If certain of the words possessed some arbitrary meaning to which the key promised by Lord Ashiel would have furnished the solution, there seemed little hope of understanding the message until the key was found. The word "way," for instance, might stand for another that had been previously decided on, and if rightly construed probably indicated the place where the papers were concealed. "Will," "face," "curiosity," "bull" and "horn" were likely to represent other very different words, or perhaps even whole sentences.
Without the key it was hopeless to search along that line; such search must end, as it would begin, in conjecture only. He would see if anything more promising could be arrived at by taking the message as it was and assuming that all the words bore the meaning usually attributed to them. For more than an hour Gimblet racked his brains to read sense into the senseless phrases, and at the end of that time was no wiser than at the beginning.
"Where there's a way there's a will." Was it by accident or design that the order in which the words way and will were placed was different from the one commonly assigned to them? Had Lord Ashiel made a mistake in arranging the message? Or did the "will" refer to his will and testament? If so, why should he take so roundabout a way of designating it? Doubtless because something more important than the will was involved; indeed, if anything was clear, from the ambiguous sentence and the precaution that Ashiel had taken that though it fell into the hands of his enemies it should convey nothing to them, it was that he considered the mystification of the uninitiated a matter of transcendental importance. It was plain he contemplated the possibility of the Nihilists knowing where to look for his message; and at the thought Gimblet shifted uneasily in his chair, remembering his first encounter with their representative.
"Face curiosity and take the bull by the horn." Perhaps those words, as they stood, contained some underlying sense, which at present it was hard to read in them. What it was, seemed impossible to guess. To take the bull by the horn, is a common enough expression, and might represent no more than a piece of advice to act boldly; on the whole that was not likely, for would anyone wind up such a carefully veiled communication with so trite and everyday a saying, or finish such an obscure message with so ordinary a sentiment?
"Face curiosity," however, was perhaps a direction how to proceed. The only trouble was to know what in the world it meant!
Whose curiosity was to be faced? The behaviour of members of a Nihilist society could hardly be said to be impelled by that motive. Gimblet could not see that anyone else had shown any symptom of it. Had "curiosity," then, some other meaning?
The detective, as has been said, was an amateur of the antique. When not at work, a great part of his time was passed in the neighbourhood of curiosity shops, and the merchandise they dealt in immediately occurred to him in connection with the word.
Did the dead man refer to some peculiarity of the ancient keep? Was there, perhaps, the figure or picture of a bull within the castle whose horn pointed to the ultimate place of concealment? It would have seemed, Gimblet thought, that the hidden receptacle in the secret stair was difficult enough to find; but the reason the papers were not placed in there was plain to him after a minute's reflection. It was doubtless because they were too bulky to be contained in the shallow drawer. At all events, there was certainly another hiding-place; and, on the whole, the best plan seemed to be to see if the castle could produce any curiosity that would offer a solution of the problem.
To the castle, accordingly, he went, and asked to see Lord Ashiel. He was shown into the smoking-room, where Mark was kneeling on the hearth-rug surrounded by piles of folded and docketed papers. The door of a small cupboard in the wall beside the fireplace stood open, revealing a row of deep shelves stacked with the same neat packets.
"Still hunting for the will, you see," he said, looking up as Gimblet entered, "I'm beginning to give up hope of finding it, but it's a mercy to have something to do these days."