Sir Richard turned toward MacKeenon. “Better get up and stand by the windows when I open these boxes,� he said. “We can’t be too careful. There is a billion pounds involved in this!�
Fay was impressed for the first time since leaving the sombre walls of Dartmoor. Sir Richard was no man to exaggerate. He might have had the treasure of the Diamond Clique as he reached, pulled a box close up to his side, inserted the key and slowly lifted the sheet-metal lid.
The cracksman leaned out of the shadow and into the light. Sir Richard laid the key upon the polished surface of the table, thrust his fingers inside the box and drew out a sheet of white paper. He held this
sheet so that Fay could read the top lines. They were:
“SCHUCKER—MAINTZ—WERKE—FRANKFORT ON MAIN—BERLINâ€�
Underneath this heading was an even row of ten-point letters, the first of which ran:
“aaahhhsssaaacccstopxxxgggssstttstopmmmwwwccc
pppfffbbbstopxxxzzzccceeesssuuukkkwwwssstttst
opyyynnnvvvfffssshhhstopmmmtttnnnpppwwwfffccc�
Fay counted thirty-two rows of similar letters, between the lines of which were double spaces of blank white. He turned to the box as Sir Richard replaced the sheet and snapped down the lid.
“They’re all like that,� said the chief bitterly. “It’s a clever, clever cipher. A cipher that runs through ten reams of paper. There’s all of six hundred thousand letters in the thing. There’s at least thirty or forty thousand words. The whole will give us the formulae to such dyes as Alizarine Sapphire and Carbanthrene Blue.�
“Might be the names of sleeping cars,� said Fay.