Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1906-03-30

chair UP to the table, and spreading
out In front Of him the various papers
upon which were recorded the antics
of the dancing men. "As to you, friend
Watson, l owe every atonement for
having allowed your natural curiosity
to remain so long unsatisfied. To you.
inspector, the whole incident nay an
peal as q remarkable professional
study. / must tell you. first of all, the
interesting circumstances connected
with the previous consultations which
Mr.. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in
Baker street" He then shortly re-
capitulated the facts which have al
ready been recorded. IL ave here in
front of me these singular productions,
at which one might smile, had they not
proved themselves to be the f~orerunners
of so terrible a tragedy. / am fairly
familiar with all forms Of secret writ
ings, and am myself the author of a
tTifiing monograph upon the subject,
in which / analyze one hundred and
sixty separate ciphers, but / confess
that this is entirely new to me. The
object Of those who invented the sys-
tenn has apparently been to conceal
that these characters convey a mes
sage, and to give the idea that they
are the mere random sketches Of chill
dren.
Having once recognized, however.
that the symbols stood for letters, and
having applied the rules which guide
us in all forms OF secret writing, the
solution was easy enough. The first
message submitted to me was so
short That 1t vas impossible for
me to do more than to say, with
some confidence, that the symbol
stood for e. As you are aware, v
e is the most common letter in
the English alphabet, and il pre-
dominates to so marked an ex-
tent that even in a short sentence
one would expect to find it most often.
Out of fifteen symbols in the first mes
sage fou were the same, so 1t was
reasonable ITO set this down as l.. 1t is
true that 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 distributed. that
they were used to break the sentence up
into words. / g accepted this as a hypothe-
sis, and noted + was represented by >e<
But now came the real diff Y
ficulty Of the inquiry. The order
of the English letters after f n
is by M mean we'll marked,
and any ~preponderance which may
be shown in an average OF a
printed sheet may be reversed in a
single short sentence. Speaking rough
ly, 4, A, O, l, n. S, II, r, d and l. are
the numerical order in which letters
occur; but T, A, o and l are very near
~ abreast of each other, and it would
be an endless task to try each COmbin-
alton until a meaning was arrived at.
| therefore waited for fresh material.
In my second interview with Mr.. Hilton
Cubitt he was able to give me two
other short sentences and one message,
which appeared-since there was no
tiag-to be q single word. Here are
the symbols. Now, in the single word
| have already got the two Els coming
second n fourth in a word Of five
letters. 1t might be sever or lever
or never There can be no question
that the latter as a reply to an appeal
is far the most probable. and the cir
Cumstances pointed to it's being a re-
ply written by a lady. Accepting
it as correct, we are now able to
say that the symbols
stand respectively fot
n, V and r.. \ - -
j. Even s 5.,J now : =. I 5 m4s 8 II
Guilty. but q happy thought put me
in the possession of several other
letters. 1t occurred to me that If these
appeals came, as l expected, from
someone who had been intimate with
the lady in her early life, a combination
which contained two Els with three
letters between might very we'll stand
LOT the ildlIlG El4SIEs Ol tNdAlilildNiDii
/ found that sue a combination
formed the termination of the message
which was three times repeated. 1t
was certainly some appeal to Elsie
In this way l had got my l.. S n /.
But what appeal could it be? There
were only four letters I'm the word
which preceded Elsie and il ended
in Il. Surely the word must be COME
/ tried all other -four letters ending in
f, but could find none to fit the case.
So o / was in possession OF g, q and
NJ, and / was in a position to attack
the first message once more, dividing
it into words and putting dots for each
symbol which was still unknown. So
treated, it worked out In this fash
ion:
M ERE ..E 81 NE.
Now the first letter can only be A.
which Is q most useful discovery, since
ii occurs no fewer than three times in
this short sentence, and the III is also
apparent in the second word. Now it
becomes:
AM HERE A. f SLANE.
Or, filling in the obvious vacancies In
the lame:
AM HERE ABE SLANEY.
/ had so many letters now that I could
| proceed with considerable confidence
TO the second message, which worked
out in this fashion:
A. ELRI 4. Els.
Here l could only make sense by put
ting T and G. for the missing letters,
and supposing that the name was that
of some house or inn at which the
writer was staying"
Inspector Martin n I had listened
with the utmost interest to the full
and clear account of how my friend
had produced results which had led to
so complete a command over our diff
culties.
What did you do then. SIR asked
the inspector.
Il had every reason to suppose that
this Abe Slaney was an American,
since Abe is an American contraction.
and since a letter from America had
been the starting point of all the trou-
Bile. / had also every to hin
that there was some criminal secret
in the matter. The lady's illusions to
her past, and her refusal to take her
husband into her confidence, both
pointed in that direction. I therefore
cabled TO my friend, Wilson Hargreave,
OF the New York police bureau. Who
has more than once made use of my
knowledge OF London crime. I asked
him whether the name of Abe Slaney
was known to him. Here Is his reply:
The most dangerous crook in Chicago
ON the every evening upon which I had
his answer, Hilton Cubitt sent me the
last message from Slaney.s Working
with known letters. IL took this form.