The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1915-10-21

instead of "Di San Giovanni"
Half minute, and would have In
serted the San" admitted Della Cam
pagna ruefully "But you know l am
poor at English, in spite Of five years
| at St. James, and there wasn't time"
1.-THE marchese was privy to the
whole thing, you scoundrel!" shouted
| fiercely.
He smiled and shrugged his shout
ders There was no getting around
that affectation of naive simplicity.
well, my friend" said, II have
| studied the cipher in hundred ways,
and can't find in that any declara-
ton of Italy's neutrality. OF course /
started by presuming that the letter
e. But that carried me nowhere.
Now, If 1t is a code cipher, all l can
| say Is you have refined the code to
| degree unknown among other nations.
| Besides, what code would have'Cher-
niagara In it, or the name Of the mar
chese?"
| Della Campagna sat down beside me
and drew a pad from his pocket He
placed 1t on his knee and took out
pencil
| "The essence OF all codes is that
they must be undecipherable without
a key" he said mo code has ever
| been invented which cannot be de-
coded, unless the letters are inter
changeable. The key gives the order
| Of change. Our key is-or was, rather
the day of the month. This being
| the fourth day Of August, the key to
| all code messages sent on that day
was 4.
Now we have to consider another
factor. The body Of the message con-
tains twenty-six words, but by reading
| one hundred thousand instead OF
| 100, 900, as this system demands, al
though In DECIDING we adhere to the
exact form of the message, we get %
words. Twenty-eight words, then, make
up the message, sans signature and
| phraseology.
I'VE have now the two numbers, 70
| and 4. Add to and we get 6. Add
to 8 and we get IL, or beyond the
| ten. In place of %, therefore, we
have new number, 62. The sixth let
| ter of the telegram forms the first let
| ter of the real message. The second
| letter forms the second letter.
Take our number 81 and repeat the
| process, which gives us 10 and 6. The
| tenth letter following, therefore, forms
/ ~ +ho m
| The sixth letter after that forms the
| fourth letter.
| Repeating the process still once
more, we take our number 106, by add
| ing to each portion we get and TO-
Now, my friend, observe how 1t works
| out in practice"
| Figuring upon his pad, he wrote
down the following series of numbers:
6, 2, 10, 6, 4, 10. 8, 4, 2, 8. 6, 2, 10,
6, A, 10, 8, 4, 2, 8, s. 2. 10, 6, 4, 10, 8,
H., 2.
"All even numbers, you see," Della
| Campagna continued. ION odd days
of the month, of course, the figures
| are odd. You will observe that we
| have a complete cycle of ten numbers
| before the process repeats itself. In
other words, where one might decodi-
| fy the code had we fixed values for
| the letters, he now finds himself under
| the necessity Of decodifying code in
| which each letter may stand for any
| other, and may be from two to ten
spaces apart from its neighbor on eth
| er hand. 1t is a good system, and far
better than a code book, which always
| gets stolen in the end"
Resuming his pencil. Della Cam
| pagna wrote out the telegraphed mes
| sage again, dividing it, not between
| the words, but after each series OF let
| tiers corresponding to the series of fig
ures, and capitalizing the end letters
instead of those at the beginning OF
| the words. The message now read as
follows:
placed MT he ChernagA rayauL, tslI
ras 100000 tparparI SOUR OR der
andwE demand BIZ promptlyeN teredT
ohhA ccountandB ecreditE DALI low
| anceU nderhM 81 gnaturediG iovanN
ibyO urroyalwaR rant4thA ugiT nv.
What do you make out of that"
1 =
inquired Della Campagna, handing the
pad to me with smile. Pretty good
English for an Italian, even If did
! spend five years as an attache at the
Court of ST. James-don't you think
500"
| I put the capital letters together
and found the following line upon my
pad:
| Observation-Disclosures
| ATV
| I stared at 1t In perplexity. 1t
seemed strangely familiar to me; yet
for the life of me could not make it
out, or think of any word ending in
| the letter v.
Surely, my dear friend, you have
not forgotten your Latin?" Della