“But he couldn’t be sure that the face would get mangled like that. It was only one chance in a thousand that the body should scrape down all along that buttress on its face.”
“He may simply have wanted to kill the man, without hoping that the corpse would be mistaken for him. After all, we’ve got to explain the ticket; a man who takes a single ticket down here is almost certainly not a resident here—the half-fare is so cheap. A spy, tracking him, or somebody he takes to be a spy tracking him. He stuns the man while he’s not looking, and then pitches him out. He’s desperate, remember.”
“Well, it seems to hang together that way.”
“But I’m not at all sure that’s the right way. I’m not at all sure that Brotherhood isn’t the murderee, and the murderer somebody unknown—such a murder might be connected with a bankruptcy, a ruined creditor, for example.”
“And how are you going to look for the murderer if that’s so?”
“You’re going to help me. We’re going to have a little detective holiday, and leave the game alone for a bit. Of course we must find out all about Brotherhood first—it’s extraordinary how little people seem to know about him. I asked four men in the Club whether he wore a wristwatch or not: two couldn’t remember, one said he did, and one swore he didn’t. But there must be some servant who looks after his bungalow for him; so I’m going there tomorrow to pump them.”
“Introducing yourself as Mr. S. Holmes of Baker Street, or how?”
“No, I shall be the Daily Mail reporter—unless I run into the real article on the mat. Now, would you mind following up the Masterman clue?”
“What Masterman clue?”
“There are only two Mastermans in the Telephone Directory. A man dressed like that would be sure to have a telephone.”
“But I thought you’d made up your mind it wasn’t a local person at all, because of the ticket?”
“I know, it’s probably a wild-goose chase, but it’s the best we can do on that tack. Both are at Binver; one’s a solicitor and one a doctor. I’ll give you the addresses.”
“And I’m to go to them and ask them what kind of handkerchiefs they use? Or should I meet them accidentally and say, Excuse me, sir, could you lend me a handkerchief, I’ve left mine at home?”
“Well, you can find out whether they’re dead, anyhow.”
“And if they’re still alive?”
“Well, scout around somehow. Do anything that occurs to you. This business ought to be rather fun, if we exercise a little ingenuity.”
“Meanwhile, let’s have another look at those documents. We don’t seem to have made much out of them, and that’s a fact.”
They sat for several minutes in silence, rereading the copy Reeves had made of the anonymous letter. It was undated; the address was in printed capitals; it had been postmarked in London at starting, and at Paston Whitchurch on arrival. The content of the message was a mere series of numbers, as follows:
| 8 | 7 | 5 |
| 18 | 4 | 7 |
| 21 | 2 | 3 |
| 25 | 6 | 4 |
| 31 | 4 | 8 |
| 74 | 13 | 9 |
| 92 | 29 | 7 |
| 97 | 5 | 3 |
| 113 | 17 | 13 |
| 10 | 12 | 13 |
“Unless they’re sums of money,” said Gordon, “I can’t make head or tail of it all. And if they were sums of money, it would be a queer way to arrange the spacing.”
“Wait one moment,” said Reeves, “I believe I’ve got the idea of it.” He put his hand to his forehead. “Yes, that does it. It’s a cipher, of course, otherwise there’d be something to explain what it’s all about. It will be a book cipher; the first figure gives you the page, the second the line, and the third the word in the line. How’s that?”
“That’s devilish ingenious,” admitted Gordon, “but you can hardly prove it.”
“I can practically prove it,” said Reeves. “Look here, the man wanted to spell out a message in ten words. There was a book, arranged upon somehow beforehand. The first few words were ordinary words, that you could find anywhere on any page: and naturally, to save himself and the other man trouble in counting, he took them from the top of the page, so you get lines 7, 4, 2, 6, and 4 of pages 8, 18, 21, 25 and 31. The sixth word he wanted was an obscure sort of word, perhaps even a proper name. He had to go right on to page 74, and even then he could only find his word on the 13th line of it. Then the next two words came easy, comparatively, but the ninth word was a brute, he couldn’t find it till page 113, and on the 17th line at that. And by that time he’d got nearly to the end of the book—a book, then, of only 120 pages or so probably; a paper edition, I suspect—so he had to go back to the beginning again, which he hadn’t meant to do.”
“Bravo!” said Gordon. “Have another injection of cocaine.”
“The curse of the thing is,” said Mordaunt Reeves, “that with a book cipher you can’t possibly guess the message unless you’ve got the book. I think we shall have to establish the identity before we get any further on that tack. Let’s have a look at the letter now.”
The letter was a curt official communication from the Railway Company, only the details being filled in in ink, the rest a mere printed form:
London Midland and Scottish Railway.
10. 10. 19XY.
Dear Sir,
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of 9th instant and have given orders for a berth to be reserved in the sleeping car attached to the 7:30 train on Thursday (corrected to Wednesday) the 18th (corrected to 17th) of October to Glasgow. I note that you will join the train at Crewe.
“These corrections are rummy,” said Reeves. “I wonder if perhaps Brotherhood’s letter corrected itself in a postscript? You see, assuming that Brotherhood was skipping, it’s all right for him to go to Glasgow—rather ingenious,
