on an _u_ or an _n_ or an _f,_ or any other letter.”
“And then?”
“And then, I am sorry to say, the cryptogram is indecipherable.”
“Indecipherable!” exclaimed Manoel. “No, sir; we shall end by finding
the key of the document on which the man’s life depends.”
Manoel had risen, a prey to the excitement he could not control; the
reply he had received was too hopeless, and he refused to accept it
for good.
At a gesture from the judge, however, he sat down again, and in a
calmer voice asked:
“And in the first place, sir, what makes you think that the basis of
this document is a number, or, as you call it, a cipher?”
“Listen to me, young man,” replied the judge, “and you will be forced
to give in to the evidence.”
The magistrate took the document and put it before the eyes of Manoel
and showed him what he had done.
“I began,” he said, “by treating this document in the proper way,
that is to say, logically, leaving nothing to chance. I applied to it
an alphabet based on the proportion the letters bear to one another
which is usual in our language, and I sought to obtain the meaning by
following the precepts of our immortal analyst, Edgar Poe. Well, what
succeeded with him collapsed with me.”
“Collapsed!” exclaimed Manoel.
“Yes, my dear young man, and I at once saw that success sought in
that fashion was impossible. In truth, a stronger man than I might
have been deceived.”
“But I should like to understand,” said Manoel, “and I do not—-”
“Take the document,” continued Judge Jarriquez; “first look at the
disposition of the letters, and read it through.”
Manoel obeyed.
“Do you not see that the combination of several of the letters is
very strange?” asked the magistrate.
“I do not see anything,” said Manoel, after having for perhaps the
hundredth time read through the document.
“Well! study the last paragraph! There you understand the sense of
the whole is bound to be summed up. Do you see anything abnormal?”
“Nothing.”
“There is, however, one thing which absolutely proves that the
language is subject to the laws of number.”
“And that is?”
“That is that you see three _h’s_ coming together in two different
places.”
What Jarriquez said was correct, and it was of a nature to attract
attention. The two hundred and fourth, two hundred and fifth, and two
hundred and sixth letters of the paragraph, and the two hundred and
fifty-eight, two hundred and fifty-ninth, and two hundred and
sixtieth letters of the paragraph were consecutive _h’s_. At first
this peculiarity had not struck the magistrate.
“And that proves?” asked Manoel, without divining the deduction that
could be drawn from the combination.
“That simply proves that the basis of the document is a number. It
shows _à priori_ that each letter is modified in virtue of the
ciphers of the number and according to the place which it occupies.”
“And why?”
“Because in no language will you find words with three consecutive
repetitions of the letter _h.”_
Manoel was struck with the argument; he thought about it, and, in
short, had no reply to make.”
“And had I made the observation sooner,” continued the magistrate, “I
might have spared myself a good deal of trouble and a headache which
extends from my occiput to my sinciput.”
“But, sir,” asked Manoel, who felt the little hope vanishing on which
he had hitherto rested, “what do you mean by a cipher?”
“Tell me a number.”
“Any number you like.”
“Give me an example and you will understand the explanation better.”
Judge Jarriquez sat down at the table, took up a sheet of paper and a
pencil, and said:
“Now, Mr. Manoel, let us choose a sentence by chance, the first that
comes; for instance:
_Judge Jarriquez has an ingenious mind._
I write this phrase so as to space the letters different and I get:
_Judgejarriquezhasaningeniousmind._
That done” said the magistrate, to whom the phrase seemed to contain
a proposition beyond dispute, looking Manoel straight in the face,
“suppose I take a number by chance, so as to give a cryptographic
form to this natural succession of words; suppose now this word is