“I might make inquiries in a general way,” I answered, “but to place the pack of cards blindly in the hands of an expert would, I fear, simply be giving away your father’s most confidential possession. There may be written here some fact which it is not desirable that the world shall know.”
“Ah!” she said, glancing quickly up at me. “Some facts regarding his past, you mean. Yes. You are quite right, Mr Greenwood. We must be very careful to guard the secret of these cards well, especially if, as you suggest, the man Dawson really knows the means by which the record may be rendered intelligible.”
“The secret has been bequeathed to me, therefore I will take possession of them,” I said. “I will also make inquiries, and ascertain by what means such ciphers are rendered into plain English.”
I had at that moment thought of a man named Boyle, a professor at a training-college in Leicester who was an expert at anagrams, ciphers, and such things, and I intended to lose no time in running up there to see him and ascertain his opinion.
Therefore at noon I took train at St. Pancras, and about half-past two was sitting with him in his private room at the college. He was a middle-aged, clean-shaven man of quick intelligence, who had frequently won prizes in various competitions offered by different journals; a man who seemed to have committed Bartlett’s Dictionary of Familiar Quotations to memory, and whose ingenuity in deciphering puzzles was unequalled.
While smoking a cigarette with him, I explained the point upon which I desired his opinion.
“May I see the cards?” he inquired, removing his briar from his mouth and looking at me with some surprise, I thought.
My first impulse was to refuse him sight of them, but on second thoughts I recollected that of all men he was one of the greatest experts in such matters, therefore I drew the little pack from the envelope in which I had placed them.
“Ah!” he exclaimed the moment he took them in his hand and ran quickly through them. “This, Mr Greenwood, is the most complicated and most difficult of all ciphers. It was in vogue in Italy and Spain in the seventeenth century, and afterwards in England, but seems to have dropped into disuse during the past hundred years or so, probably on account of its great difficulty.”
Carefully he spread the cards out in suits upon the table, and seemed to make long and elaborate calculations between the heavy puffs at his pipe.