“About twenty letters should be enough for experiment?” he suggested, taking up a test card.
When he had written the key-word and the letters under it, he, scarcely without reference to the Blocked-Out Square, wrote the translation. Marston did the same, very much slower.
“It doesn’t fit!” Marston announced. “You can’t make anything out of AGELUMTONZN, and so forth.”
“I can’t!” Carpenter smiled—and waited. Would Marston suggest the transposed or elided word?
“I’m disappointed,” Marston confessed, “I thought sure we had it. Let’s try the next key-word in the book.”
They tried it, and the next, and all the rest. None of them translated the letter.
It took more than an hour; at the end, as a full measure of good faith and because it was of no further use to him—he having preserved a copy—Marston insisted that Carpenter retain the original of the French code-book and have a copy made, after which the book could be returned to him at the Chateau. During this hour and more his hand was in and out in his side coat-pocket. When he left the room there went with him, in that pocket, a copy of the original letter—roughly made by the sense of touch alone, yet none the less a copy and sufficiently distinct to be decipherable. For years Marston had practised writing in the dark and under all sorts of handicaps. In his pocket, a number of small slips of paper and a pencil were concealed. He would write a line, then take his hand from his pocket; after a time he would shift the page of paper, write another line, and then another, and so on until the copy was made. And all the while he was so frankly communicative, with apparently not the slightest intent to obtaining a copy—even tearing up the paper on which were the various trial translations—that he completely deceived Carpenter. When he left, the latter went with him to the elevator and bowed him down.
“I don’t quite understand their game,” Carpenter chuckled, as he turned away, “but it’s no matter. I took all the tricks this morning and still have a few trumps left. I thought he certainly would try for a copy of the letter, but he didn’t even attempt it. He may have committed it to memory, but I’ll chance it.”
Returning to his office he gave the code-book another careful inspection and confirmed his impression as to its being authentic. Then he laid it aside, and took up the letter and à l’aube du jour!
First he tried it in reverse position: ruoj ud ebua’l à. The translation was gibberish. Then he wrote the first and last letters, the second and next to last, the third and the third from last, and so on. The result, too, was gibberish. Next he dropped the first word, ‘à’ and tried the rest—still gibberish. He dropped also the ‘l’—still gibberish. Then, in turn, the ‘a’ of the third word the ‘d’ of the fourth, the ‘j’ of the last word—all gibberish. Next he wrote the key-word entire but transposed the ‘a’ from the first letter to the last— still gibberish. He began with the aube—still gibberish.