The Max Brand Megapack (221 page)

Ronicky vaulted up through the hole and stood exultant beside them.

“He did put it under the veranda!” he cried. “He put it so far under that it rolled right on down into the cellar. And there it’s laid ever since!”

They stood about it in trembling excitement, Jerry so agape with astonishment that it was plain she had considered, up to this point, that the whole story was a myth. Hugh Dawn was beyond use of his muscles. Only Ronicky Doone had not been incapacitated by wonder and excitement.

For unquestionably it was the “forty-pound box” so often referred to. Even Ronicky Doone was convinced. Of course there was no reason to think that the box proved anything, or that its discovery lead to important things. But as it stood there in the center of the three, a mass of red rust, its presence verified one step in the story of the Cosslett treasure, and thereby the whole trail seemed to be the truth. The rotting strong box was like a fourth presence. Its silence was more eloquent than a voice.

CHAPTER NINE

The Iron Box

“It’s heavy enough to have a tidy bunch of gold in it,” said Ronicky. “Let’s get her open. Did you bring a sledge hammer, Dawn?”

The latter looked at him reproachfully.

“Figure I’d come on a trip like this without getting a pack ready long before? Nope, Ronicky, I had my pack under my arm when I left the house on the run last night, and the things in the pack are a pick and a shovel and a chisel and an eight-pound sledge.”

As he enunciated the last word Ronicky disappeared through the door. Hugh Dawn picked up the strong box and, carrying it outside, had braced it firmly, lock up, between two big stones ready for the hammering which was to open it. Ronicky came a moment later with the hammer.

“Now,” Hugh cried, brandishing the hammer about his head, “look sharp!”

He loosed a terrific blow which landed fairly and squarely upon the lock. But the hammer, after crunching through the rust, rebounded idly. The lock had not even been cracked. He whirled it again, again, and again. His back went up and down, and the sledge became a varying streak of light that struck against the box, always hitting accurately on one spot. Ronicky Doone looked on in amazement, and the girl’s eyes shone in delight at the prowess of her father, when there was a slight sound of cracking; at another blow the box flew open.

Inside there were exposed a few scraps of paper, and nothing else!

Ronicky Doone gasped with excitement. Was it true, then, that what the box was used for was to guard a secret and not money?

Hugh Dawn, panting with labor and joy, gathered the paper fragments in trembling fingers.

“Read ’em, Jerry,” he said. “I—my eyes are all blurred. Where’s the map, first off?”

There were three slips of paper, apparently fly leafs of books torn off, and the girl examined them.

“There’s no map,” she said. “I’m sorry, dad.”

“No map!” he shouted. “Let me see! Let me see!”

He snatched them from her, glaring; then he crumpled the paper into a ball and cast it to the ground.

“No wonder Cosslett died with a smile,” he groaned. “It was only a joke that he locked up in that box and threw away so careful. If ghosts walk the earth, he’s somewhere in the air now laughing at me.” He looked up as though he half expected to see the old face take form out of the empty atmosphere.

“Nothing but a list of names and some figuring,” the girl said with a sigh. “I’m afraid it was only a jest.”

Ronicky Doone alone had not seen the writing. He ran a few steps after the ball of paper as it rolled along in the breeze, picked it up, and smoothed out the separate bits. What he found was exactly what had been reported. First there were two slips covered with a list of names and dates:

H. L. L.—September 22.
Gregory—May 9.
Scottie—August 14.

The list continued, each separate name followed by dates ranging through two years until October of the second year. With this month the dates were crowded together. Half of the first slip and all of the second were covered with names and dates of that month. And last of all was the name “Hampden, October 19.”

It struck a faint light in Ronicky’s groping imagination.

“Hampden was the gent that run the affair for Cosslett, wasn’t he?” he asked.

“What of it?”

“Here’s his name the last of the lot.”

“And what does that mean?” Hugh Dawn asked.

Jerry Dawn came and peered with interest over the shoulder of Ronicky.

“It goes to prove that we’re working on more than hearsay,” the girl said. “Goes to prove that there was really a connection between Cosslett and Hampden, and in that case, why, Cosslett is simply a murderous old miser who used other men to do killings so that he could get gold, and who then sat down with his Bible and thought about his ill-gotten gains.”

“I 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, chapter, 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 me,” murmured Ronicky. “I was only joking, and if—”

“Why not?” she exclaimed, more to herself than to him.

Then, to their astonishment, she pushed the paper into the hand of Ronicky and opened the Bible.

“Read the first group!” she commanded.

“One, one, three, two,” said Ronicky obediently.

“Book one. That’s Genesis. Chapter one, third verse, second word—‘God.’ Ronicky, perhaps we have it, but I mistrust that beginning. People don’t begin codes with the word God. But no! What he’d used would be merely the first letter of the word. That must be it. The first letter is G. Next?”

“One, one, six, five,” read Ronicky dutifully, but his voice was uneven with his excitement.

“Book one, chapter one, sixth verse, fifth word!” translated Jerry Dawn. “And the word is ‘there.’ Oh, Ronicky, we’re lost! There isn’t a word in the English language that begins with Gt. But go on.”

“One, one, nine, one. And don’t give up. We’re on the track of something!”

Hugh Dawn said nothing. He sat on a rock with his head buried in his hands, hardly able to endure the tension.

“Ninth verse, first word, ‘A.’ Gta. Ronicky, we’re lost, indeed. That isn’t the beginning of any word!”

“Wait a minute,” urged Ronicky, as she closed the book with a slam. “Count off the letters in the verses instead of the words. First book, first chapter, third verse, second letter. What does that give you?”

“N.”

“Now sixth verse and fifth letter.”

“O.”

“Ninth verse and first letter.”

“A.”

“Twelfth verse and fifth letter.”

“H. It spells N-O-A-H! Ronicky, we have it!”

A groan of happiness came from Hugh Dawn, who rose and came stumbling to them. Steadily the spelling went on, Ronicky, scribbling down the letters as fast as the girl located them.

In conclusion he read:

Noah and the crescent in line with ravenhead and the vixen twenty down.

“Noah and the crescent in line with ravenhead and the vixen twenty down,” repeated Hugh Dawn sourly. “And what the devil good does all the work do when it only brings us to this? Noah and the crescent—twenty down!”

He groaned again.

“Just a minute more,” said his daughter, more eagerly than ever. “Doesn’t it strike you that those words are like names of places? ‘Noah’ may be the name of a town. Then ‘The Crescent,’ and ‘Ravenhead,’ and ‘The Vixen.’”