‘Find it!’ answers his excited guest ‘Why, under that loose board by the window! I’ve been searching here all day long with scarcely a hope of turning anything up. What a lottery life is!—Get me a knife, a hammer, anything that will wrench the lid off. Quick, man, quick!’
Old Dipping disappeared and shortly returned with a chisel, that being the only article he could find which was in any way likely to suit his visitor’s requirements. Seizing upon it, Ainslie endeavoured to force the lid off the mysterious box. His efforts are for some minutes paralysed by his own precipitate violence, and old Hobb groans impatiently. At length the fastenings can resist no longer; hinges and locks give way, and the lid flies off, disclosing to view a quantity of time-coloured papers and parchments. Beneath these, at the bottom of the box, is a coarse canvas bag, which on being opened is found to contain about a score of guineas in gold. These the lieutenant tosses aside, much to the surprise of Hobb Dipping, who looks upon ready-money as being far more valuable than any papers could possibly be. Various documents are one by one read and laid aside. Many of them appear to be letters of correspondence from persons of rank, and the greater portion are expressed in language which is enigmatical to Ainslie, but which he rightly conjectures as relating to the Jacobite plots in which his scheming uncle had been engaged. Not the slightest hint can be twisted out of any one that at all refers to the subject upon which our hero had hoped to be enlightened. After all, the discovery appears to be very much like a failure.
‘There—there’s somethin’ in that bag you’ve overlooked, sir,’ nervously remarks the landlord, who has been watching his visitor’s actions with a trembling kind of interest.
‘Ay, so there is.’ And a precious something it turns out to be. At the bottom of the bag which Reginald had so carelessly tossed aside is an old parchment cipher alphabet.
‘Landlord,’ says Ainslie, whose fleeting hopes have once more risen to a fever-heat, ‘this may or may not be—I know not which—the very clue I hoped to find here. Be it so, or be it not, at anyrate this money shall go to you,’ and he thrust it across the table towards the wondering innkeeper.—‘No thanks,’ he added, seeing that old Dipping was about to speak. ‘Leave me alone now. I must be quiet.’
The landlord carefully gathers up the gold and goes out, amazed at such unlooked-for generosity.
‘Now for it!’
At the top of the scrap of paper which Reginald had obtained when he first entered the house was a bold, curious kind of monogram; underneath this were two words, which, on being interpreted by means of the cipher alphabet, read as Number Two. Thus far all was plain sailing; but as our agitated hero proceeded with his task, his heart sank within him, for the meaning of the translation seemed well-nigh as obscure as the document was itself. When the whole of the intricate writing which covered the paper had been followed up letter by letter, it ran in ordinary language in this style:
Read the
Second word of the first line.