Read Ebook: The Cab of the Sleeping Horse by Scott John Reed Van Dresser William Illustrator

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Ebook has 2289 lines and 62201 words, and 46 pages

Moreover, while a very expensive handkerchief, it was without initial--which also was most unusual.

He put the bit of lace into his coat and went on with the search:

Three American Beauty roses, somewhat crushed and broken, were in the far corner. From certain abrasions in the stems, he concluded that they had been torn, or loosed, from a woman's corsage.

He felt again--then he struck a match, leaning well inside the cab so as to hide the light as much as possible.

The momentary flare disclosed a square envelope standing on edge and close in against the seat. Extinguishing the match, he caught it up.

It was of white linen of superior quality, without superscription, and sealed; the contents were very light--a single sheet of paper, likely.

The handkerchief, the crushed roses, the unaddressed, sealed envelope--the horse, the empty and deserted cab, standing before a vacant lot, at one o'clock in the morning! Surely any one of them was enough to stir the imagination; together they were a tantalizing mystery, calling for solution and beckoning one on.

Harleston took another look around, saw no one, and calmly pocketed the envelope. Then, after noting the number of the cab, No. 333, he gathered up the lines, whipped the ends about the box, and chirped to the horse to proceed.

The horse promptly obeyed; turned west on Massachusetts Avenue, and backed up to his accustomed stand in Dupont Circle as neatly as though his driver were directing him.

Harleston watched the proceeding from the corner of Eighteenth Street: after which he resumed his way to his apartment in the Collingwood.

A sleepy elevator boy tried to put him off at the fourth floor, and he had some trouble in convincing the lad that the sixth was his floor. In fact, Harleston's mind being occupied with the recent affair, he would have let himself be put off at the fourth floor, if he had not happened to notice the large gilt numbers on the glass panel of the door opposite the elevator. The bright light shining through this panel caught his eye, and he wondered indifferently that it should be burning at such an hour.

Subsequently he understood the light in No. 401; but then it was too late. Had he been delayed ten seconds, or had he gotten off at the fourth floor, he would have--. However, I anticipate; or rather I speculate on what would have happened under hypothetical conditions--which is fatuous in the extreme; hypothetical conditions never are existent facts.

Harleston, having gained his apartment, leisurely removed from his pockets the handkerchief, the roses, and the envelope, and placed them on the library table. With the same leisureliness, he removed his light top-coat and his hat and hung them in the closet. Returning to the library, he chose a cigarette, tapped it on the back of his hand, struck a match, and carefully passed the flame across the tip. After several puffs, taken with conscious deliberation, he sat down and took up the handkerchief.

His course in this instance was typical--the more so, indeed, since he had broken over and lost his poise only that afternoon. He wanted to know what was inside that blank envelope. He was persuaded it contained that which would either solve the mystery of the cab, or would in itself lead on to a greater mystery. In either event, a most interesting document lay within his reach--and he took up the handkerchief. Discipline! The curb must be maintained.

And the handkerchief yielded nothing--not even when inspected under the drop-light and with the aid of a microscope. Not a mark to indicate who carried it nor whence it came.--Yet stay; in the closed room he detected what had been lost in the open: a faint, a very faint, odour as of azurea sachet. It was only a suggestion; vague and uncertain, and entirely absent at times. And Harleston shook his head. The very fact that there was nothing about it by which it might be identified indicated the deliberate purpose to avoid identification. He put it aside, and, taking up the roses, laid them under the light.

They were the usual American Beauties; only larger and more gorgeous than the general run--which might be taken as an indication of the wealth of the giver, or of the male desire to please the female; or of both. Of course, there was the possibility that the roses were of the woman's own buying; but women rarely waste their own money on American Beauties--and Harleston knew it. A minute examination convinced him that they had been crushed while being worn and then trampled on. The stems, some of the green leaves, and the edges of one of the blooms were scarred as by a heel; the rest of the blooms were crushed but not scarred. Which indicated violence--first gentle, then somewhat drastic.

He put the flowers aside and picked up the envelope, looked it over carefully, then, with a peculiarly thin and very sharp knife, he cut the sealing of the flap so neatly that it could be resealed and no one suspect it had been opened. As he turned back the flap, a small unmounted photograph fell out and lay face upward on the table.

Harleston gave a low whistle of surprise.

It was Madeline Spencer.

THE VOICE ON THE WIRE

"Good morning, madame!" said Harleston, bowing to the photograph. "This is quite a surprise. You're taken very recently, and you're worth looking at for divers aesthetic reasons--none of which, however, is the reason for your being in the envelope."

He drew out the sheet of paper and opened it. On it were typewritten, without address nor signature, these letters:

"Cipher!" commented Harleston, looking at it with half-closed eyes.... "The Blocked-Out Square, I imagine. No earthly use in trying to dig it out without the key-word; and the key-word--" he gave a shrug. "I'll let Carpenter try his hand on it; it's too much for me."

He knew from experience the futility of attempting the solution of a cipher by any but an expert; and even with an expert it was rarely successful.

As a general rule, the key to a secret cipher is discovered only by accident or by betrayal. There are hundreds of secret ciphers--any person can devise one--in everyday use by the various departments of the various governments; but, in the main, they are amplifications or variations of some half-dozen that have become generally accepted as susceptible of the quickest and simplest translation with the key, and the most puzzling without the key. Of these, the Blocked-Out Square, first used by Blaise de Vigen?rie in 1589, is probably still the most generally employed, and, because of its very simplicity, the most impossible of solution. Change the key-word and one has a new cipher. Any word will do; nor does it matter how often a letter is repeated; neither is one held to one word: it may be two or three or any reasonable number. Simply apply it to the alphabetic Blocked-Out Square and the message is evident; no books whatever are required. A slip of paper and a pencil are all that are necessary; any one can write the square; there is not any secret as to it. The secret is the key-word.

Harleston took a sheet of paper and wrote the square:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAB DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABC EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCD FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDE GHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEF HIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFG IJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGH JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHI KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJ LMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJK MNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKL NOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLM OPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMN PQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNO QRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP RSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ STUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR TUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS UVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST VWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU WXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV XYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW YZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWX ZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY

Assume that the message to be transmitted is: "To-morrow sure," and that the key-word is: "In the inn." Write the key-word and under it the message:

INTHEINNINTH TOMORROWSURE

BBFVVZBJAHKL

The translator of the cipher message simply reverses this proceeding. He knows the key-word, and he writes it above the cipher message:

INTHEINNINTH BBFVVZBJAHKL

Simple! Yes, childishly simple with the key-word; and the key-word can be carried in one's mind. Without the key-word, translation is impossible.

Harleston put down the paper and leaned back.

His thought trailed off into silence; and the silence lasted so long, and he sat so still, that the ash fell unnoticed from his cigarette; and presently the cigarette burned itself into the tip, and to his fingers.

He tossed it into the tray and laughed quietly.

He picked up the photograph and regarded it thoughtfully.

"And what are to be the stakes now, I wonder," he mused. "It's another deal of the same old cards, but who are players? If America is one, then, my lady, we shall see who will win this time--if you're in it; and I take it you are, else why this picture. Yet to induce you to break your rule and cross the Atlantic, the moving consideration must be of the utmost weight, or else it's purely a personal matter. H-u-m! Under all the circumstances, I should say the latter is the more likely. In which event, I may not be concerned further than to return these--" with a wave of his hand toward the exhibits.

For a while longer he sat in silence, eyes half closed, lips a bit compressed; a certain sternness, that was always in his countenance, showing plainest when in reflective thought. At last, he smiled. Then he lit another cigarette, took up the letter and the photograph, and put them in the small safe standing behind an ornate screen in the corner--not, however, without another look at the calmly beautiful face.

"I'm sure bewitched!" he remarked, going on to his bedroom. "It's not difficult for me to understand the Duke of Lotzen. He was simply a man--and men, at the best, are queer beggars. No woman ever understands us--and no more do we understand women. So we're both quits on that score, if we're not quite on some others." Then he raised his hands helplessly, "Oh, Lord, the petticoats, the petticoats!"

Just then the telephone rang--noisily as befits two o'clock in the morning.

"Who the devil wants me at such an hour?" he muttered.

The clang was repeated almost instantly and continued until he unhooked the receiver.

"Well!" he said sharply.

"Is that Mr. Harleston?" asked a woman's voice. A particularly soft and sweet and smiling voice, it was.

"I am Mr. Harleston," he replied courteously--the voice had done it.

"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Harleston!" the voice rippled. "I suppose you are rather astonished at being called up at such an unseemly hour--"

"Not at all--I'm quite used to it, mademoiselle," Harleston assured her.

"Now you're sarcastic," the voice replied again; "and, somehow, I don't like sarcasm when I'm the cause of it."

"You're the cause of it but not the object of it," he assured her. "I'm quite sure I've never met you, and just as sure that I hope to meet you today."

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