“Later she’ll get me, you think!” the Secretary laughed.
“If she is so minded she’ll get you, I have not the least doubt,” Harleston shrugged.
“Then here is where you have your doubt resolved into moonshine.”
“Very well; it won’t be the first time I’ve had the pleasure of seeing moonshine. I’ll try to make the appointment for tomorrow at four.”
“Self-opinionated old mountebank,” Harleston thought, as he went down the corridor to Carpenter’s office. “I shall enjoy watching Spencer make all kinds of an ass of him. ‘You impressible chaps!—not dangerous to me!’ Oh, Lord, the patronizing bumptiousness of the man!... Have you anything for me, Carpenter?” he asked, as he entered the latter’s office.
The Fifth Assistant was sitting with his feet on his desk, a cigar in his mouth, his gaze fixed on vacancy.
“Damn your old cipher, Harleston!” he remarked, coming out of his abstraction. “It’s bothered me more than anything I’ve tackled for years. I can’t make head nor tail of it. Its very simplicity—or seeming simplicity—is what’s tantalizing. It’s in French. Of so much I feel sure, though I’ve little more than intuition to back it. As you know, this Vigenèrie, or Blocked-Out Square, cipher is particularly difficult. I’ve tried every word and phrase that’s ever been used or discovered. We have a complete record of them. None fit this case. Can you give me anything additional that will be suggestive?”
“Here’s what I’ve brought,” Harleston replied—and related, so far as they seemed pertinent, the incidents of the previous afternoon and evening.
“A French message in an English envelope, inclosing an unmounted photograph of Madeline Spencer, a well-known German Secret Agent in Paris,” Carpenter remarked slowly; “and the letter is borne by Madame Durrand to the French Ambassador. You see, my intuition was right? the letter is in French; and as it is of French authorship the key-word is French. That narrows very materially our search. Find the key-word to the Vigenèrie cipher of the French Diplomatic Service and we shall have the translation.”
“You haven’t that word?” Harleston asked.