“Well,” exclaimed the Professor with some impatience. “Leave us, child. We want to get on with the examination of this paper which Doctor Diamond has just brought me.”
“Does it concern the Treasure of Israel, dad?” inquired the girl, walking up to his table.
“Yes, dear. It is a copy of the complete document, so you may imagine how deeply I’m interested in it.”
“Has Frank seen it?” she asked quickly, to which the Doctor replied in the affirmative.
Then when the girl had, with some reluctance, left them together, they resumed their discussion.
“We can discover nothing tangible without a knowledge of the cipher,” remarked Griffin very gravely. “And in my belief, though it is here stated that the key is concealed in two separate cities, at the time of Holmboe’s death he had it in his possession. That was a portion of it which you rescued—the one folio in manuscript. The typewritten document was evidently prepared to place before a financier with a view to the equipment of an expedition to Palestine. But the additional manuscript was evidently a record of the cipher, together with its key. Have you a copy of it?”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor, taking from his breast-pocket some papers from among which he took a copy he had made in his own handwriting. “As far as I could judge, the manuscript of which this is one folio, consisted of about seven folios. I recollect quite well noticing, as I placed it in the stove, that certain characters in Hebrew were written upon it.”
“Well,” exclaimed Griffin, spreading the copy of the half-destroyed leaf before him, “that the cipher is a numerical one is quite apparent. It seems that it is based upon the wāw sign, or sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Six is the sign of evil. Nevertheless I have turned up the reference to Ezekiel, xli, 23, but cannot find anything unusual in the Hebrew text.”
“Because we do not possess the key,” remarked the hunchback with a sigh.
“Admitted. But we have the basis of the calculation—the regular occurrence of the letter ‘w’ or ‘v’ in the text. For days, nay, weeks, I have been trying to solve that problem, using each of the known cabalistic ciphers of the ancients, but without the slightest success.”