Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1915-10-22

| was one pecuuarlLy. Inc maTcHeS0
had been written down "Di Giovanni
instead of 'Di San Giovanni"
Half a minute, and would have IN
serted the San" admitted Della Cam
pagna ruefully. But you know ] am
poor at English, in spite of five years
at st. James, and there wasn't time.
'The marchese was privy to the
whole thing, you scoundrel!" / shouted
| f1ercely.
He smiled and shrugged his shout
ders. There was no getting around
that affectation of naive simplicity.
"Well, my friend" said, Il 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
appearing most frequently stood for
e. But that carried me nowhere.
Now, if it is code cipher, all 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 it on his knee and took out a
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
100000, as this system demands, al
though in DECIDING we adhere to the
exact form of the message, we get 2o
words. Twenty-eight words, then, make
up the message, sans signature and
phraseology.
eve have now the two numbers, 70
and 4. Add to and we get 6. Add
4 to and we get IL, or 2 beyond the
ten. In place of %, therefore, we
have a new number, 81. 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
the third letter of the real message.
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 4 and 10.
Now, my friend, observe how it 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, A, 2, 8, 6, 2, 10, 6, 4, 10, 8,
4, 2.
"All even numbers, you see," Della
Campagna continued. son 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-
fly the code had we fixed values for
the letters, he now finds himself under
the necessity of decodifying a code in
which each letter may stand for any
other, and may be from two to ten
spaces apart from it's neighbor on eth
er hand It is 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 capita1izing the end letters
instead of those at the beginning OF
the words. The message now read as
follows:
placed Mt he ChernagA ravauL, 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 rV.
'What do you make out of that?"
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"
put the capital letters together
and found the following line upon my
pad:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ATV
stared at it 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 "