The Sherwood Ring (9 page)

"It came," gasped Lieutenant Featherstone, too full of his tidings to pause or even to glance at Colonel Van Spurter. "It came last night. We've got him now, old boy — got him hooked, gaffed, and put away in the basket!"

"Him? It? Just a little more slowly and coherently, Charles, if you don't mind."

"Peaceable Sherwood, of course! I was mending a harness up in the stable loft this morning, when I saw old Jasper sneaking out into the yard just below me, with his face over his shoulder to make sure nobody was following him. That didn't seem much like old Jasper's usual manner, which tends more to be bold and rude, as a poor wretched cowhand like myself can tell you. And so I drew back out of sight and saw him prying a little sheet of paper from behind a loose rock in that stone wall that runs along there by the road in front of the stables. Then I remembered I'd heard a horse going by the house late the night before, and while of course I couldn't swear that Peaceable Sherwood had been riding the horse, it did seem like a good idea to drop on the back of Jasper's dirty neck and persuade him to let me have a look at his love letter. I've got it somewhere about me now." Fumbling at the pocket of his shabby breeches, he produced a folded note and laid it on the table before Dick, who stood there staring down at it as if he were almost unable to believe in so much sudden good fortune.

"You're sure it's genuine, Charles?" he asked hesitatingly. "Peaceable may be trying to give us a false lead."

"I don't think so, old boy. I've had no chance to really look at it, but it seems to be in some sort of cipher — and besides, Jasper tried to eat it when he saw I'd caught him for good and all. He wouldn't have done that if he'd been told to let me have it."

"Where's Jasper now?"

"Tied up in your South Meadow. I didn't quite know what to do with the other farmhand and that housekeeper of his, but they don't seem to be concerned in this, so I told them to keep their mouths shut and took the liberty of sending over a couple of your rangers to discourage them if they try to leave or talk to anybody. And now
please
may I get out of these abominable clothes and go fishing?"

Dick held out his hand to him with a look of gratitude that made Lieutenant Featherstone blush.

"Charles," he said, "you literally are a blessing in disguise, and I hope you catch a whale."

"Well, just so it's anything but a cow," said Lieutenant Featherstone, saluting us formally and then making for the door. "I never want to see or smell another cow again as long as I live. When I think of the way I used to drink milk as a child, it makes me positively ill."

The door swung shut again behind Lieutenant Featherstone's filthy back, and the rest of us came crowding up around the table to look at the cipher letter. I was so excited that for a moment I could hardly even read the words on the paper as I stood peering down at it under the cover of Dick's elbow: "Better Meet every evening making Us elegant rich music At invitation, letting loathsome Bald aged tyrants — "

"Oh, merciful heaven!" Dick's voice was saying ruefully. "It is a cipher, sure enough."

"What's the difference?" demanded Colonel Van Spurter. "I suppose this man Twill can be forced to tell you the key."

"If Peaceable Sherwood's men could be forced to tell anything, Sputters, they wouldn't be in his gang at all. I'm afraid we'll have to struggle on by ourselves. It can't be a very difficult cipher — that's one good thing. Old Jasper's too simple-minded to understand a complicated one."

"It looks complicated enough to me," I said, finishing the letter and beginning to read through it again. "The words as they stand now don't seem to make any real sense — and why has he written so many of them with capital letters? Look, Dick! There's 'meet,' 'us,' 'at,' and — wait a moment! Dick! Doesn't that sound as if it might be — "

"Good Lord, so it does! Go on, Eleanor — all the words with the capital letters. Never mind the rest. They'll be put in simply to fill up space and create confusion."

" 'Meet — us — ,"' I read, " 'at — Bald — Rock — for — ' "

" 'Raid — on — supply — train,' " finished Colonel Van Spurter, triumphantly. "What supply train would that be, Dick?"

"There's only one on the road just now, moving up the Central Valley with gunpowder for West Point," said Dick, turning the cipher letter over restlessly in his hand and looking down at it again. "But I thought —" he added rather slowly, "I thought that was too much for even Peaceable to tackle. Charles told me they were sending a whole armed guard down to meet it."

"All the better — he'll have to come with every man he can lay his hands on, and we'll haul in the whole gang at one swoop. I've got about fifty rangers of my own with me that I can add to yours — and with eighty in all, it ought to be easy."

"Yes," said Dick, thoughtfully. "Almost too easy."

"And by the way, Dick," Colonel Van Spurter swept on without heeding him, "I think I'd better be the one to command the expedition. After all, I'm bringing more men to it than you are; and even your men were originally in my company to begin with."

"Certainly you may command the expedition, Sputters — if we go."

"What do you mean,
if
we go?"

"Just what I say. I can't explain very well, but... I simply don't like the looks of this message, Sputters. It's all wrong, somehow. Can't you see for yourself? It's not like Peaceable. As I said a moment ago, it's — it's
too
easy."

"You mean it might be some sort of trap? But didn't your friend Lieutenant Featherstone say he thought it was a perfectly real message?"

"Yes, he said that."

"Then what in tunket are you worrying about? Suppose it is easy! Peaceable Sherwood would have to make it easy anyway, wouldn't he, if this Jasper Twill is as simple-minded as you say he is?"

"Simple-minded, yes — but not
this
simple-minded."

"Now you see here, Dick!" Colonel Van Spurter stepped back from the table with the air of a man putting an end to all further discussion. "I can't waste any more of my good time sitting around here fretting over what's simple-minded and what isn't. Are you coming, or aren't you? If you're frightened, say so, and I'll take all the men and go by myself."

"You can unfortunately do what you like with your own men, Colonel Van Spurter. But I want it clearly understood here and now that not one of mine is going to stir on any such expedition."

"Permit me to remind you, Colonel Grahame, that I am your superior officer — or will be the moment General Washington sets foot in this house."

"But until that moment comes, sir, you are
not
my superior officer, and have no right whatever to give orders either to me or to any troops General Washington may have put in my charge."

Colonel Van Spurter may have been a fool, but at least he was not the sort of fool who does not know when he is defeated. Snatching up his hat and cloak, he strode quivering with rage across the room to the door, and turned to pause dramatically on the threshold.

"Two hours ago, you'd have been lucky to escape from this business without losing your command, Dick," he said, between his teeth. "Now, you'll be lucky if you escape from it without getting shot for your cowardice."

"Shut the door as you go out," said Dick wearily.

The door slammed, and Colonel Van Spurter's voice was raised in the hall outside, issuing orders that gradually died away in a trampling of feet and clatter of horses' hoofs. Then from the distant camp in the South Meadow there stole up on the drowsy afternoon air a sudden murmur of activity, so faint that it could hardly have been heard by any ears less accustomed to it than mine. Colonel Van Spurter's fifty men had mounted and were riding out by the lower meadow-gate.

Dick paid no attention whatever. He was sitting at the table with his head in his hands, studying the cipher letter again. I watched him in silence for a moment, and then rose quietly to go away and leave him to himself. As I paused on my way to the kitchen to clear away the litter which Colonel Van Spurter had left in the fruit dish, he looked up at me and said suddenly, "Do you think I was right, Eleanor?"

"Of course you were right!" I retorted scornfully. "And only a fool who didn't know Peaceable Sherwood could have supposed you weren't right for an instant."

"I'm not so certain, Eleanor. Perhaps I've been fighting with Peaceable for so long now that I'm beginning to jump at my own shadow. After all, it may be Sputters who's right — we all agreed it had to be a very simple cipher, and — "

I put down the fruit dish on the sideboard once more. My hands were suddenly beginning to shake and I was afraid I might drop it. "Say that again!" I interrupted him sharply.

"What? You mean about its having to be a very simple — "

"But that's just it!" I cried. "Oh, Dick, can't you see that's exactly the reason? Look! You're Peaceable Sherwood. You have to send an important message in cipher to a loyal but not very intelligent member of your gang. You can't make it too hard, or he won't understand it. At the same time, you're afraid of making it too easy because there's just a chance that it might fall into the wrong hands. So what do you do?" I went to him and caught him by the shoulder, fairly shaking it in my eagerness and excitement. "You put in a blazing great false message along with the real one, on purpose to hit the wrong reader crack in the eye, and send him dashing madly off in the wrong direction without looking any further. Dick, I don't want to go around blowing my own horn, as Colonel Van Spurter would probably say, but I think we've got it at last!'

"By heaven, Eleanor, I believe you're right!" Dick put up his own hand and laid it over mine for an instant. "Now let go of my shoulder before you tear it to pieces, and come here and let's see what we can make of all this. It must be something very simple, as I seem to keep repeating over and over again. I presume the real message is hidden somewhere in the other words: the ones we were meant to regard merely as space-fillers."

"And you have to count every third word or so in order to read it?"

"Not the
words,
I'm afraid — there aren't enough of them that would make sense if you tried to fit them into the kind of message this must be. 'Meet' and 'evening' might do, and perhaps 'invitation' or 'violence' at a pinch; but what about 'elegant rich music' and 'utmost respectability' and all the rest of them? No, I think that the real message must be made up somehow out of the letters that form the words themselves. Wait a moment while I get a sheet of paper and some ink . . . Now, taking first things first, I will begin by writing down the first letter of every word if you will read them off for me."

"B," I read obediently. "M — E — E — M — U — E — R — M — A — I — L — L — B — A. That doesn't sound very promising, does it?"

"It does not. Suppose we proceed to the second letter of every word."

"E — E — V — V — A — S — L — "

"Never mind the second letters. Let's try the third."

We tried the thirds and the fourths, and the fifths, and even the sixths, before we were convinced that success did not lie in that direction.

"Very well, then," said Dick, in a determinedly cheerful voice. "We'll have to try combinations — the first letter of first word, the second letter of the second, and so on. That system seems a little stiff for one of old Jasper's intelligence, but I suppose it might do. After all, Peaceable can probably judge old Jasper's intelligence better than we can."

We worked out every possible combination of letters until our fingers were cramped and our brains dizzy with writing them down. The clock in the hall was solemnly chiming four when we finally lifted our heads to look at each other in despair.

"We're all wrong," I said hopelessly. "It must be something about the words themselves."

"It
can't
be the words, Eleanor. The longer I think about it, the more I feel convinced that we're on the right track — we've just made a mistake somewhere, perhaps a very simple one, if we only had the wits to see it. Try once again before we go on to anything else."

There followed a long silence, while we clawed through the scattered papers and sat poring over our blotted lists with our chins on our hands.

"Eleanor!"

"What is it, Dick?"

"Look at this a moment. It's the list we made out of the first letter in every word: B — M — E — E — M — U — E — R — M — A — I — L — L — B — A. Where did that M come from?"

"It was the first letter of 'meet.' "

"And that U?"

"The first letter of 'us.' "

"And the A there, the one after the M?"

" 'At.' "

"Then that's where we made our mistake. You're supposed to leave out the words with the capital letters — the ones that make up the false message. They're not part of the cipher at all. Do you see what that man has done? The capital letters would instantly draw an enemy's attention to the false message. At the same time, they would serve to jumble and confuse the real message if he were clever or suspicious enough to break through to it as we did.
And
at the same time, they would also act as signposts to warn old Jasper not to pay any attention to them! There's the true Peaceable touch for you! Scratch them out and look what you have: B — E — E — M — E — R — M — I — L — L. And that, my dear Eleanor, seems to me very astonishingly like the two words, 'Beemer Mill.' "

"Beemer Mill?"

"It's that old gristmill on the river road, about six miles from here, the one that was struck by lightning and burned down ten years ago. You must have seen it, you have to pass it every time you cross the river and come up from — Oh, Lord!"

"What is it, Dick? What's the matter?"

"Eleanor, take that sheet of paper and get down the rest of this as fast as you can. Quick! Never mind BEEMER MILL — we know that already — now then, A — T — F — I — V — "

"AT FIVE," I wrote, reading the words aloud as I put them down, stumbling a little in my haste. "CAPTURE WASHINGTON. Capture Washington! Oh, Dick! Was that what you were afraid of?"

"That," said Dick grimly, "is precisely what I was afraid of. Sputters or one of his men must have talked to somebody in a tavern on their way over here, and the word blew back to Peaceable as usual. I suppose he thinks that if he can present a real live commander-in-chief to those boobies at British headquarters, they'll have to give up and take over his system. And what would become of us anyway, with Washington gone?"