"You have succ.u.mbed?" the Secretary smiled.
"I have--twenty times at least. You"ll join the throng, if she has occasion to need you, and gives you half a chance."
"I"m married!" said the Secretary.
"I"m quite aware of it!"
"I"m immune!"
"And yet you"re wishing to see her in the flesh!" Harleston smiled.
"I think I can safely take the risk!" smoothing his chin complacently.
"Other men have thought the same, I believe, and been burned. However, if the lady is in Washington I"ll engage that you meet her. Also, I"ll acquaint her of your boasted immunity from her _beaux yeux_."
"The latter isn"t within the scope of your duty, sir," the Secretary smiled. "Now we"ll have Carpenter."
He touched a b.u.t.ton.
A moment later Carpenter entered; a scholarly-looking man in the fifties; bald as an egg, with the quiet dignity of bearing which goes with a student, who at the same time is an expert in his particular line--and knows it. He was the Fifth a.s.sistant Secretary, had been the Fifth a.s.sistant and Chief of the Cipher Division for years. His superior was not to be found in any capital in Europe. His business with the secret service of the Department was to pull the strings and obtain results; and he got results, else he would not have been continued in office. His specialty, however, was ciphers; and his chief joy was in a case that had a cipher at the bottom. Ciphers were his recreation, as well as his business.
The Secretary with a gesture turned him over to Harleston--and Harleston handed him the letter.
"What do you make out of it, Mr. Carpenter?" he asked.
Carpenter took the letter and examined it for a moment, holding it to the light, and carefully feeling its texture.
"Not a great deal cursorily," he answered. "It"s a French paper--the sort, I think, used at the Quay d"Orsay. Have you the envelope accompanying it?"
"Here it is!" said Harleston.
"This envelope, however, is not French; it"s English," Carpenter said instantly. "See! a saltire within an orle is the private water-mark of Sergeant & Co. I likely can tell you more after careful examination in my workshop."
"How about the message itself?" Harleston asked.
"It is the Vigenerie cipher, that"s reasonably certain; and, as you are aware, Mr. Harleston, the Vigenerie is practically impossible of solution without the key-word. It is the one cipher that needs no code-book, nor anything else that can be lost or stolen--the code-word can be carried in one"s mind. We used it in the De la Porte affair, you will remember. Indeed, just because of its simplicity it is used more generally by every nation than any other cipher."
"I thought that you might be able to work it out," said Harleston. "You can do it if any one on earth can."
"I can do some things, Mr. Harleston," smiled Carpenter deprecatingly, "but I"m not omniscient. For instance: What language is the key-word--French, Italian, Spanish, English? The message is written on French paper, enclosed in an English envelope.--However, the facts you have may clear up that phase of the matter."
"Here are the facts, as I know them," said Harleston.
Carpenter leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and listened.
"The message is, I should confidently say, written in English or French, with the chances much in favour of the latter," he said, when Harleston had concluded. "Everyone concerned is English or American; the men who descended upon you so peculiarly and foolishly, and who showed their inexperience in every move, were Americans, I take it, as was also the woman who telephoned you. Moreover, she is fighting them."
"Then your idea is that the United States is not concerned in the matter?" the Secretary asked.
"Not directly, yet it may be very much concerned in the result. We will know more about it after Mr. Harleston has had his interview with the lady."
"That"s so!" the Secretary reflected. "We shall trust you, Harleston, to find out something definite from her. Keep me advised if anything turns up. It seems peculiar, and it may be only a personal matter and not an _affaire d"etat_. At all events, you"ve a pleasant interview before you."
"Maybe I have--and maybe I haven"t!" Harleston laughed--and he and Carpenter went out, pa.s.sing the French Amba.s.sador in the anteroom.
Harleston went straight to Police Headquarters. The Chief was waiting for him.
"I had Thompson, your cab driver, here," said Ranleigh, "and he tells a somewhat unusual but apparently straight tale; moreover, he is a very respectable negro, well known to the guards and the officers on duty around Dupont Circle, and they regard him as entirely trustworthy. He says that last evening about nine o"clock, when he was jogging down Connecticut Avenue on his way home--he owns his rig--he was hailed by a fare in evening dress, top coat, and hat, who directed him to drive west on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. In the neighbourhood of Twenty-second Street, the fare signalled to stop and ordered him to come to the door. There he asked him to hire the horse and cab until this morning, when they would be returned to him at that point. Thompson naturally demurred; whereupon the man offered to deposit with him in cash the value of the horse and cab, to be refunded upon their return in the morning less fifty dollars for their hire. This was too good to let slip and Thompson acquiesced, fixing the value at three hundred and fifty dollars, which sum the man skinned off a roll of yellow-backs. Then the fare b.u.t.toned his coat around him, jumped on the box, and drove east on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue.
This morning the horse and cab were backed up to the curb at their customary stand in Dupont Circle, where they were found by officer Murphy shortly after daybreak; before he could report the absence of the driver, Thompson came up and explained."
"Can Thompson describe the man?" Harleston asked.
"Merely that he was clean-shaved, medium-sized, somewhat stout, wore evening clothes, and was, apparently, a gentleman. Thompson thinks however, that he could readily recognize the man, so we should let him have a look at the fellow that"s under guard in your apartment."
"It isn"t he," Harleston explained. "He"s slender, with a mustache and imperial. It was Marston, likely. Did any of your officers see cab No.
333 between nine P.M. and this morning?"
"The reports are clean of No. 333, but we are investigating now. It"s not likely, however. Meanwhile, if there is anything else I can do, Mr.
Harleston--"
"You can listen to the balance of the episode--beginning at half-past one this morning, when I found the cab deserted at Eighteenth Street and Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue, with the horse lying in the roadway, asleep in the shafts...."
"What do you wish the police to do, Mr. Harleston?" the Superintendent asked at the end.
"Nothing, until I"ve seen the Lady of Peac.o.c.k Alley. Then I"ll likely know something definite--whether to keep hands off or to get busy."
"Shan"t we even try to locate the two men, in preparation for your getting busy?"
"H"m!" reflected Harleston. "Do it very quietly then. You see, I don"t know whom you"re likely to locate, nor whether we want to locate them."
"The men who visited your apartment are not of the profession, Mr.
Harleston."
"It"s their profession that"s bothering me!" Harleston laughed. "Why are three Americans engaged in what bears every appearance of being a diplomatic matter, and of which our State Department knows nothing?"
"There"s a woman in it, I believe; likely two, possibly three!" was the smiling reply.
"Hump!" said Harleston. "A woman is at the bottom of most things, that"s a fact; she"s about the only thing for which a man will betray his country. However, as they"re three men there should be three women--"
"One woman is enough--if she is sufficiently fascinating and plays the men off against one another. Though you"ve plenty of women in the case, Mr. Harleston, if you"re looking for the three:--the one whom you"re to meet this afternoon; the unknown who left the Collingwood so mysteriously; and the one of the photograph. If the other two are as lovely as she of the photograph they are some trio. I shouldn"t care for the latter lady to tempt me overlong."
"Wise man!" Harleston remarked, as he arose to go. "I"ll advise you after the interview. Meanwhile you might have the cabby look at the fellow in durance at the Collingwood. Possibly he has seen him before; which may give us a lead--if we find we want a lead."
The telephone buzzed; Ranleigh answered it--then raised his hand to Harleston to remain. After a moment, he motioned for Harleston to come closer and held the receiver so that both could hear.
"I can see you at three o"clock," Ranleigh said.