The Explorer's Code (30 page)

Sinclair finally broke the silence in the picture gallery.

“I hate to suggest the obvious, but shouldn’t we check to see if a deed is taped to the back of the painting?”

Tom shook his head.

“This painting was cleaned two years ago. We took it out of the frame. There was nothing attached to it,” he said.

“If William Bradford was a friend of Sir James’s, maybe they gave the deed to him,” suggested Cordelia.

“Not possible. William Bradford died in 1892. And the journal was written in 1908. I am not sure they would even have known each other. But in any case, Bradford would not have been around to receive the deed in 1908,” said Tom.

Cordelia walked over to the red velvet settee in the middle of the room and sat down, staring at the painting.

“John, remember that description of icebergs we read about in the journal? Look at the color of the ice. This is
exactly
the scene Elliott was describing. I know we’re on the right track.”

“What did the journal say about Bradford?” asked Tom.

“We only came across one passage, and I have it memorized,” said

Cordelia. “ ‘I will bring it to my partner JSR. As he is leaving for the Middle East, JSR may agree to entrust it to Bradford—is as good a choice as any for safekeeping.’ ”

They all stared at the painting.

“ ‘Entrusting it to Bradford is as good a choice as any . . . ,’ “ repeated Sinclair out loud.

“It
has
to be this painting! I know he was talking about this scene,” said Cordelia again. “I
feel
it!”

Suddenly Tom slapped his knee in excitement. He leapt to his feet.

“
I know where to look!”
he exclaimed.

They stared at him in expectation.

“Come along to the library.”

“Would you roll that ladder over here, John?” Tom requested, searching up into the dark regions of the bookshelves.

“Certainly.”

Tom explained as he walked along the bookshelves.

“Bradford wrote a book; really, it was a folio of his photographs of the Arctic that he used as studies for his painting.”

“Bradford was American, you said. Why is this folio in England?” asked Sinclair, rolling the library stairs over.

“The mania for all things Arctic was sweeping England, and his paintings and photographs found a richer market in London than they did in New York. Queen Victoria was a patron.”

“But you say this folio is a book of
photos
?” said Cordelia.

“Yes, an enormous leather-bound folio. It was sold as a collector’s item for the personal libraries of Victorian gentlemen and was very much in demand by high society. It was a great conversation piece, for after-dinner entertaining.”

Tom started climbing the ladder. “Queen Victoria commissioned a painting from him, and he was the toast of London society. Push to the left a bit, would you, John?”

Sinclair rolled the ladder carefully, with Tom balancing on top.

“Here it is,” said Tom. Sinclair braced the ladder with his shoulder as Tom lifted the heavy volume off the shelf. It was the size of a very large atlas, bound in black leather.

“This book is extremely rare. They published fewer than three hundred here in England, and plans for an American version were never completed.”

Tom used both hands to swing the heavy portfolio around. Afraid he might drop it or lose his balance, he handed it down to Sinclair, then stepped down.

They examined the impressive volume on the library table. The leather cover was hand-tooled, with a relief of polar bears walking across the Arctic ice. Tom pulled open a drawer in the library table and handed out white cotton gloves.

“We have to put these on so the oils of our skin don’t taint the antique paper,” he explained.

They put the gloves on while Tom pulled out a long wooden spatula about two feet long.

“The paper is brittle. We have to turn the pages with this. I will slide it in between the paper, and, Marian and Cordelia, you support the corners when we turn the page.”

Gingerly the three of them turned the first page.

The preface was signed “WB 1872.” Page by page, they examined the book, turning the pages gently and exclaiming over the images as each appeared. Several dozen sepia photos were clearly the original studies for scenes Bradford later painted. The text was elaborate and dramatic, very much in the style of Victorian travel writing. Finally they came to the photo that inspired the painting
An Arctic Scene: Among the Icebergs in Melville Bay
. It was identical to the painting in the gallery.

“That is your painting!”
exclaimed Cordelia.

Tom didn’t answer. He put down the wooden page-turner and focused on sliding his gloved fingers underneath the cardboard plate. He lifted carefully, and as the old glue gave way it came up with a snap. He then put his fingers under the corners of the loose photo and raised it. There underneath was a small square of folded paper, coffee-colored with age.

They stood staring at it for a few moments, afraid to touch it.

“Is that the deed?”
asked Cordelia.

“I don’t know. We should see if we can get this unfolded without destroying it,” said Tom.

“I have a good bit of experience with old documents,” said Sinclair, “some much older than this. Last year I opened an Egyptian papyrus in Cairo. I am sure I won’t damage it.”

He could barely suppress the excitement in his voice. He turned to the others. “We need a bright light, a clean surface, in case it crumbles, two pairs of tweezers, and a pane of glass to put over it when we are finished unfolding it,” he explained.

“I have tweezers for my crewelwork, and we can take a pane of glass out of one of the picture frames on the piano,” said Marian.

“I’ll go get a bedsheet to cover the library table,” said Tom, “And, John, why don’t you bring that floor lamp over for some extra light.”

Within minutes they were reassembled.

“Let’s have a look at this,” Sinclair said quietly as they crowded around him. He removed the square of paper from the folio with the tweezers and bent over it. He was infinitely patient in unfolding the document, giving it his full concentration and not speaking. It didn’t crumble, but the old paper looked very brittle. As he opened it, they could immediately see it wasn’t a legal deed or any kind of official document. There was some writing and a series of numbers. When the paper was fully extended, it read:

T
HE
C
APTAIN OF THE
N
AUTILUS
HOLDS THE KEY
. E
LLIOTT
S
TAPLETON 1918

“It’s some kind of code,” said Tom.

“Look at the date,” said Sinclair. “It’s 1918—that’s ten years
later
than the journal entry. I wonder why?”

“That
is
curious, isn’t it,” said Marian.

“Who is the captain of the
Nautilus
?” asked Sinclair. “Is that the name of the ship in the painting?”

“No,” said Tom thoughtfully. “The ship in the painting is Bradford’s ship, and it was called the
Panther
.”

“It’s not Stapleton’s ship either. Elliott Stapleton went on expedition with Prince Albert on the
Princess Alice,
” Cordelia added.

“Wait. I have a historical record of all registered ships in any given year. Maybe we can find the
Nautilus
there.” Tom rolled the ladder over to the
corner of the room and came back with a large ledger. He began looking through the index.

“I see in 1800 there was a human-powered submarine designed by Robert Fulton, called the
Nautilus,
” Tom said.

“The same Robert Fulton of steamship fame?” asked Sinclair.

“Exactly. It says here he was commissioned by Napoleon in France to build one of the first submarines, named the
Nautilus
.”

“Would that submarine have a captain? Unless he means Fulton,” Sinclair said.

“That would have been too early for this. It was in 1800,” added Tom.

“The
Nautilus
was also the name of the first nuclear-powered submarine that went under the North Pole in the 1950s,” Cordelia interjected.

“But again, not the right historical period for this code,” observed Tom.

“It has to be some kind of ship, because the paper says there was a captain. . . .” Cordelia trailed off.

“I think there were some British naval ships named
Nautilus,
” Tom said, skimming through the book.

Marian was sitting quietly, staring at the paper. “I know this may sound silly,” she said, “but I think these numbers could be a book cipher.”

They all looked at her in surprise.

“I read a lot of mysteries,” she explained. “Tom usually thinks I am filling my head with all kinds of nonsense. And he is probably right. . . .”

“She always has a mystery on her bed table,” he affirmed. “But, Marian, I wouldn’t
dream
of criticizing what you read.”

They exchanged a tender glance as Marian continued. “I don’t know if you have heard of a ‘book cipher.’ It was popular in Victorian literature.”

“How does it work?” asked Cordelia.

“There is usually a key text. It’s the basis of the code. For example, it can be a passage in the Bible or any other classic book, like
David Copperfield
or
Moby-Dick.
”

“Marian, I had no idea . . .” Tom was looking at her in astonishment.

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created this type of code in the ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men.’ ”

“Could this be that code?”

“No. I was just using that as an example. There are thousands. It’s called cryptoanalysis. Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Gold-Bug’ also uses a cipher text. Poe was an expert at ciphers and codes. The hero in that story uses it to find the buried treasure of Captain Kidd.”

“It sounds very plausible, if codes were popular at the t—” said Sinclair.

Cordelia broke in. “
Wait!
If it’s a book code . . . when was Jules Verne published?”

They all stopped to consider, but nobody answered.

“In Jules Verne,” Cordelia continued, “the captain of the
Nautilus
is Captain Nemo in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

“Of course,”
said Tom and Sinclair in unison.

“I haven’t read it since I was a child. But that book is what started my interest in submarines,” Cordelia explained.

Tom had pulled down a volume of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
and looked up the entry for Jules Verne. He read silently for a moment.

“Verne was at the peak of popularity in the 1870s,” Tom said, snapping the book shut. “That was right in the middle of the Victorian era. The book would have been very well known when your great-great-grandfather was writing this code.”

“It was published when he was a child,” observed Sinclair. “He probably read it when he was young, just like Cordelia did.”

Sinclair and Cordelia exchanged a look of suppressed excitement.

“Do we have a copy of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?
” asked Marian.

“As a matter of fact, we do,” said Tom.

“Let’s see if I can remember this,” said Marian as she took the novel in her hands. “It’s actually pretty simple, as far as codes go. But, of course, I have never decoded anything, so let me think a moment. John, why don’t you write down the letters as I call them out. There is a pen and paper over there on the writing desk.”

“How do you begin?” asked Cordelia.

“Is there anything that looks like a page number or a line number on the note?” Marian asked.

Cordelia bent over the scrap of paper.

“Yes! It says P-thirty-five, L-sixteen!” said Cordelia.

“Page thirty-five, line sixteen reads: ‘ “I have hesitated for some time,” continued the commander, “nothing obliged me to show you hospitality,” ’ “ read Marian.

Sinclair wrote out the sentence, assigning each letter a consecutive number. Cordelia looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the cipher.

I
-1
H
-2
A
-3
V
-4
E
-5
H
-6
E
-7
S
-8
I
-9
T
-10
A
-11
T
-12
E
-13
D
-14
F
-15
O
-16
R
-17 . . .

“That looks fairly complicated,” she observed.

“Not necessarily,” Marion reassured her. “You will see how simple it really is.”

They turned back to the paper under the glass. Tom read off each number, and Sinclair wrote down the corresponding letter. The whole exercise took about five minutes.

“So what do we have?” asked Marian.

“It makes no sense,” said Sinclair, showing them the paper. It read:

AFH BIVW IM RIETOU IEL ES TMDOECD

“Something is wrong,” puzzled Marian. “The numbers must be off.”