"Ah," said Dr. Fell, nodding again.
"In the magazines―" began Sir Benjamin.
Dr. Fell settled himself more deeply into his chair, blowing an enormous cloud of smoke.
"By the way," he observed, "I have a quarrel to pick with those puzzles in the magazines and illustrated papers. Now, I'm very fond of cryptograms myself. (Incidentally, you will find behind you one of the first books on cipherwriting: John Baptist Porta's De Furtivis Literarum Notis, published in 1563.) Now, the only point of a good cryptogram is that it should conceal something which somebody wanted to keep a secret in the first place. That is, it is really a piece of secret writing. Its message should be something like, `The missing jewels are hidden in the archdeacon's pants,' or, 'Von Dinklespook will attack the Worcestershire Guards at midnight.'-But when these people in the illustrated papers try to invent a cryptogram which will baffle the reader, they don't try to baffle you by inventing a difficult cryptogram at all. They only try to baffle you by putting down a message which nobody would ever send in the first place. You puzzle and swear through a gigantic mass of symbols, only to produce the message: `Pusillanimous pachyderms primarily procrastinate procreative prerogatives.' Bah!" stormed the doctor. "Can you imagine an operative of the German secret service risking his life to get a message like that through the British lines? I should think that General Von Googledorfer would be a trifle nettled when he got his dispatch decoded and found that cowardly elephants are in the habit of putting off any attempt to reproduce their species."
"That isn't true, is it?" inquired Sir Benjamin, with interest.
"I'm not concerned with the natural history of the statement," returned the doctor, testily; "I was talking about cryptograms." He took a long pull at his beer-glass, and went on in a more equable tone:
"It's a very old practice, of course. Plutarch and Gellius mention secret methods of correspondence used by the Spartans. But cryptography, in the stricter sense of substituting words, letters, or symbols, is of Semitic origin. At least, Jeremiah uses it. A variant of this same simple form is used in Caesar's 'quarta elementorus littera,' where―"
"Put look at the blasted thing!" exploded Sir Benjamin, picking up Rampole's copy from the hearth and slapping it. "hook here, in the last verse. It doesn't make sense. `The Corsican was vanquished here, Great mother of all sin.' if that means what I think it does, it's a bit rough on Napoleon."
Dr. Fell took the pipe out of his mouth. "I wish you'd shut up." he said, plaintively. "1 feel like lecturing, I do. I was going on from Trithemius to Francis Bacon, and then―"
"I don't want to hear any lecture," interposed the chief constable. "I wish you'd have a look at the thing. I don't ask you to solve it. But stop lecturing and just look at it."