat, Jason, quite in character. He would have been more likely to have begun with a sentence of piratical profanity. He had some reason for bringing in the “Book”—and when I knew what it was, I believed I would know the key to the cryptogram.
The “Book” was the Bible of course—a name still in wide use. And the whole volume of my blood seemed to spurt through the veins when I remembered what an important place the Bible had taken in the events of the past few days!
Nealman had had a Bible, wide open, in his room. Edith had been seen to carry it to him through the corridor—and this business with it had been of such a character that he had ordered Edith’s silence in regard to the errand. Whether or not Florey had possessed a copy I wasn’t able to remember for certain.
It must have been a grim old joke to Jason—to use the Holy Word to transmit the record of his iniquity! In an instant I was burrowing, not a little excited, into the bottom of my bag for a small copy of the Bible that I carried with me on every journey.
Apart from religious reasons, there is no better traveling companion for a knowledge-loving man than King James’ Bible. The font of all literature, the mighty well of inspiration, the record of the ages—it was beloved not only of the scientist and historian, but the literati and the esthete. Hardly a week had passed that I hadn’t referred to it, in one capacity or another. And now I felt that I was on the right track at last.
There is no book in such common usage, published with such fidelity as to the position of every word, so easily procured in any place or time, as the Holy Bible. It would be the perfect code-book. Certainly it could be used to the greatest advantage as the key to a cryptogram.
But what had been the method of its use? In what way could these four-letter words, none of which were intelligible, be made through the agency of the Bible to present an intelligent meaning? Again I found myself relying on inductive reasoning. I worked backward, just as I had done before, trying to see some way to convey a secret meaning through the agency of this universally read book.
All at once I saw the way. The Bible contained almost every word in the present English vocabulary. In all probability each one of the words in the column represented some English word to be found somewhere in the Bible, and the column of them, written out, would be the message in full.
How to find that word was the only problem that remained. True, it looked formidable enough at first. Yet I saw in a moment that the four-letter words could not represent the words of the message themselves, but only their position in the Bible.
My mind was working clearly now, leaping from one conclusion to another; and reasoning deductively I tried to work out some method of secret writing whereby I could reveal to another person the position of a certain word I wanted him to know. Suppose, for instance, that Jason wished to use the word “feet” in his message. Looking through the Bible he found the word—say on page 86, third line, fourth word. It was conceivable that he might send the numbers “86-3-4” to some other person; and the latter, aware that the Bible acted as the key, looked up the place in the Book and learned what the word was.