CHAPTER XII
THE DOCUMENT
THIS WAS a contingency which neither Joam Dacosta nor his people
could have anticipated. In fact, as those who have not forgotten the
first scene in this story are aware, the document was written in a
disguised form in one of the numerous systems used in cryptography.
But in which of them?
To discover this would require all the ingenuity of which the human
brain was capable.
Before dismissing Benito and his companions, Judge Jarriquez had an
exact copy made of the document, and, keeping the original, handed it
over to them after due comparison, so that they could communicate
with the prisoner.
Then, making an appointment for the morrow, they retired, and not
wishing to lose an instant in seeing Joam Dacosta, they hastened on
to the prison, and there, in a short interview, informed him of all
that had passed.
Joam Dacosta took the document and carefully examined it. Shaking his
head, he handed it back to his son. "Perhaps," he said, "there is
therein written the proof I shall never be able to produce. But if
that proof escapes me, if the whole tenor of my life does not plead
for me, I have nothing more to expect from the justice of men, and my
fate is in the hands of God!"
And all felt it to be so. If the document remained indecipherable,
the position of the convict was a desperate one.
"We shall find it, father!" exclaimed Benito. "There never was a
document of this sort yet which could stand examination. Have
confidence--yes, confidence! Heaven has, so to speak, miraculously
given us the paper which vindicates you, and, after guiding our hands
to recover it, it will not refuse to direct our brains to unravel
it."
Joam Dacosta shook hands with Benito and Manoel, and then the three
young men, much agitated, retired to the jangada, where Yaquita was
awaiting them.
Yaquita was soon informed of what had happened since the evening--the
reappearance of the body of Torres, the discovery of the document,
and the strange form under which the real culprit, the companion of
the adventurer, had thought proper to write his
confession--doubtless, so that it should not compromise him if it
fell into strange hands.
Naturally, Lina was informed of this unexpected complication, and of
the discovery made by Fragoso that Torres was an old captain of the
woods belonging to the gang who were employed about the mouths of the
Madeira.
"But under what circumstances did you meet him?" asked the young
mulatto.
"It was during one of my runs across the province of Amazones,"
replied Fragoso, "when I was going from village to village, working
at my trade."
"And the scar?"
"What happened was this: One day I arrived at the mission of Aranas
at the moment that Torres, whom I had never before seen, had picked a
quarrel with one of his comrades--and a bad lot they are!--and this
quarrel ended with a stab from a knife, which entered the arm of the
captain of the woods. There was no doctor there, and so I took charge
of the wound, and that is how I made his acquaintance."
"What does it matter after all," replied the young girl, "that we
know what Torres had been? He was not the author of the crime, and it
does not help us in the least."
"No, it does not," answered Fragoso; "for we shall end by reading the
document, and then the innocence of Joam Dacosta will be palpable to
the eyes of all."
This was likewise the hope of Yaquita, of Benito, of Manoel, and of
Minha, and, shut up in the house, they passed long hours in
endeavoring to decipher the writing.
But if it was their hope--and there is no need to insist on that
point--it was none the less that of Judge Jarriquez.
After having drawn up his report at the end of his examination
establishing the identity of Joam Dacosta, the magistrate had sent it
off to headquarters, and therewith he thought he had finished with
the affair so far as he was concerned. It could not well be
otherwise.
On the discovery of the document, Jarriquez suddenly found himself
face to face with the study of which he was a master. He, the seeker
after numerical combinations, the solver of amusing problems, the
answerer of charades, rebuses, logogryphs, and such things, was at
last in his true element.
At the thought that the document might perhaps contain the
justification of Joam Dacosta, he felt all the instinct of the
analyst aroused. Here, before his very eyes, was a cryptogram! And so
from that moment he thought of nothing but how to discover its
meaning, and it is scarcely necessary to say that he made up his mind
to work at it continuously, even if he forgot to eat or to drink.
After the departure of the young people, Judge Jarriquez installed
himself in his study. His door, barred against every one, assured him
of several hours of perfect solitude. His spectacles were on his
nose, his snuff-box on the table. He took a good pinch so as to
develop the finesse and sagacity of his mind. He picked up the
document and became absorbed in meditation, which soon became
materialized in the shape of a monologue. The worthy justice was one
of those unreserved men who think more easily aloud than to himself.
"Let us proceed with method," he said. "No method, no logic; no
logic, no success."
Then, taking the document, he ran through it from beginning to end,
without understanding it in the least.
The document contained a hundred lines, which were divided into half
a dozen paragraphs.
"Hum!" said the judge, after a little reflection; "to try every
paragraph, one after the other, would be to lose precious time, and
be of no use. I had better select one of these paragraphs, and take
the one which is likely to prove the most interesting. Which of them
would do this better than the last, where the recital of the whole
affair is probably summed up? Proper names might put me on the track,
among others that of Joam Dacosta; and if he had anything to do with
this document, his name will evidently not be absent from its
concluding paragraph."
The magistrate's reasoning was logical, and he was decidedly right in
bringing all his resources to bear in the first place on the gist of
the cryptogram as contained in its last paragraph.
Here is the paragraph, for it is necessary to again bring it before
the eyes of the reader so as to show how an analyst set to work to
discover its meaning.
_"P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j
u g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k
j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y
g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g
s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o
h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f
e p m q k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k
r p l x h x q r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d."_
At the outset, Judge Jarrizuez noticed that the lines of the document
were not divided either into words or phrases, and that there was a
complete absence of punctuation. This fact could but render the
reading of the document more difficult.
"Let us see, however," he said, "if there is not some assemblage of
letters which appears to form a word--I mean a pronounceable word,
whose number of consonants is in proportion to its vowels. And at the
beginning I see the word _phy;_ further on the word _gas_. Halloo!
_ujugi_. Does that mean the African town on the banks of Tanganyika?
What has that got to do with all this? Further on here is the word
_ypo_. Is it Greek, then? Close by here is _rym_ and _puy,_ and
_jox,_ and _phetoz,_ and _jyggay,_ and _mv,_ and _qruz_. And before
that we have got _red_ and _let_. That is good! those are two English
words. Then _ohe--syk;_ then _rym_ once more, and then the word
_oto."_
Judge Jarriquez let the paper drop, and thought for a few minutes.
"All the words I see in this thing seem queer!" he said. "In fact,
there is nothing to give a clue to their origin. Some look like
Greek, some like Dutch; some have an English twist, and some look
like nothing at all! To say nothing of these series of consonants
which are not wanted in any human pronunciation. Most assuredly it
will not be very easy to find the key to this cryptogram."
The magistrate's fingers commenced to beat a tattoo on his desk--a
kind of reveille to arouse his dormant faculties.
"Let us see," he said, "how many letters there are in the paragraph."
He counted them, pen in hand.
"Two hundred and seventy-six!" he said. "Well, now let us try what
proportion these different letters bear to each other."
This occupied him for some time. The judge took up the document, and,
with his pen in his hand, he noted each letter in alphabetical order.
In a quarter of an hour he had obtained the following table:
_a_ = 3 times
_b_ = 4 --
_c_ = 3 --
_d_ = 16 --
_e_ = 9 --
_f_ = 10 --
_g_ = 13 --
_h_ = 23 --
_i_ = 4 --
_j_ = 8 --
_k_ = 9 --
_l_ = 9 --
_m_ = 9 --
_n_ = 9 --
_o_ = 12 --
_p_ = 16 --
_q_ = 16 --
_r_ = 12 --
_s_ = 10 --
_t_ = 8 --
_u_ = 17 --
_v_ = 13 --
_x_ = 12 --
_y_ = 19 --
_z_ = 12 --
----------------
Total . . . 276 times.
"Ah, ah!" he exclaimed. "One thing strikes me at once, and that is
that in this paragraph all the letters of the alphabet are not used.
That is very strange. If we take up a book and open it by chance it
will be very seldom that we shall hit upon two hundred and
seventy-six letters without all the signs of the alphabet figuring
among them. After all, it may be chance," and then he passed to a
different train of thought. "One important point is to see if the
vowels and consonants are in their normal proportion."
And so he seized his pen, counted up the vowels, and obtained the
following result:
_a_ = 3 times
_e_ = 9 --
_i_ = 4 --
_o_ = 12 --
_u_ = 17 --
_y_ = 19 --
----------------
Total . . . 276 times.
"And thus there are in this paragraph, after we have done our
subtraction, sixty-four vowels and two hundred and twelve consonants.
Good! that is the normal proportion. That is about a fifth, as in the
alphabet, where there are six vowels among twenty-six letters. It is
possible, therefore, that the document is written in the language of
our country, and that only the signification of each letter is
changed. If it has been modified in regular order, and a _b_ is
always represented by an _l,_ and _o_ by a _v,_ a _g_ by a _k,_ an
_u_ by an _r,_ etc., I will give up my judgeship if I do not read it.
What can I do better than follow the method of that great analytical
genius, Edgar Allan Poe?"
Judge Jarriquez herein alluded to a story by the great American
romancer, which is a masterpiece. Who has not read the "Gold Bug?" In
this novel a cryptogram, composed of ciphers, letters, algebraic
signs, asterisks, full-stops, and commas, is submitted to a truly
mathematical analysis, and is deciphered under extraordinary
conditions, which the admirers of that strange genius can never
forget. On the reading of the American document depended only a
treasure, while on that of this one depended a man's life. Its
solution was consequently all the more interesting.
The magistrate, who had often read and re-read his "Gold Bug," was
perfectly acquainted with the steps in the analysis so minutely
described by Edgar Poe, and he resolved to proceed in the same way on
this occasion. In doing so he was certain, as he had said, that if
the value or signification of each letter remained constant, he
would, sooner or later, arrive at the solution of the document.
"What did Edgar Poe do?" he repeated. "First of all he began by
finding out the sign--here there are only letters, let us say the
letter--which was reproduced the oftenest. I see that that is _h,_
for it is met with twenty-three times. This enormous proportion
shows, to begin with, that _h_ does not stand for _h,_ but, on the
contrary, that it represents the letter which recurs most frequently
in our language, for I suppose the document is written in Portuguese.
In English or French it would certainly be _e,_ in Italian it would
be _i_ or _a,_ in Portuguese it will be _a_ or _o_. Now let us say
that it signifies _a_ or _o."_
After this was done, the judge found out the letter which recurred
most frequently after _h,_ and so on, and he formed the following
table:
_h_ = 23 times
_y_ = 19 --
_u_ = 17 --
_d p q_ = 16 --
_g v_ = 13 --
_o r x z_ = 12 --
_f s_ = 10 --
_e k l m n_ = 9 --
_j t_ = 8 --
_b i_ = 8 --
_a c_ = 8 --
"Now the letter _a_ only occurs thrice!" exclaimed the judge, "and it
ought to occur the oftenest. Ah! that clearly proves that the meaning
had been changed. And now, after _a_ or _o,_ what are the letters
which figure oftenest in our language? Let us see," and Judge
Jarriquez, with truly remarkable sagacity, which denoted a very
observant mind, started on this new quest. In this he was only
imitating the American romancer, who, great analyst as he was, had,
by simple induction, been able to construct an alphabet corresponding
to the signs of the cryptogram and by means of it to eventually read
the pirate's parchment note with ease.
The magistrate set to work in the same way, and we may affirm that he
was no whit inferior to his illustrious master. Thanks to his
previous work at logogryphs and squares, rectangular arrangements and
other enigmas, which depend only on an arbitrary disposition of the
letters, he was already pretty strong in such mental pastimes. On
this occasion he sought to establish the order in which the letters
were reproduced--vowels first, consonants afterward.
Three hours had elapsed since he began. He had before his eyes an
alphabet which, if his procedure were right, would give him the right
meaning of the letters in the document. He had only to successively
apply the letters of his alphabet to those of his paragraph. But
before making this application some slight emotion seized upon the
judge. He fully experienced the intellectual gratification--much
greater than, perhaps, would be thought--of the man who, after hours
of obstinate endeavor, saw the impatiently sought-for sense of the
logogryph coming into view.
"Now let us try," he said; "and I shall be very much surprised if I
have not got the solution of the enigma!"
Judge Jarriquez took off his spectacles and wiped the glasses; then
he put them back again and bent over the table. His special alphabet
was in one hand, the cryptogram in the other. He commenced to write
under the first line of the paragraph the true letters, which,
according to him, ought to correspond exactly with each of the
cryptographic letters. As with the first line so did he with the
second, and the third, and the fourth, until he reached the end of
the paragraph.
Oddity as he was, he did not stop to see as he wrote if the
assemblage of letters made intelligible words. No; during the first
stage his mind refused all verification of that sort. What he desired
was to give himself the ecstasy of reading it all straight off at
once.
And now he had done.
"Let us read!" he exclaimed.
And he read. Good heavens! what cacophony! The lines he had formed
with the letters of his alphabet had no more sense in them that those
of the document! It was another series of letters, and that was all.
They formed no word; they had no value. In short, they were just as
hieroglyphic.
"Confound the thing!" exclaimed Judge Jarriquez.
