“I quite see the danger, dad,” remarked his daughter, “but I’m so interested, do go on with your task and show me how it is accomplished.”
“Very well,” he said, smiling and humouring her. “You see here, at this mark,” and he showed her a pencilled line upon the Hebrew text, “that is where I halted for luncheon. Now we go on to the next sign of six. See, here it is—in the next line. Now we count the eleventh letter,” and he wrote it down in Hebrew. Then he counted the sixty-sixth, the six hundredth and sixty-sixth, the fiftieth, the two-hundredth, and so on until he had a number of Hebrew signs ranged side by side. Presently he said, pointing to them:
“Here you are! The English translation to this is ‘...yourselves, and wonder, for unto thee, O children of Israel...’”
“Really, dad!” exclaimed the girl, highly excited. “It’s most remarkable!”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I confess that until now I held the same idea that every Jewish Rabbi holds—namely that no secret cipher can exist in our inspired writings.”
“But you have now proved it beyond question!” she declared.
“Yes. But startling as it may be, we must preserve our secret, dear. There are others endeavouring to learn the trend of my investigations, recollect. We may have spies upon us, for aught we know,” he added in a low tone, glancing at her with a significant look.
“How long do you expect it will take before you are in full possession of the whole of the secret statement?” she asked.
“Many hours, my dear. Perhaps many days—how can I tell. Holmboe says it runs through only nine chapters. Therefore it should end with chapter xxvi. But as far as I can gather I believe I shall find further cryptic statements in the later chapters. There are certain evidences of these in chapter xxxvii, 16, in chapter xxxix, 18, 19 and 20, and again in chapter xliv, 5. Therefore, I anticipate that my task may be a rather long one. The counting and recounting to ensure accuracy occupies so much time. The miscounting of a single letter would throw everything out and prevent the record being recovered, as you will readily foresee. Hence, it must be done with the greatest precision and patience.”
“But, dad—this is most joyful news!” declared the girl excitedly, “I’m most anxious to telegraph to Frank.”