Early in the morning he had rung up Sir Felix on the telephone beside the bed, announcing his arrival, and obtaining an appointment for later in the day.
Both scholars, unknown to each other, were busy upon the same problem, each hoping for success and triumph over the other.
Through weeks and weeks Griffin, seated in his big, silent, rather gloomy study, had tried and tried again, yet always in vain. He was a calm, patient man, knowing well that in cryptography the first element towards success is utmost patience.
It was noon. The fog had not lifted, and Bayswater was plunged in the semi-darkness of the London “pea-souper.”
Gwen was out. She was trying on a new evening frock at Whitley’s—a dainty creation in pale blue chiffon ordered specially for a dance which Lady Duddington was giving in Grosvenor Street in a few days’ time.
Alone, his grey head bent on the zone of shaded light upon the big writing-table, the Professor had ever since breakfast time been putting a new cipher theory to the test.
All the thirty odd numerical ciphers known to the ancients he had applied to certain chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, but each one in vain. The result was mere chaos. The ancients employed numerous methods of cryptography besides the numerical cipher, among them being the use of superfluous words where the correspondents agreed that only some of the words, at equal distances apart, was necessary to form the message; by misplaced words; by vertical and diagonal reading; by artificial word grouping; by transposing the letters; by substitution of letters; or by counterpart tabulations with changes at every letter in the message, according to a pre-arranged plan.
All these, however, he had, in face of the reading of the scrap of the manuscript of the dead discover of the secret, long ago dismissed.
He held the firm opinion—perhaps formed on account of that crumpled paper found at the Bodleian—that the cipher was a numerical one, and based upon some variation of the numerical value of the “wāw” sign, or the number six.
He now fully recognised how very cleverly old Erich Haupt had endeavoured to put him off the scent. The German was a very crafty old fellow, whose several discoveries, though not altogether new, had evoked considerable interest in academic circles in Europe. He was author of several learned studies in the Hebrew text, as well as the renowned work upon the Messianic Prophecies, and without a doubt now that he had possessed himself of the dead professor’s discovery he intended to take all the credit to himself. Indeed it was his intention to pose as the actual discoverer.