When the youth had been dispatched with the note, Sherlock Holmes gavehis instructions to the servants. If any visitor were to call asking forMrs. Hilton Cubitt no information should be given as to her condition,but he was to be shown at once into the drawing-room. He impressed thesepoints upon them with the utmost earnestness. Finally he led the wayinto the drawing-room with the remark that the business was now out ofour hands, and that we must while away the time as best we might untilwe could see what was in store for us. The doctor had departed to hispatients, and only the inspector and myself remained.
"I think that I can help you to pass an hour in an interesting andprofitable manner," said Holmes, drawing his chair up to the tableand spreading out in front of him the various papers upon which wererecorded the antics of the dancing men. "As to you, friend Watson, I oweyou every atonement for having allowed your natural curiosity to remainso long unsatisfied. To you, inspector, the whole incident may appealas a remarkable professional study. I must tell you first of all theinteresting circumstances connected with the previous consultationswhich Mr. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in Baker Street." He thenshortly recapitulated the facts which have already been recorded. "Ihave here in front of me these singular productions, at which onemight smile had they not proved themselves to be the fore-runners ofso terrible a tragedy. I am fairly familiar with all forms of secretwritings, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon thesubject, in which I analyze one hundred and sixty separate ciphers;but I confess that this is entirely new to me. The object of those whoinvented the system has apparently been to conceal that these charactersconvey a message, and to give the idea that they are the mere randomsketches of children.
"Having once recognised, however, that the symbols stood for letters,and having applied the rules which guide us in all forms of secretwritings, the solution was easy enough. The first message submitted tome was so short that it was impossible for me to do more than to saywith some confidence that the symbol XXX stood for E. As you are aware,E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it predominatesto so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expectto find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message fourwere the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is truethat in some cases the figure was bearing a flag and in some cases not,but it was probable from the way in which the flags were distributedthat they were used to break the sentence up into words. I accepted thisas a hypothesis, and noted that E was represented by XXX.
"But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order ofthe English letters after E is by no means well marked, and anypreponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed sheet may bereversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I, N, S,H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in which letters occur; but T,A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each other, and it would be anendless task to try each combination until a meaning was arrived at. I,therefore, waited for fresh material. In my second interview with Mr.Hilton Cubitt he was able to give me two other short sentences and onemessage, which appeared--since there was no flag--to be a single word.Here are the symbols. Now, in the single word I have already got thetwo E's coming second and fourth in a word of five letters. It mightbe 'sever,' or 'lever,' or 'never.' There can be no question thatthe latter as a reply to an appeal is far the most probable, andthe circumstances pointed to its being a reply written by the lady.Accepting it as correct, we are now able to say that the symbols XXXstand respectively for N, V, and R.
"Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy thought put mein possession of several other letters. It occurred to me that if theseappeals came, as I expected, from someone who had been intimate with thelady in her early life, a combination which contained two E's withthree letters between might very well stand for the name 'ELSIE.' Onexamination I found that such a combination formed the termination ofthe message which was three times repeated. It was certainly some appealto 'Elsie.' In this way I had got my L, S, and I. But what appeal couldit be? There were only four letters in the word which preceded 'Elsie,'and it ended in E. Surely the word must be 'COME.' I tried all otherfour letters ending in E, but could find none to fit the case. So now Iwas in possession of C, O, and M, and I was in a position to attack thefirst message once more, dividing it into words and putting dots foreach symbol which was still unknown. So treated it worked out in thisfashion:--
.M .ERE ..E SL.NE.
"Now the first letter CAN only be A, which is a most useful discovery,since it occurs no fewer than three times in this short sentence, andthe H is also apparent in the second word. Now it becomes:--
AM HERE A.E SLANE.
Or, filling in the obvious vacancies in the name:--
AM HERE ABE SLANEY.
I had so many letters now that I could proceed with considerableconfidence to the second message, which worked out in this fashion:--
A. ELRI.ES.
Here I could only make sense by putting T and G for the missing letters,and supposing that the name was that of some house or inn at which thewriter was staying."
Inspector Martin and I had listened with the utmost interest to the fulland clear account of how my friend had produced results which had led toso complete a command over our difficulties.
"What did you do then, sir?" asked the inspector.
"I had every reason to suppose that this Abe Slaney was an American,since Abe is an American contraction, and since a letter from Americahad been the starting-point of all the trouble. I had also every causeto think that there was some criminal secret in the matter. The lady'sallusions to her past and her refusal to take her husband into herconfidence both pointed in that direction. I therefore cabled to myfriend, Wilson Hargreave, of the New York Police Bureau, who has morethan once made use of my knowledge of London crime. I asked him whetherthe name of Abe Slaney was known to him. Here is his reply: 'The mostdangerous crook in Chicago.' On the very evening upon which I had hisanswer Hilton Cubitt sent me the last message from Slaney. Working withknown letters it took this form:--
ELSIE .RE.ARE TO MEET THY GO.
The addition of a P and a D completed a message which showed me that therascal was proceeding from persuasion to threats, and my knowledge ofthe crooks of Chicago prepared me to find that he might very rapidlyput his words into action. I at once came to Norfolk with my friend andcolleague, Dr. Watson, but, unhappily, only in time to find that theworst had already occurred."
"It is a privilege to be associated with you in the handling of a case,"said the
inspector, warmly. "You will excuse me, however, if I speakfrankly to you. You are only answerable to yourself, but I have toanswer to my superiors. If this Abe Slaney, living at Elrige's, isindeed the murderer, and if he has made his escape while I am seatedhere, I should certainly get into serious trouble."
"You need not be uneasy. He will not try to escape."
"How do you know?"
"To fly would be a confession of guilt."
"Then let us go to arrest him."
"I expect him here every instant."
"But why should he come?"
"Because I have written and asked him."
"But this is incredible, Mr. Holmes! Why should he come because youhave asked him? Would not such a request rather rouse his suspicions andcause him to fly?"
"I think I have known how to frame the letter," said Sherlock Holmes."In fact, if I am not very much mistaken, here is the gentleman himselfcoming up the drive."
A man was striding up the path which led to the door. He was a tall,handsome, swarthy fellow, clad in a suit of grey flannel, with a Panamahat, a bristling black beard, and a great, aggressive hooked nose, andflourishing a cane as he walked. He swaggered up the path as if theplace belonged to him, and we heard his loud, confident peal at thebell.