Within an Inch of His Life by Emile Gaboriau (good summer reads .TXT) 📖

suspicious of every thing, will at once tell us all in a letter which must needs pass through several hands before it can reach us?”

“He will tell us all, sir, without reserve, without fear, and without danger.”

“Oh!”

“I have taken my precautions. You will see.”

“Then we have only to wait.”

Alas, yes! They had to wait, and that was what distressed Dionysia. She hardly slept that night. The next day was one unbroken torment. At each ringing of the bell, she trembled, and ran to see.

At last, towards five o’clock, when nothing had come, she said,—

“It is not to be to-day, provided, O God! that poor Mechinet has not been caught.”

And, perhaps in order to escape for a time the anguish of her fears, she agreed to accompany Jacques’s mother, who wanted to pay some visits.

Ah, if she had but known! She had not left the house ten minutes, when one of those street-boys, who abound at all hours of the day on the great Square, appeared, bringing a letter to her address. They took it to M. de Chandore, who, while waiting for dinner, was walking in the garden with M. Folgat.

“A letter for Dionysia!” exclaimed the old gentleman, as soon as the servant had disappeared. “Here is the answer we have been waiting for!”

He boldly tore it open. Alas! It was useless. The note within the envelope ran thus,—

“31:9, 17, 19, 23, 25, 28, 32, 101, 102, 129, 137, 504, 515—37:2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 24, 27, 52, 54, 118, 119, 120, 200, 201—41:7, 9, 17, 21, 22, 44, 45, 46”—

And so on, for two pages.

“Look at this, and try to make it out,” said M. de Chandore, handing the letter to M. Folgat.

The young man actually tried it; but, after five minutes’ useless efforts, he said,—

“I understand now why Miss Chandore promised us that we should know the truth. M. de Boiscoran and she have formerly corresponded with each other in cipher.”

Grandpapa Chandore raised his hands to heaven.

“Just think of these little girls! Here we are utterly helpless without her, as she alone can translate those hieroglyphics for you.”

If Dionysia had hoped, by accompanying the marchioness on her visits, to escape from the sad presentiments that oppressed her, she was cruelly disappointed. They went to M. Seneschal’s house first; but the mayor’s wife was by no means calculated to give courage to others in an hour of peril. She could do nothing but embrace alternately Jacques’s mother and Dionysia, and, amid a thousand sobs, tell them over and over again, that she looked upon one as the most unfortunate of mothers, and upon the other as the most unfortunate of betrothed maidens.

“Does the woman think Jacques is guilty?” thought Dionysia, and felt almost angry.

And that was not all. As they returned home, and passed the house which had been provisionally taken for Count Claudieuse and his family, they heard a little boy calling out,—

“O mamma, come quick! Here are the murderer’s mother and his sweetheart.”

Thus the poor girl came home more downcast than before. Immediately, however, her maid, who had evidently been on the lookout for her return, told her that her grandfather and the lawyer from Paris were waiting for her in the baron’s study. She hastened there without stopping to take off her bonnet; and, as soon as she came in, M. de Chandore handed her Jacques’s letter, saying,—

“Here is your answer.”

She could not repress a little cry of delight, and rapidly touched the letter with her lips, repeating,—

“Now we are safe, we are safe!”

M. de Chandore smiled at the happiness of his granddaughter.

“But, Miss Hypocrite,” he said, “it seems you had great secrets to communicate to M. de Boiscoran, since you resorted to cipher, like arch conspirators. M. Folgat and I tried to read it; but it was all Greek to us.”

Now only the young lady remembered M. Folgat’s presence, and, blushing deeply, she said,—

“Latterly Jacques and I had been discussing the various methods to which people resort who wish to carry on a secret correspondence: this led him to teach me one of the ways. Two correspondents choose any book they like, and each takes a copy of the same edition. The writer looks in his volume for the words he wants, and numbers them; his correspondent finds them by the aid of these numbers. Thus, in Jacques’s letters, the numbers followed by a colon refer to the pages, and the others to the order in which the words come.”

“Ah, ah!” said Grandpapa Chandore, “I might have looked a long time.”

“It is a very simple method,” replied Dionysia, “very well known, and still quite safe. How could an outsider guess what book the correspondents have chosen? Then there are other means to mislead indiscreet people. It may be agreed upon, for instance, that the numbers shall never have their apparent value, or that they shall vary according to the day of the month or the week. Thus, to-day is Monday, the second day of the week. Well, I have to deduct one from each number of a page, and add one to each number of a word.”

“And you will be able to make it all out?” asked M. de Chandore.

“Certainly, dear grandpapa. Ever since Jacques explained it to me, I have tried to learn it as a matter of course. We have chose a book which I am very fond of, Cooper’s ‘Spy;’ and we amused ourselves by writing endless letters. Oh! it is very amusing, and it takes time, because one does not always find the words that are needed, and then they have to be spelled letter by letter.”

“And M. de Boiscoran has a copy of Cooper’s novels in his prison?” asked M. Folgat.

“Yes, sir. M. Mechinet told me so. As soon as Jacques found he was to be kept in close confinement, he asked for some of Cooper’s novels, and M. Galpin, who is so cunning, so smart, and so suspicious, went himself and got them for him. Jacques was counting upon me.”

“Then, dear child, go and read your letter, and solve the riddle,” said M. de Chandore.

When she had left, he said to his companion,—

“How she loves him! How she loves this man Jacques! Sir, if any thing should happen to him, she would die.”

M. Folgat made no reply; and nearly an hour passed, before Dionysia, shut up in her room, had succeeded in finding all the words of which Jacques’s letter was composed. But when she had finished, and came back