He picked it up and turned it over and over.
“The humbug! the rascal!” he hissed; “it will end by driving me mad! But steady! Be calm! Don’t let our spirits go down! This is not the time!”
And then, having refreshed himself by giving his head a thorough sluicing with cold water:
“Let us try another way,” he said, “and as I cannot hit upon the number from the arrangement of the letters, let us see what number the author of the document would have chosen in confessing that he was the author of the crime at Tijuco.”
This was another method for the magistrate to enter upon, and maybe he was right, for there was a certain amount of logic about it.
“And first let us try a date! Why should not the culprit have taken the date of the year in which Dacosta, the innocent man he allowed to be sentenced in his own place, was born? Was he likely to forget a number which was so important to him? Then Joam Dacosta was born in 1804. Let us see what 1804 will give us as a cryptographical number.”
And Judge Jarriquez wrote the first letters of the paragraph, and putting over them the number 1804 repeated thrice, he obtained
| 1804 | 1804 | 1804 |
| phyj | slyd | dqfd |
Then in counting up the spaces in alphabetical order, he obtained
s.yf rdy. cif.