Only that morning I had received a response from an expert in cipher—one of the officials at the Record Office in London—to whom I had submitted a copy of that tantalising document.
“This,” he wrote, “is what is known as the checker-board cipher, a numerical cipher invented by a Russian revolutionist some forty years ago, and of all secret means of correspondence is the most complicated and ingenious. It is absolutely undecipherable unless the keyword or words agreed upon by the two correspondents be known, and it is therefore much used by Anarchists and Revolutionists. The meaning of the present cipher can never be solved until you gain knowledge of the keyword used, for in writing it the numbers representing each letter of that word are added to the numbers representing each letter of the message. Therefore, in deciphering, the proper subtraction must be made before any attempt can be successful in learning the message contained. I enclose you a copy of the checker-board used in writing the cipher, but without knowledge of the keyword this can be of no use whatever. It will, however, serve to show you what an extremely ingenious cipher it is, devised as it has been by a Russian of quick and subtle intellect, and used as means of secret communication in the constant plots against the Russian aristocracy. In the Russian prisons this square with its five numbers and twenty-five letters is used in a variety of ways, for most political prisoners have committed it to memory. If two persons are in separate cells, for instance, and one wishes to communicate with the other, who in all probability is acquainted with the use of the square, he will ask, ‘Who are you?’ by rapping on the wall, thus, 5 raps, a pause, 2 raps, a pause (W); 2 raps, a pause, 3 raps, a pause (H); 3 raps, a pause, 4 raps, a pause (O); and so on until the whole question is rapped out. This is the way in which the cipher you have submitted to me is written, but in this case, as I have said, with the numbers of the keyword added. Discover that, and the secret here will be yours.”
Enclosed was a half sheet of note-paper on which was drawn the following device:—
- 1 2 3 4 5
1 A B C D E
2 F G H I K
3 L M N O P
4 Q R S T U
5 V W X Y Z
Ah! If only I could read what was written there! I placed the key beside the message, but saw that all the numbers were higher than those of the checker board, showing that the unknown keyword had been added, thus rendering the cipher secure from any save the person aware of the pre-arranged word. If, however, the expert failed to decipher what was written there, how could I hope to decipher it? I therefore replaced the papers in the drawer regretfully, locked it, and went upstairs to the long, old-fashioned room set apart for me when I dined and slept at the Hall.
My thoughts were full of Lolita and of the curious effect the news of Richard Keene’s return had produced upon the Countess. For a long time I sat gazing out across the park, flooded as it was by the bright white light of the harvest moon.
My window was open, and the only sound that reached me there was the distant barking of the hounds in the kennels and the bell of the old Norman church of Sibberton striking two o’clock.
Over there, beyond the long dark line of the avenue, was the spot where the tragedy had been enacted, the spot where, in the clay, was left the imprints of Lolita’s shoes. Time after time I tried to get rid of those grave suspicions that ever rose within me, but could not succeed. The evidence against my love, both confirmed by her own words and by the circumstances of the affair, was so strong that they seemed to convey an overwhelming conviction.
Yet somehow the Countess herself seemed to have united with Lolita in order to preserve the secret. Their interests, it seemed, were strangely identical. And it was this latter fact that rendered the enigma even more puzzling than ever.
Next day the guests shot over at Banhaw, the Countess accompanying them, but “cubbing” having just opened, the Earl was out with the hounds at five o’clock at the Lady Wood.