Reply Paid (18 page)

“Very well,” I agreed, and splayed out a few papers on my desk. It is always better to be brooding—Archimedes and the Roman soldier—when an inquirer enters. So I heard the door close behind my new client, and Miss Delamere was gone before I looked up. I was glad she was—for I found myself looking at a face I knew, but certainly hadn't expected to see here or perhaps ever again. My “reaction” was not very ready.

“Oh, of course,” I said aloud but to myself, “I ought to have guessed—of course it was ‘Kerson'!”

“Yes,” said my visitor, taking a seat without being invited. “You're the guy was out back by the reservation. The old fellow said you were a detector of a sort—read codes and that sort of thing.…”

I was just going to begin to feel pleased that Mr. Mycroft had named me as the detective, when I realized that naturally he had done so to draw attention to me and away from himself. My face must, then, have remained blank, and I can only hope that he took it for a poker-face of noncommittalness.

Anyhow, after a pause, he did go on. “Living a bit of a lonely life as I do, I get to figuring out the fancy-stuff riddles and that sort of thing which people put in the papers and the competition stuff and what have you. Gotten pretty cute on it. But queer how it gets you! Can crack open most puzzles of an evening now. But when you get one that won't split—” he paused, “Why, then, it sort of gets
you!
Just can't get it out of your brain-pan. I say, not many of 'em can get you so fixed but when one does—well, you don't seem able to let the darned thing drop. Sometimes, after a week or more, you get it. If you don't, why, then, you just have to have it out. Now, you're an expert. The old fellow says you've just the hunch for this one sort of thing.” I bowed; I suppose he was also conveying that I was no use at anything else. “So when I got fixed a fortnight ago with a small puzzle I found in a little old book of puzzles—when I got myself quite mad with this one—had all the others cleared out and up—as anyhow I was coming up to the city, I thought I'd drop in on you.”

“To what book do you refer, Mr. Kerson?” I asked. “Often students, if they know the volume, can give the answer straight out of their reference files.”

“Funny,” he said. “Can't remember the book's name—
Old Puzzles
, or some such term. And I left it back at the store. But,” with rather abrupt cheerfulness, “I did copy out fully the one that had me stuck. Worked at it all the time in the train. Thought—” he gave a wry smile “—if I can get it before I get to his office I shan't have to pay. I'll have extracted the acher myself.”

Well, he intended to pay. That is always an encouragement, I honestly believe one guesses, or hunches, or whatever it is, with far better aim if one's subconscious knows it's up to real business. It puts it on its mettle. I know that there are fine fanciful natures who feel that any thought of gain would tarnish with the foggy breath of avarice the fair mirror of their vision—or so they say. But I am certainly not one of those up-in-the-air seers.

To seal the proffered contract, I said, “Ten dollars for a consultation and twenty if the decoding is immediately verifiable.”

“That's a lot,” he said dourly. And that just put my “dander” up.

“Very well,” I retorted, “take your code to another expert or let it stay aching in your mind. It makes no difference to me.” That worked.

“Not so fast. I didn't say I wouldn't pay.”

“Very well,” I snapped, following up the advantage. “Time, too, is valuable. Hand me your deposit and your copy of the code. I work fast.”

Sure enough, he laid a ten-dollar bill on my desk and a long slip of paper. My mind had need to work fast—but it didn't. I looked up at him. He was looking at me. But, as far as I could judge, with no suspicion—no suspicion, for example, of why, when the slip of paper began to curl, I put a ruler on it to keep it flat. Now that reaction was right. I should have left it there—should have said, “This isn't a code, surely? Perhaps it's a message partly in invisible ink. Those little dots and flourishes may be parts of the ink which have come clear. The whole might yield to chemical treatment—but that's not my specialty. Go to a chemist. I advise …” etc. Of course this thing could never have come out of a puzzle book. I hesitated—and compromised.

“You know,” I said, “this isn't a puzzle.”

“Surely,” he replied. “There's another quite like it on the opposite page. It's called an Old Irish Puzzle.”

Now that was shrewd, and could it possibly be true? A moment's thought, a second glance at the paper, made me quite sure it couldn't be, but then the man must be cleverer than I'd thought. Part of his tale, too, would probably be true. Where else, other than in a puzzle book, would a desert trader have come across an Ogham inscription? For that was what he was trying to make me believe it was—one of those Dark Age Irish cryptic inscriptions made by notching the edges of upright stones. They are the only inscriptions which might at all represent the “script” which edged and notched the strip of paper lying now on my desk—but another copy of which script I had seen take the shape which yielded words, words I couldn't decode, nor could Mr. Mycroft, words which I was now sure were a matter of life and death, of killing or being killed, to all the people who happened to see them.

“It's a code right enough,” he said.

Safety shouted in my ear, “Stick to it: say no!”

“Why, look,” I said, smoothing it out. “It's quite arbitrary. These markings are random etchings—little chance stains or at most someone cleaning the tip of a pen and trying a stroke or two to see if it has come clean.”

“You forget what I've told you,” he replied. “I made this copy from the book.”

I couldn't resist showing my knowledge, for it seemed quite safe and it seemed also the shortest way of shutting the man up and sending him about his business, which I had certainly more than a hunch I'd be the better for knowing nothing about. I thought I could safely show I knew my business, had earned my inspection fee and that the thing he was showing me was outside my expert field.

“The only thing this faintly resembles—” I wasn't going to say a word about Mr. Mycroft's Greek knowledge, “—is Irish Ogham, but I assure you this is not Ogham. Once you know the secret of that Hibernian script it isn't really hard to read—the actual language used is generally Latin, not even Erse.”

I was watching him; he wavered at that. He didn't, I felt, suspect that I had any inside knowledge. He only felt that my scholarship was in danger of exposing his little protective lie about his paper's being copied from an Ogham inscription; and, no doubt, he
had
seen such an inscription in some puzzle book—they are a common thing to find there—and thought that Sanderson's code must have been so copied also. And it might have been, for Sanderson was, I knew, a queer sort of scholar, and I've heard that Ogham inscriptions have been found in Scotland, so his loyalty to his country might have made him tie up his secret in that form. But, I knew, it hadn't.

Kerson stood irresolute for a moment. I should have risen, pocketed the ten-dollar bill, handed him his paper strip, touched the desk buzzer, and stiffly bowed him out. He acted first, though. Literally, he pounced on both bill and strip and had them both in his pocket before I had time to prevent him.

“Look here,” I said—a feeble opening I own—“look here, you can't act like that.”

“Good day,” was his reply, with his hand on the door.

Suddenly I felt I just wouldn't be treated like that. He certainly had the power to walk out of the office, to rob us if he liked; but I still, if I chose to use it, had more power than he. I could still make him come back with a word and make him make proper restitution. And what was keeping me from doing so? Only a vague uneasiness. After all, no danger lay for
me
in this direction? Even Mr. Mycroft had never suggested that. On the contrary, the two men had seemed in a way to like each other, and even to combine in a genial contempt for me. With all his faults, Mr. Mycroft surely wouldn't put me in danger. With all his boring appreciation of himself for doing so, after all, he
had
extricated me from some danger—at least he thought so, and was coming back to prove himself right in three days' time. No, just for his own fame he would not wish me to be imperiled.

I said quickly, “That's not, I repeat, an Irish Ogham inscription as you say it is. And I'll prove my words by telling you what, in point of fact, it is.”

He stopped. “Prove it, then,” he said.

“First, then,” I answered, for I had stopped him from going, as I knew I could, “the form,” I stressed the word, “is not an Irish but a Greek code.” Yes, he was caught. “Now,” I said sharply, pressing the buzzer, and Miss Delamere appeared, “please hand my secretary the agreed advance fee of ten dollars. She will make out your receipt as I proceed to demonstrate what I have said.”

He handed out the bill and as Miss Delamere withdrew he brought out also the strip of paper. I took a round ruler, wrapped the coil of paper spirally on it until the curl had completely papered the shaft. It did not fit precisely but closely enough, for, though a bit disjointed, it was quite clear that words were there when the edge jots and tittles came near enough to each other. I read off the inscription, for of course I had little difficulty in reciting it, and I must own I had a moment's real triumph at his startled face. Indeed, he was so startled, so taken aback by my powers that it was his turn to blurt and stammer.

“Then,” he said, “that's the code—I mean—but what
does
it mean?” He was in confusion, longing to know more, and, equally, fearing to let me know something he knew. Of that I felt now quite sure.

But all I was set on was to exploit my success and make sure he didn't get away without paying every cent he'd promised.

“I've given you the first demonstration,” I shot at him, “and certainly you have shown no sign of behaving like a gentleman. As, then, I've proved to you I know what I'm talking about, you can now pay in advance for the further information.” At that moment Miss Delamere swung in with the receipt, “Miss Delamere,” I said, “please receive from this
gentleman
, a further twenty dollars and make out another receipt.”

She held out her hand as though this was the way we spent every afternoon, rapidly receiving ten- and twenty-dollar bills and issuing receipts. I saw she felt I was being unusually businesslike—a back-swing from an attack of nerves and sentiment, she would, I suspected, describe it to herself. But what did that matter? I was in the ascendant; both new intruder and home critic were owning that I held the initiative.

It was rather like a hold-up, but a perfectly just one. He paid again. Miss Delamere swung out. I sat down and made a copy of the text now familiar to me. He stood looking over my shoulder as I wrote out the words: “When the flyer whose flight is not through air, sitting in his cage stretches his wing toward the left. Cloc Friar's Heel. AP. 20111318—3.”

“There,” I said, sitting back and looking up at him; “we are agreed that we have laid bare the text and this is precisely what it says?”

“Yes,” he said doubtfully. “Yes, but what the mischief does that rigmarole possibly mean?” Then, after a pause, “Oh, heck! And it
does
mean, I know it does, if only I could make the damned words speak.”

Well, it was clear that he didn't know any more than I what the real meaning could be. And why, in the name of mystery, shouldn't my guess be as good as anybody's? Anyhow, I felt sure it was good enough even if Intil wouldn't take it and Mr. Mycroft mocked it and even poor Miss Brown's “control” sniggered at it—it was good enough for this blundering trader who, I suppose, had somehow blundered on it among Sanderson's “effects.” Probably he'd watched the poor old fellow, trailed him even—it would be easier for him than for us or Intil. Perhaps the poor old man had slept in this man's out-station cave and, when he'd been made a bit tipsy, had shown the secret paper, boasting that it was no use to anyone to find it for they'd never read it if they did. And certainly it kept its inner lines intact even when the outer defenses had been pierced. So I'd be giving away no real secret if I gave my own reading. If it proved a true clue, then it was “anybody's gold”—any of these desert zanies could have it, for all I cared.

It took me a moment to think that out—a moment I had anyhow at my disposal, for, of course, I knew already by heart the reading I was going to decode.

“The first part is a time reference. It is a curiously obscure way of saying the time should be twenty minutes to three o'clock. That gives the time at which a certain place should be visited—the rendezvous, the tryst, the hour of meeting.” He was listening attentively. I went on. “That is made clear by the next word, a sort of signature word, as it were—the word ‘Cloc' or ‘Clock.' It means, ‘All that goes before refers to time. Now henceforward we shall be dealing with place.' ‘Friar's Heel' has, therefore, to do, as we might expect, with a route, the route. I need hardly point out to you that the only really original routes in this country are those, not blazed but rather beaten out by the sandaled and calloused heels of the friars—the Friars Minor, the Franciscan missionaries who penetrated all the way up on foot from Mexico to San Francisco, the city of their patron saint. Once we have our main points clear, as we have,” I said with growing emphasis as I became increasingly vague as to that numeral-and-letter ending, “the rest is merely a matter of local investigation and a little elimination of the numerical notation until you obtain a reading which gives the required indications.”

I stopped. Kerson had certainly attended carefully—well, as teachers would say. I was pretty sure he was considerably impressed. I was certain, when, after a pause, he said, “You're sure that's it?”