Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post (any book recommendations TXT) 📖
- Author: Melville Davisson Post
Book online «The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post (any book recommendations TXT) 📖». Author Melville Davisson Post
The Baronet laughed. Then he spoke in a lower voice:
“It's extraordinary lucky that I ran over to the Sorbonne. Come along up to your room and I'll tell you. This place is filling up with a lot of thirsty swine. We can't talk in any public room of it.”
They went up the great stairway, lined with paintings of famous colonials celebrated in the English wars, and into the room. Hargrave turned on the light and poked up the fire. Sir Henry sat down by the table. He took out his three newspapers and laid them down before him.
“My word, Hargrave,” he said, “old Arnold is a clever beggar! He cleared the thing up clean as rain.” The Baronet spread the newspapers out before him.
“We knew here at the Criminal Investigation Department that this thing was a cipher of some sort, because we knew about these horses. We had caught up with this business of importing horses. We knew the shipment was on the way as I explained to you. But we didn't know the port that it would come into.”
“Well,” said the American, “did you find out?”
“My word,” he cried, “old Arnold laughed in my face. 'Ach, monsieur,' he cried, mixing up several languages, 'it is Heidel's cipher! It is explained in the seventeenth Criminal Archive at Gratz. Attend and I will explain it, monsieur. It is always written in two paragraphs. The first paragraph contains the secret message, and the second paragraph contains the key to it. Voila! This message is in two paragraphs:
“'"P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight steamer Don Carlos from N. Y.
“'"Have the bill of lading handed over to our agent to check up.”
“'The hidden message is made up of certain words and capital letters contained in the first paragraph, while the presence of the letter t in the second paragraph indicates the words or capital letters that count in the first. One has only to note the numerical position of the letter t in the second paragraph in order to know what capital letter or word counts in the first paragraph.'”
The Baronet took out a pencil and underscored the words in the second paragraph of the printed cipher: “Have the bill of lading handed over to our agent to check up.”
“You will observe that the second, the eighth and the eleventh words in this paragraph begin with the letter t. Therefore, the second, the eighth and the eleventh capital letters or words in the first paragraph make up the hidden message.”
And again with his pencil he underscored the letters of the first paragraph of the cipher: “P.L.A. shipped nine hundred horses on freight steamer Don Carlos from N. Y.”
“So we get L, on, Don.”
“London!” cried Hargrave. “The nine-hundred horses are to come into London!”
And in his excitement he took the gold piece out of his pocket and pitched it up. He had been stooping over the table. The fog was creeping into the room. And in the uncertain light about the ceiling he missed the gold piece and it fell on the table before Sir Henry. The gold piece did not ring, it fell dull and heavy, and the big Baronet looked at it openmouthed as though it had suddenly materialized out of the yellow fog entering the room.
“My word!” he cried. “One of the nine hundred horses!”
Hargrave stopped motionless like a man stricken by some sorcery.
“One of the nine hundred horses!” he echoed.
The Baronet was digging at the gold piece with the blade of his knife.
“Precisely! In the criminal argot a counterfeit American twenty-dollar gold piece is called a 'horse.'
“Look,” he said, and he dug into the coin with his knife, “it's white inside, made of Babbit metal, milled with a file and gold-plated. Where did you get it?”
The American stammered.
“Where could I have gotten it?” he murmured.
“Well,” the Baronet said, “you might have got it from a big, old, pasty-faced Alsatian; that would be 'Dago' Mulehaus. Or you might have got it from an energetic, middle-aged, American woman posing as a social leader in the States; that would be 'Hustling' Anne; both bad crooks, at the head of an international gang of counterfeiters.”
XII. The Spread Rails
It was after dinner, in the great house of Sir Henry Marquis in St. James's Square.
The talk had run on the value of women in criminal investigation; their skill as detective agents... the suitability of the feminine intelligence to the hard, accurate labor of concrete deductions.
It was the American Ambassadress, Lisa Lewis, who told the story.
It was a fairy night, and the thing was a fairy story.
The sun had merely gone behind a colored window. The whole vault of the heaven was white with stars. The road was like a ribbon winding through the hills. In little whispers, in the dark places, Marion told me it. We sat together in the tonneau of the motor. It was past midnight, of a heavenly September. We were coming in from a stately dinner at the Fanshaws'.
A fairy story is a nice, comfortable human affair. It's about a hero, and a thing no man could do, and a princess and a dragon. It tells how the hero found the task that was too big for other men, how he accomplished it, circumvented the dragon and won the princess.
The Arabian formula fitted snugly to the facts.
The great Dominion railroad, extending from Montreal into New York, was having a run of terrible luck; one frightful wreck followed another. Nobody could get the thing straightened out. Old Crewe, the railroad commissioner of New York, was relentless in pressing hard conditions on the road. Then out of the West, had come young Clinton Howard, big, tawny, virile, like the race of heroes. He had cleaned out the tangles, set the thing going, restored order and method; and the confidence of Canada was flowing back. Then Howard had made love to Marion in his persistent dominating fashion.... and here, with her whispered confession, was the fairy story ended.
Marion pointed her finger out north, where, far across the valley, a great country-house sat on the summit of a wooded hill.
“Clinton has discovered the Commissioner's secret, Sarah,” she said. “The safety of the public isn't the only thing moving old Crewe to hammer the railroad. He pretends it is. But in fact he wishes to get control of the road in a bankrupt court.”
She paused.
“Crewe is a Nietzsche creature. Victory is the only thing with him.
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