"Put up or shut up!" cried McArdle.
The upshot was that we each deposited a dollar with old Tom the door-keeper, and I took the paper home.
It was the most ingenious and difficult cryptogram I ever tackled. The sun was up before I got it. It was a richer prize than I had hoped for. Here it is:
"disposed of and your share of the money is here whenever you want to get it.
I strongly advise you not to leave the company. You say she has not discovered her loss. All right. But these phony pearls soon lose their lustre. She might get on to it the same night you hand in your resignation. Then good-night. I'll be back Monday. J."*
* For the benefit of those of curious minds I will give the key to the cryptogram. The simplest form of this kind of puzzle is that in which every letter has a certain other letter to stand for it. It may be the one before it, the one after it, or a purely arbitrary substitution. In any case the same letter always has the same alias. That is child's play to solve. I soon discovered that I was faced by something more complex. Observe that in one place "night" appears as EA&BO, whereas in the next line it is FBACP. "Company" masqueraded in this extraordinary form: &MW&M&L. Here was a jawbreaker! To make a long story short I discovered after hundreds of experiments that the first letter of the first word of each sentence was ten letters in advance of the one set down; the second letter eleven letters ahead, and so on up to twenty-five, then begin over from ten. With each sentence however short the writer began afresh from ten. He added to the complications by including the character & as the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet. The fragmentary sentence at the top of the page held me up for a long time until I discovered that the first letter was twenty-three numbers in advance of the right one. Several mistakes on the part of the writer added to my difficulties.
5
In my experience I have found in adopting a disguise that it is no less important to change the character than the personal appearance. As the new member of Miss Hamerton's company I called myself William Faxon. I appeared as a shabby, genteel little fellow with lanky hair and glasses. The glasses were removed only when I went on the stage in the dark scene. On top of my bald spot I wore a kind of transformation that my friend Oscar Nilson furnished. It combed into my own hair, was sprinkled with grey and made me look like a man on the shady side of forty somewhat in need of a barber. The character I assumed was that of a gentle, friendly little party who agreed with everybody. The people of the company mostly despised me and made me a receptacle for their egotistical outpourings. They little guessed how they bored me.
When I joined the company it had been agreed between Miss Hamerton and I that thereafter she had better come to the office to hear my reports. It was her custom to call nearly every afternoon about five. She insisted on hearing every detail of my activities, and listened to the story from day to day with the same anxious interest.