Monsieur Jonquelle (19 page)

Then, because he could still move his hands, it had occurred to her to have him write the secret, and she had put a pencil in his fingers and a pad of paper on his chair arm, and he had made these pothooks. Over and over again and always in the same strange fashion he had made the same strange marks.

As I have written, they looked to me like the first efforts of a child to form the curves and angles of letters in a copy-book. But the girl, beside me, pointed out some peculiar details.

The paralytic had made always precisely the same number of these marks on every sheet that had been put before him; there were always
five
of these marks; they were always precisely the same with no variation, and they were always in precisely the same relative position to one another. There was always a line drawn under them across the page, and below this line at about the middle of it there was an “x.”

The girl had thought the thing all out and her comments were intelligent; in her simple way she had followed the very methods of learned men
who undertake to decipher an inscription. She gave her conclusion:

The marks were not unmeaning scrawls, because they never varied in form; the mere incoherent efforts of a paralytic to form letters would not have this exactness. Therefore she concluded that each of these marks meant something definite.

Then these characters were always placed in the same order and on a line; therefore they were related in that order in their meaning—if they had a meaning. Her father had always apparently understood her question to him, and seemed concerned to give her a direction. The “x” under the line, the point of his pencil always dwelt on, and returned to, as though he wished her particularly to mark it; as though it, in the whole writing, was the important sign.

Her deep interest might, indeed, influence her conclusions, but she thought that these characters contained a definite direction about the packet, and that the “x” indicated the point at which it was concealed, in some relation to the message above the line in this mysterious cipher. She thought that if she could understand these strange marks she would be told where the thing was that she sought, and how to find it.

But she could not understand them.

They did not resemble any letters of any alphabet with which she was familiar. True, she knew
only such modern languages as a girl was taught in Petrograd—French, Italian, English, and her native one. But her father was a great philologist. He would know innumerable languages. Could it be that he had written here in some one of the old dead languages to which his life had been given up? He was always deciphering inscriptions in these dead dialects at the Czar's museum.

She had thought about it.

Might it happen that this paralysis had left some portion of his mind uninjured—some portion dealing with old things—and benumbed the rest?

I caught at the suggestion: why, yes, that was a thing we had been taught in lectures. It was called
aphasia
, and there were many cases; men stricken with it forgot their names and history and their language, and had to learn to write again like a child; there was a case of one who could write only in the Greek script after he was so stricken, and another who knew only Latin.

“The thing is simple,” I said. “We require only a direction to some archeologist. I will ask Monsieur Jonquelle.”

“Oh, no, no!” she cried, “not Monsieur Jonquelle, not the police!”

That would ruin everything. The police would find the thing and keep it. It would be seized and confiscated. It had been carried into France concealed.
There had been no declaration at the customs. Monsieur Jonquelle was the very last person who should know.

Let her think a moment! And she walked about in her perturbation, her face tense, her fingers moving.

“I know,” she said, “the very thing to do … the very thing!”

There was a book shop on the street where I had found her with the dog, a dingy place with a clutter of old books. And now that she remembered there was a big English book with a leather back; a sort of lexicon, she thought, that had a lot of ancient alphabets grouped in columns on one page. I might go in there and see if these strange marks resembled the letters of any alphabet.

I would know the very page. One day, when her father was poring over it, she had put her thumb on the margin; it was soiled with the dust of the shop and left a print. I would be able to see that very mark there.

She was now alive and vital with an eager interest. And she literally put me out of the cottage into the road. I must go now at once.

I set out for Ostend as upon some high adventure.

As I approached the village a tall man seated on a stone by the roadside got up and went on before me. I thought for a moment it was Monsieur
Jonquelle; then I saw the peasant dress he wore. I tried to overtake him, but his stride was as long and as vigorous as my own and he kept his distance. He was still before me when I went into the book shop on the street in Ostend.

I found the book at once.

It was a copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary in some old edition. And a moment later I had the very page, headed: Ancient Alphabets: Comparative Table of Hieroglyphic and Alphabetic Characters. And on the margin was the little thumb print! These ancient alphabets were arranged in columns, as the girl had said, with the equivalent English letter in the last narrow column on the right.

For a little while I was confused by the mass of outlandish characters. Then suddenly, in the third column from the left, I saw a mark like one of those on the sheet of paper that I had brought with me, and unfolded here for a comparison. I ran up the column and found another and another—the whole five. They were characters of the Phoenician alphabet. There could be no doubt about them. They were here precisely as the paralytic had drawn them on his sheet of paper. I wrote down the equivalent English letter below each hieroglyphic.

And they spelled the word LIGHT!

I put the paper into my pocket, tipped the shopkeeper,
and went to my dinner at the Maison Blanc. He gave me a sly wink as I departed:

“It is a cipher of the heart perhaps, that page. Mademoiselle comes, and then Monsieur!”

I found Monsieur Jonquelle at dinner. He talked without waiting for replies. Did I find adventures—distressed damsels and a quest of fleece? And could I bear it to remain a little? He must go back to Brussels. And then he spoke a word or two about my great-aunt, whom I was near forgetting. Long ago she had loved a Russian, a grand duke. He had been killed in a duel at Nice. But he had given her, for he was incredibly rich, a wonderful
gage d'amour
, that in the end had caused her death.

He rose, made me a rather pretentious genuflection, and went out.

I took it for a marked favor of heaven; for I was burning to get back with my report.…

It was scarcely dusk. I hired a motor to take me to the village, where I got down, dismissed it and went on afoot. I passed the tall peasant at his place beyond the village, but he strolled away into the field as I approached.

The girl ran to open the door for me, and stood back with her arm behind her as though to bow me in. I had the sense of having passed through a door in the hill into some witch's cottage of a fairy land.

Her big eyes grew wider in a sort of amazed, vague wonder when I put the paper down on the table and explained what I had discovered.

She nestled down beside me on the arm of the chair in which I sat, and seemed to fall into reflection,
light
—
light
. What could her father mean by that cryptic word? Then she spoke slowly, as though she thought aloud.

“A window in Russia is called a ‘light.'”

“Then he means a window,” I said. “What window could he mean?”

She leaned forward until the mass of her straw-colored hair touched my face.

“It would be a window in Paris,” she replied; “for the packet is hidden in Paris.”

Then her voice caught vigor and went eagerly on:

“It would mean a window in the house on the Boulevard St. Germain, where we were living.… What window in that house? … Why, surely the window in my father's room there!”

She sprang up and whirled around the table like one of those exquisite spring-driven toys that the Swiss so excellently put together.

Why, of course, that was the reading of the riddle; the window in that room in that house in Paris.

Would I go to Paris in the morning and bring it to her?

I was not a suspect alien from that mad Russia all Europe feared. I would not be searched and registered, as she and her father had been searched and registered at every turning when their arrival in France was known; a matron at the Customs here had fingered every stitch of clothing on her, as though bombs from Moscow could be carried in the seam of a bodice.

The Prince's house was closed. He was now in England; for her father's health they had come here to the sea when their host departed. But I would have no difficulty. I could climb the wall if the gate was locked, a grating by the door could be lifted; the room was the first to the right on the first landing of the stairway; and there was only a single window in it. The house was 68 on the left hand as one faced down the Seine. I could not fail to find it.

Then she stopped, her face lifted.

But where, about the window, was it hidden? The query seemed only then to strike her.

And here I was able to add my quota of deduction. Was there not always a line drawn below
the word with that mystic cross mark? That would mean
below
the window; and was not the “x” always precisely under the center of this line? That would mean at the center under the window.

She whirled off again into the doll dance, as at the releasing of the spring that held her. And I stood up. Nothing in all the world could have been so alluring. The dainty wooden shoes, that one could have put into one's waistcoat pocket, were noiseless on the floor, and the little fairy figure turned smiling, its arms extended. It was all beyond the resistance of any mortal man. As she passed beside me I gathered her up into my arms.…

I traveled on the morning train to Paris.

I had not seen Monsieur Jonquelle, but he met me as I stepped down from my compartment. He was suave and with that bit of acid in his voice. He had expected me on an earlier train; and I must pardon his lack of leisure. To-morrow he would see me—perhaps a little before that.… He thought I might be toughened now to the depravity of Paris.

I was so bewildered at the man's appearing thus, with such knowledge of my acts, that to cover it I put the only query I could think of. Had he discovered my great-aunt's assassin?

He laughed. Her assassins he had known from
the very day. It was another thing that he was seeking to discover, and he had tethered out a kid to find it.… I had perhaps heard of that style of trapping cheetahs—to tether out a kid!

Then he made me a low, ironical, continental courtesy and walked away.

I followed precisely the girl's directions; took a motor to the Rue St. Père, dismissed it at that point and walked along the Boulevard St. Germain, until I found the house. Then I turned in behind it to a narrow street; a little way between two walls. The gate was not locked. I closed it behind me and crossed the garden to the door. To the right of this door was the old iron grating of which the fastenings had rusted out, and by which I could enter. But as I approached I noticed that this door was not quite closed. And so I pushed it open and went in.

I found the old marble stairway and ascended. The furniture in the house was covered. But it was evidently a splendid house; the house of some one old and rich. The friend of these exiles in Paris had been a grandee; but I thought, from his surroundings, of an effeminate and decadent taste. I found the room to the right at the first landing and went in. There before me was the single great window. The sun of the afternoon, filtered through the heavy curtains, made a sort of golden
twilight. And I paused for a moment, with my hand on the handle of the closed door.

The furnishings in this room were also covered. But I could see it was no man's apartment. It was the boudoir of a woman. It was mellow with age and in the refined taste of one long accustomed to the luxuries of life. The Russian who had received here the exiled savant and his daughter was a strange exotic thus to surround himself with this effeminacy.

But such reflections were of no concern.

I went over to the window. The casement board came up easily when I put the blade of my knife under it, and there, as though hastily thrust into concealment, was a necklace of great Oriental pearls.

I lifted it out and gathered it into my hands; it filled them—a fortune!

At this moment I heard a faint sound behind me. I turned, my fingers a mass of jewels.

Before the door, the heels of his boots together, stood Monsieur Jonquelle, his body in the act of that mocking genuflection.

“Ah, Monsieur!” he said, “how great a thing this love is! Blind and with the strength of Samson! It ejects the great-aunt out of life, and sends the nephew to the service of distressed damsels and paralyzed old men. But also it is blind! Hieroglyphics spelling out an English word for
the direction of a Russian lady does not seem queer to him; and doors unlatched for his convenience in the heart of Paris.…”