The Doom of London

by Fred M. White

"Is it likely?" Asherton-Smith asked.

"Why, yes. It has happened three times during this year. I tell you I have followed this thing pretty keenly. It's more than on the cards. Suppose the breakdown did come, Eli, and we had the last message through? Look at this."

Ericsson took from a safe a sheet of paper—a cablegram message, in fact, sent cut from the office of the East Africa company. It was a genuine document enough, with the date and the hour showing that it had been dispatched from Cape Town on the afternoon of the same day. There were words upon it to the effect that "Bertha has lost her aunt, and the water has been packed in the matchbox."

"That isn't our cypher," Asherton-Smith said.

"That isn't our cypher," Asherton-Smith said.

"Quite right; it's the cypher used by The Messenger. The Messenger, my boy, enjoys as high a reputation as The Times. If a cablegram appeared in The Messenger to-morrow saying that there had been an earthquake on the Rand, and that the Johannesburg water-works had overflowed into the deep levels everybody could take it for gospel. That's why I managed to get hold of and learn The Messenger cypher.

"On the off-chance of the Eastern cable breaking down, I've had a cable sent to me every day from a friend in South Africa saying that there has been an earthquake in Johannesburg, and that the mines are flooded out. The cable comes to me in the cypher used by The Messenger people. That's what all that gibberish about Bertha and the water and the matchbox means.

"Suppose you were to walk into the office and say the Eastern line of cable had broken down. As the Western line is under repair that tells me that communication with South Africa is impossible for a day or more. Probably the lines would be unavailable for nearly a week. I've got a spare envelope or two used by the Eastern Company for their messages; I put this flimsy inside and alter my own address 'Bonan' to 'Bonanza'—which is the registered cable address of The Messenger—by the addition of two letters, and there you are. That's why I thought of 'Bonan' and that little office of mine in Long Lane, where I am known as James Jones.

"I've had this scheme in my mind for years. A boy drops into The Messenger office and hands over the cablegram, and there you are. The thing looks perfectly in order; it is the private cypher of the big newspaper, and, moreover, it is quite up-to-date. If the cable breaks down no questions can be asked, and the thing goes into the paper. We've only got to get the same message sent to me every day, and sooner or later our chance comes."