The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition. Max Brand

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СКАЧАТЬ knew all that before,” declared her father. “But this is a blank trail, Jerry. Cosslett’s gold will rest and rot. No man’ll ever find it— all them millions!”

      Ronicky turned to the third slip. It was a compact jumble of figures. He read as follows:

      (1, 1, 3, 2; 1, 1, 6, 5; 1, 1, 9, 1; 1, 1, 12, 5) (2, 9, 1, 13; 2, 9, 1, 4; 2, 9, 3, 6)

      So it ran on through line after line of bracketed numbers with commas and semicolons interspersed.

      Ronicky Doone dropped the paper to his side. “Dawn,” he said, “I figure that every word you’ve said is right, except where you begin to give up hope. But this mess of figures—I dunno what could have been in Cosslett’s head when he started to make it up. Anyway, it can’t do us any good.”

      He was about to throw the papers to the wind, but the girl stayed his hand.

      “Just a moment,” she said hastily, and, taking the slip which contained the figures, she perused it carefully.

      Ronicky and her father anxiously turned toward her. Since both of them were convinced that the trail to the treasure began at the shack of Cosslett, and since there was no possible clue save that piece of paper and the list of numbers, they hoped against hope that Jerry could make something out of it.

      “If they’s any sense to it,” said her father, “Jerry’ll get at it. She always was a wonder at puzzles, even when she was no bigger’n a minute.”

      The girl raised her fine head, and now the gray eyes were glinting with excitement.

      “It’s a message of some kind written in a code,” she announced. There’s no doubt about that.”

      The two men crowded about her.

      “You see?” she pointed out. “There are thirteen of those bracketed groups. Inside the brackets the numbers are separated with commas and grouped with semicolons. I counted the groups set off by the semicolons, and altogether there are fifty-eight of them. Well, the average length of a word is about five letters. Five goes into fifty-eight eleven times and a little over. That’s near enough. Fifty-eight letters to make up eleven words. And those eleven words —since they were locked up so carefully in the strong box—may they not form the directions to the place where the treasure is buried? I admit that I don’t see how he could have written complete directions with so few words; but at least it gives us a new hope, doesn’t it?”

      The cheer from the two men was answer enough.

      “After all,” said Ronicky, “that leaves us almost as much in the dark as ever. See any way you can get at the code?”

      “I don’t know,” said the girl, shaking her head. “It looks hard. But then, most puzzles seem hard until you get at them, you know; and, once they’re deciphered, they seem so simple that everyone is surprised he didn’t see through the thing before. There are lots of ways of making up codes, of course. The oldest way is the worst. You simply substitute particular characters for the different letters. In that way you simply have a new alphabet.”

      “That sounds hard enough to suit me,” said her father, peering anxiously over her shoulder at the paper.

      “But, you see,” explained Geraldine, “that there are ways of distinguishing letters by the frequency with which they are used. E is used much more than any other letter. Then come T, A, N, O, I, et cetera, in that same order. And—”

      “Where in the world,” broke in Ronicky Doone, “did you learn all that?”

      “She’s had a pile of schooling,” replied the proud father.

      “Not schooling,” Jerry Dawn said, with a laugh. “It’s just that I’ve always been interested in puzzles, and I’ve picked up odds and ends of information that way. But to come back to this conundrum. It obviously isn’t one of the simple types of codes. I’m certain that each group inside a semicolon represents a letter, and not one of the groups is identical with another. So the ‘substituted alphabet’ code isn’t used at all. Outside of that code, there are scores of others, of course. Anyone can make up a code with a little forethought, and probably each code will be quite unlike, in several features, any other code in the world.”

      “Then we’re through,” said her father bitterly. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

      “Please give me a chance to think,” pleaded the girl, with a touch of irritation. “It isn’t absolutely hopeless. At least there’s room for work. For instance, inside of each bracket the first letter of each group is the same. And in each succeeding bracket the first letter is one larger. The characters of the first bracket run one, one, three, two; one, one, six, five; et cetera. In the second bracket they run two, nine, one, thirteen; two, nine, one, four, et cetera. And this continues right down to the last bracket, where the first character is thirteen.”

      “But what on earth does that show?”

      “It shows an amateur maker of codes,” said the girl firmly. “He could have left out the first character in every instance and found it simply by getting the number of the bracket in each case. Isn’t that clear? But let’s look at some other interesting features. The first character in each group is the same throughout the individual bracket. The second character is also identical throughout each bracket. In the first bracket the second character is everywhere one; in the second it is nine; in the third it is eighteen; in the fourth it is six. Each group is made up of four characters. The first two are regular throughout and follow some definite plan. The third character varies in the first two brackets only. In the first it is three, six, nine, twelve. In the second it is one, one, three. But after that the third character also becomes regular. In the third bracket it is always two, and in the fourth bracket it is always two; while in other brackets other numerals are used, but each is constant throughout the individual bracket. But the fourth character in each group is the variant. It changes continually.”

      “It all sounds like Greek to me,” said Ronicky.

      “I suppose it does,” said the girl, “but that’s simply because you haven’t worked over things like this before. The regularity of the first three characters of the groups shows me that they are intended as guides. But the actual distinguishing element in each group is the last or fourth character. All of this, I admit, goes for nothing unless I get at some clue to the problem.”

      “Maybe we can help,” suggested Ronicky, “when it comes to clues.”

      “They are of all kinds,” said the girl, “these clues I refer to. They come out of the character and life of the man who makes the code, as a rule. This man, so far as I know, was a clever criminal. He also was fond of isolation and the Bible. Perhaps he thought he could read his way out of guilt and responsibility for his sins. At any rate, I’m going to think over what I know about him. The whole thing may clear up in a moment.”

      And she walked away meditatingly tapping the Bible which had belonged to the dead Cosslett.

      “She’s got book, ter, and verse,” Ronicky Doone remarked, with a grin, “and, as long as she’s that far along she’ll find the words pretty soon.”

      These words were hardly out of his mouth when the girl turned on him in a flash.

      “Do you mean that seriously?” she cried eagerly.

      “Excuse СКАЧАТЬ