Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1885-12-11

COUNT MATTHIAS sANDoRF
pains to conceal, rendered it necessary
Tor hum 10 resign and then he came TO
hive at Trieste rs professor unattached.
1t was in Zathmars house that. the
three friends had met since the arrival
OF Count Sundorf although the latter
ostensibly occupied an apartment on the
Palazzo Modello on the Piazza Grande.
The police had no suspicion that the
house on the AcquedOtto was the centre
OF Il conspiracy which counted numbers
of partisans IN all the principal towns of
the kingdom.
Xuthmar and Bathory were Sandorf' 5
most devoted au4iliaries Like him,
they had seen that circumstances were
favorable 10 movement which might
restore Hungary tothe place she desired
in Europe. They rlSkcd their lives
they knew, but that they cared little
about The house IN the Acquedotto
had thus become the rendezvous OF the
chiefs of the conspiracy. Numbers of
partisans, summoned from different
points of the kingdom, came there to
take their measures and receive their
orders. A service of carrier pigeons was
organized, and established rapid and
sale communication between Trieste and
the chief towns OF Hungary and Tran
sylvania when 1t was necessary to send
what could not well be coniided to the
post or telegraph. In short, every pre-
caution had been taken, and the con-
spirators had not a. vet raised the least
breath of suspicion. Besides. rs We
know, the correspondence was carried
on in cipher and on such plan that
unless the secret was known absolute
security was obtained
Three DAYS after the arrival o. the
carrier pigeon whose message had been
intercepted ly Sarcany, on the 2lst Of
MAY about eight O'Clock IN the evening,
Zathmai and B1thory were IN the study,
waiting tie return If Matthias S,udo4f.
His private aititirs had recently COM
PEELED the Count 20 return into Irunsyl-
wanna and 90 Arteuak lint he had taken
the opportunity of consulting with his
friends M ka>eubury. the pital Of the
province. AMI H. was "a rot back this
We Y day, after sending them the de-
spa'cn Of which Sarcany lad taken the
duplicate.
During the time Sandori was away
other correspondence had been ex-
changed between Trieste and Duda, and
many letters III cipher had arrived 10y
pigeon-post And Zathmar was even
now busy in working out the real mean
ing OF one OF these cryptographic epis-
ties 10y means of grating
Tie dispatches were devised on n very
simple plan-that of the transposit-
ion OF the letters In this system
every letter retained It's alphabetical
value-that is 10 say, meant b, o meant
o, etc. But the letters are successfully
transposed in accordance with the OPEN
ings of n grating, which, laid on the
message, only allowed such letters to
appear as were to &c read, and hid al
the others.
These gratines are an old invention,
but having been greatly improved by
Colonel Fleissner they seem now TO
offer the 6estand surest means of OBJ
tanning an iudecipherable crvptogram.
In all the other systems Of inversion,
be they systems with an invariabIe base
or a simple key in which each letter is
always represented by the same letter or
sign be they systems with a variable
base or q double key ia which the alpha
bet varies with each letter, the security
is incomplete Experienced decipher-
ers are capable Of per orming perfect
prodiCies in such Investigations, either
with The aid OF the calculation of proba-
bilities, OF 10y merely trying and trying
until they succeed All that has TO be
done j. 10 find ont the letters in the or
der OF tAyir repetition IN the cryptogram
q being that most frequently employed
in English German and French, in
Spanish, IL Russian and and in
Italian and tine meaning of the text Is
soon made clear And there are very
few cryptognms based on these methods
which defy investigat on.
1t would appear, therefore. that the
best guarantee for ludecIpherability is
afforded bv these glutincs or bv ciph-
cred dictionaries codes. that is to say,
or vocabularIes IN which certain words
represent fully formed sentences indi-
Gated by the page number. But both
these systems have one grave draw back;
they require absolute secrecy on the
part II those tina. use them, and the
greatest care that the books on apparatus
should never GET into undesirable hands.
Without the grating. or the code, the
message vii remain unread bat once
these are obtained the mystery vanishes.
IL was then 10y means Of a grating
that Is 10 say a piece Of card cut out in
certai n places-that the correspondence
between Sandorf and his accomplices
was carried GA, INT as an extra pre-
caution. in ease the ratings should be
lost or stolen. every despatch after being
deciphered was destroyed There thus
remainod no trace OF this conspiracy in
which the greatest no5lcmen and mag
mates Of Hungary were risking their
lives IA conjunction with the representa-
tive Of the middle class and the bulk Of
the people.
Zathmar had just burned his last de-
spatch when there came = quiet knock