Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon Part 44

The magistrate, who had often read and re-read his "Gold Bug," was perfectly acquainted with the steps in the a.n.a.lysis 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 doc.u.ment.

"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 doc.u.ment 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 a.n.a.lyst 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 doc.u.ment. 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 gla.s.ses; 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 a.s.semblage 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 doc.u.ment! 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.

CHAPTER XIII. IS IT A MATTER OF FIGURES?

IT WAS SEVEN o'clock in the evening. Judge Jarriquez had all the time been absorbed in working at the puzzle--and was no further advanced--and had forgotten the time of repast and the time of repose, when there came a knock at his study door.

It was time. An hour later, and all the cerebral substance of the vexed magistrate would certainly have evaporated under the intense heat into which he had worked his head.

At the order to enter--which was given in an impatient tone--the door opened and Manoel presented himself.

The young doctor had left his friends on board the jangada at work on the indecipherable doc.u.ment, and had come to see Judge Jarriquez. He was anxious to know if he had been fortunate in his researches. He had come to ask if he had at length discovered the system on which the cryptogram had been written.

The magistrate was not sorry to see Manoel come in. He was in that state of excitement that solitude was exasperating to him. He wanted some one to speak to, some one as anxious to penetrate the mystery as he was.

Manoel was just the man.

"Sir," said Manoel as he entered, "one question! Have you succeeded better than we have?"

"Sit down first," exclaimed Judge Jarriquez, who got up and began to pace the room. "Sit down. If we are both of us standing, you will walk one way and I shall walk the other, and the room will be too narrow to hold us."

Manoel sat down and repeated his question.

"No! I have not had any success!" replied the magistrate; "I do not think I am any better off. I have got nothing to tell you; but I have found out a certainty."

"What is that, sir?"

"That the doc.u.ment is not based on conventional signs, but on what is known in cryptology as a cipher, that is to say, on a number."

"Well, sir," answered Manoel, "cannot a doc.u.ment of that kind always be read?"

"Yes," said Jarriquez, "if a letter is invariably represented by the same letter; if an _a,_ for example, is always a _p,_ and a _p_ is always an _x;_ if not, it cannot."

"And in this doc.u.ment?"

"In this doc.u.ment the value of the letter changes with the arbitrarily selected cipher which necessitates it. So a _b_ will in one place be represented by a _k_ will later on become a _z,_ later on an _u_ or an _n_ or an _f,_ or any other letter."

"And then?"

"And then, I am sorry to say, the cryptogram is indecipherable."

"Indecipherable!" exclaimed Manoel. "No, sir; we shall end by finding the key of the doc.u.ment on which the man's life depends."

Manoel had risen, a prey to the excitement he could not control; the reply he had received was too hopeless, and he refused to accept it for good.

At a gesture from the judge, however, he sat down again, and in a calmer voice asked:

"And in the first place, sir, what makes you think that the basis of this doc.u.ment is a number, or, as you call it, a cipher?"

"Listen to me, young man," replied the judge, "and you will be forced to give in to the evidence."

The magistrate took the doc.u.ment and put it before the eyes of Manoel and showed him what he had done.

"I began," he said, "by treating this doc.u.ment in the proper way, that is to say, logically, leaving nothing to chance. I applied to it an alphabet based on the proportion the letters bear to one another which is usual in our language, and I sought to obtain the meaning by following the precepts of our immortal a.n.a.lyst, Edgar Poe. Well, what succeeded with him collapsed with me."

"Collapsed!" exclaimed Manoel.

"Yes, my dear young man, and I at once saw that success sought in that fashion was impossible. In truth, a stronger man than I might have been deceived."

"But I should like to understand," said Manoel, "and I do not----"

"Take the doc.u.ment," continued Judge Jarriquez; "first look at the disposition of the letters, and read it through."

Manoel obeyed.

"Do you not see that the combination of several of the letters is very strange?" asked the magistrate.

"I do not see anything," said Manoel, after having for perhaps the hundredth time read through the doc.u.ment.

"Well! study the last paragraph! There you understand the sense of the whole is bound to be summed up. Do you see anything abnormal?"

"Nothing."