“Have you not been able to read any of it?” he queried.
Dangle shook his head.
“Not so much as a single word—not a letter even!” he declared. “I tell you, Mr. Cheyne, it’s a regular sneezer! I wouldn’t like to say how many hours we’ve spent—all of us—working at it. And I don’t think there’s a book on ciphers in the whole of London that we haven’t read. And not a glimmer of light from any of them! Blessington had a theory that each of these circles was intended to represent one or more atoms, according to the number it contained, and that certain circles could be grouped to make molecules of the various substances that were to be mixed with the copper. I never could quite understand his idea, but in any case all our work hasn’t helped us to find them. The truth is that we’re stale. We want a fresh brain on it, and particularly a woman’s brain. Sometimes a woman’s intuition will lead her to a lucky guess. We hope it may in this case.”
He paused, then went on again: “Another thing we tried was this. Suppose that by some system of numerical substitution each of these numbers represents a letter. Then groups of these letters together with the letters already in the circles should represent words. Of course it is difficult to group them, though we tried again and again. At first the idea seemed promising, but we could make nothing of it. We couldn’t find any system either of substitution or of grouping which would give a glimmering of sense. No, we’re up against it and no mistake, and when we think of the issues involved we go nearly mad from exasperation. Take the thing, Mr. Cheyne, and see what you and Miss Merrill can do. That is the original, but I have made a tracing of it, so that we can continue our work simultaneously.”
Cheyne felt himself extraordinarily thrilled by this recital, and the more he examined the mysterious markings on the sheet the more interested he grew. He had always had a penchant for puzzles, and ciphers appealed to him as being perhaps the most alluring kind of puzzles extant. Particularly did this cipher attract him because of the circumstances under which it had been brought to his notice. He longed to get to grips with it, and he looked forward with keen delight to a long afternoon and evening over it with Joan Merrill, whose interest in it would, he felt sure, be no whit less than his own.
Certainly, he thought, his former enemies had made a good beginning. So far they were playing the game, and he began to wonder if he had not to some extent misjudged them, and if the evil characters given them by the gloomy Speedwell were not tinged by that despondent individual’s jaundiced outlook on life in general.
Dangle had left the room, and he now returned with a bottle of whisky and a box of cigars.
“A drink and a cigar to cement our alliance, Mr. Cheyne,” he proposed, “and then I think our business will be done.”
Cheyne hesitated, while a vision of the private room in the Edgecombe Hotel rose in his memory. Dangle read his thoughts, for he smiled and went on:
“I see you don’t quite trust us yet, and I don’t know that I can blame you. But we really are all right this time. Examine these tumblers and then pour out the stuff yourself, and we’ll drink ours first. We must get you convinced of our goodwill.”