The Black Hills union and western stock review. [volume] (Rapid City, S.D.) 1904-19??, 1906-03-23

inspector. the whole incident may APP
peal as a remarkable professional
study. mast 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 have here in
front of me these singular productions.
at which one might smile. had they not
proved themselves to be the forerunners
or so terrible tragedy. | am fairly
familiar With all forms of secret writ
ngs, and am myself the author of a
tritins monograph upon the subject.
in which | analyZe one hundred and
sixty separate ciphers, but l confess
that this is entirely new to me. The
object OF those who invented the sys-
TEN has apparently been to conceal
that these characters convey Il 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 i, was impossible for
me to do more than to say. with
some confidence, that the symbol >o<
stood for r. AS you are aware, Y
y is the most common letter in 4
he English alphabet. and it pre- N
dominates to so marked an ex-
tent that even in II short sentence
one would expect to find 1t most often.
Out of fifteen symbols in the first mes
sage four were the same, 50 it was
reasonable to set this down as r.. 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 accepted this as a hypothe-
sis,nnd noted lGwas represented by >o<
But now came the real diff Y
iiculty OF the inquiry. The order 4
OF the English letters after f ~
is BY no means well marked.
and any preponderance which may
be shown in an average of IL
single short sentence. Speaking rough
~, t. a, @. |. N, S. ii. r. d and L. are
the numerical order in which letters
occur; but Il. a, o and are very near
~ abreast of each other, and 1t would
be an endless task to try each combin-
alton until meaning was arrived at.
| therefore waited for fresh material.
In my second interview with MIR. Hilton
Cubitt he was able to give ME two
other short sentences and one message.
which appeared--since there was no
t1as-to be a single word. Here are
the symbols. Now, in the single word
l have already got the two Els coming
second and fourth in Il word of five
letters. 1t might be sever or lever
or never There can be no question
that the latter as II reply to an appeal
is far the most probable. and the cir
cumstances pointed to it's being a re-
ply written by lady. Accepting
1t as correct, we are now able 10
say that the symbols
N. V and r. \ IL -
in considerable diff &
Guilty. but a happy thought put me
In the possession of several other
letters. 1t occurred to me that if these
appeals came, as / expected. from
someone who had been intimate with
which contained two Els with three
letters between might very well stand
| for the name ELSIE On examination
found that such combination
| formed the termination of the message
which was three times repeated. 1t
was certainly some appeal to Elsie
In this way | had got my l.. S and I.
But what appeal could it be? There
We're only four letters in the word
| which preceded Elsie, and it ended
in Il. Surely the word must be COME
tried all other four letters ending in
e, but could find none to fit the case.
So now I was in possession OF G, o and
NJ, and was in u 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 ST. NE.
Now the first letter can only be A,
which is q most useful discovery, since
this short sentence, and the H is also
apparent in the second word. Now 1t
| becomes:
AM HERE A. r sLANE.
Or filling in the obvious vacancies in
! the name:
AM HERE ABE SLANEY.
had so many letters now that could
proceed with considerable confidence
| to the second message, which worked
| out in this fashion:
A ELRI ES.
Here could only make sense by put
| ting Il and G for the missing letters,
and surprising that the name was thnt
of some house or inn at which the
! writer was staying"
Inspector Martin and 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.
II had every reason to suppose that
this Abe Slaney was an American
since Abe is an American contraction,
and since letter from America had
been the starting point of all the trou-
Bile. I had also every cause to think
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. 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 had
his answer, Hilton Cubitt sent me the
4 last message from Slaney. Working
with known letters, 1t took this form:
i ELSIE RE ARE TO MEET THY
GO.
j The addition Of a p and d completed