*CHAPTER XXXIII*
*Palafox the Name*
Nonplussed--In the Convent--A Warning--The Key--Permutations andCombinations--Light Ahead--Don Fernan's Message
One day the guerrilla camp in the mountains was thrown into someexcitement by the sudden reappearance of Pepito. All the guerrillerosby this time knew something of the strange complications in which theEnglish senor was involved. They had been constantly on the look-outfor the gipsy boy whom he was so anxious to see; and when, on this sunnymorning, the boy was seen bounding up the hillside, they flocked to himin a crowd, crying "Que hay de nuevo? Que hay de nuevo?" Pepito madethem no answer. He had already caught sight of his master sitting someyards above him, and rushed forward with a piercing cry of delight.
"Found, Senor!" he shouted. "Found!"
Jack needed no telling who was found.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"Glad Senor is well, glad Senor is well!" shouted the little fellow."The Senorita will be glad too. Oh, she will! When I told theSenorita--"
"Where is she?" repeated Jack impatiently.
"When I told the Senorita that Senor was ill, she jumped up; said shemust come; but the old Busna looked ugly; said no; and I come to fetchSenor."
"Pepito, tell me at once where she is."
"Safe, at a convent near Carinena, Senor, all among the trees andflowers. Senor can go, now he is well, and I know who will be pleased.Yes, I know!"
"You're a good boy, Pepito." He turned to Dugdale. "Grampus, when shallI be fit to ride?"
"Good heavens! Not for a long time. Look here, Lumsden, I'm not goingto have my cure spoilt and my career ruined by you going raiding beforeyou're fit. Don't laugh. I'm in dead earnest. I'm sick and tired ofplaying the fool at Oxford. As soon as I get home I'm going to be adoctor. New idea, you know; fresh air and cold water. The pater willlaugh himself into a fit when I tell him; but don't you see, if you backme up, and I can show you as my first case--why, bet you the old boycomes round and doubles my allowance, to encourage me. See?"
"All right!" said Jack, laughing. "But you must finish my cure quickly,for the instant I can manage it I'm going to ride over to Carinena."
"What for? What is there special about Carinena?"
"Well, I've a--a friend there I want specially to see."
"H'm! A friend? Bet you my first year's fees it's a girl. Now lookhere, Lumsden, don't be a fool. An Englishman oughtn't to marry tillhe's thirty at least. I've got ten years yet, and it won't be too much.It takes time to be able to face a girl without flinching, and for mypart I'd rather learn Greek verbs than--"
"Oh, shut up!" exclaimed Jack. "Who said anything about marrying?Juanita--"
"Oho! Juanita! Sorry for you, my boy; no cure for that complaint.Well, I'll take care of you, but it'll be a long time yet before you canride."
Nearly a month passed away before Jack, after a few experiments, waspronounced fit to undertake the ride to Carinena. The period of waitingwas diversified by one or two expeditions against French convoys, inwhich Antonio achieved brilliant successes. Jack chafed at beingobliged to remain inactive, and to share in these raids merely inimagination. He spent hour after hour in attempting to decipher thepostscript of Don Fernan's letter, always without success. Rememberingthe enigmatical phrase in the letter he himself had received inSalamanca, "Palafox the Man, Palafox the Name", he believed that the keymust be contained in that; but though he tried to fit it to the cipheredmessage, and made considerable demands on Dugdale's patience, he drew nonearer to solving the puzzle, and finally gave it up in disgust.
At length the day arrived when, feeling well and strong, he set off onhis ride to the convent. Pepito had several times conveyed verbalmessages between him and Juanita, but nothing had been committed topaper for fear lest it should fall into the hands of the French. Guidedby the boy, who rode before him, he reached the convent in the afternoonof a beautiful April day, and was at once admitted to the presence ofJuanita, with whom he found the old duenna he had seen in Saragossa.
Though Juanita greeted him with as much cordiality as ever, he wasconscious of a slight difference in her manner; there was not quite thesame frank comradeship she had shown in Saragossa.
"I am very glad to see you looking so well, Jack," she said. "Will youtake a cup of chocolate?"
"Thanks!" replied Jack briefly. He sipped it for a brief intervalwithout speaking, then said suddenly: "I say, Juanita, I am mighty gladyou escaped, you know. It was good of Padre Consolacion to helpyou--after trying to persuade you to marry Miguel, too. Tell me aboutit."
Without her usual animation Juanita recounted how she had been capturedas she neared Morata by a party of troopers, among whom she hadrecognized Perez, Miguel's one-eyed man. She had been treated kindlyenough by the wife of a colonel of chasseurs, who, however, irritatedher beyond endurance by constant reference to her approaching marriage.Miguel himself had only seen her once. He had asked what had become ofher father's old servant Jose, and shown some annoyance when she refusedto answer. But she had had another and a more frequent visitor. Afterthe capitulation, Padre Consolacion had been surprised to find that,though he had been as consistent an opponent as Don Basilio and SantiagoSass, he had not met with the same fate at the hands of the French. Hecould only conclude that he owed his security to the good offices ofMiguel, whom, however, he now held in utter abhorrence. Making hisescape from the city, he had gone into hiding at Morata, where he soonlearnt of what had befallen Juanita. It was not difficult for him, withthe assistance of the people of the house, to obtain secret interviewswith her. On the day before Miguel went with Commissary Taberne on theforaging expedition, Juanita learnt from the colonel's wife thatpressure was to be brought to bear in high quarters for the purpose ofbringing about her marriage with Don Miguel. She sent a message by asecret channel to Padre Consolacion, informing him of this alarmingnews. On the next evening, almost at the moment when Jack was surprisingthe commissary, she had slipped out of the house in the dress of one ofthe Spanish maid-servants, fled to where the priest was awaiting her,and by him was escorted to the convent, where she was joined in a fewdays by the duenna, after the sudden swoop of Antonio had cleared theplace of French.
"The padre is a trump," said Jack. "I confess I didn't like him inSaragossa; but then, of course, he hadn't found Miguel out. I thoughthe must be either stupid or something worse. I shall do him morejustice in future."
He would not perhaps have been so cordial if he had known that it was toPadre Consolacion he owed the strange alteration in Juanita's mannerwhich had puzzled him. When he left her in the convent, the padre'slast words had been: "Now, querida mia, though I have helped you toescape a marriage with a traitor and a villain, remember I shall notapprove, I shall forbid, your marriage with a heretic. You willunderstand me."
All unconscious of this, Jack waxed eloquent in praise of the padre, andwent on: "Well now, I've something to tell you besides what you haveheard from Pepito. You remember that a letter left with General Palafoxfor my father disappeared--a letter about your property?"
"Yes. I hate the sound of the word 'property'."
"I have the letter. It was--perhaps you guess--in the possession ofMiguel."
He proceeded to tell the whole story. Juanita listened with growinginterest, and when it was concluded every trace of her stiffness hadpassed away.
"Ah, Jack!" she cried, "now we can get this wretched treasure that hasnearly cost your life--for but for it you would never have come toSaragossa--and then--oh! do you think we can get away to England?"
"I'm very sorry, Juanita. I was just going to tell you that I'm afraidwe can't get the treasure."
"Why not? You said the letter was about it."
"So it is. But, unfortunately, the secret of its whereabouts is lockedup in a postscript--a single line of capital letters, which I can'tread. It is in cipher."
"Show it to me. You
have it with you?"
Jack took out the paper, and unfolded it before her. She read over thepostscript letter by letter:
S E O S F L S A E O A P E J E J P J J F J P J X P A P P F
"Certainly a most curious-looking sentence," said Juanita. "And haveyou no clue at all?"
"None whatever. I thought I had. I made sure I had, but when I triedto work it out in the cipher it proved useless."
"What was it?"
"Well, I had never told anyone. Your father said I was to burn theletter as soon as I received it, and I did so; but now that things havealtogether changed, there can be no harm in telling you all about it.In the letter I received at Salamanca, Don Fernan said that I was toremember the phrase, 'Palafox the Man, Palafox the Name'. It occurredto me, of course, that the clue to the cipher might be found in thatphrase; but, try it as I might, I couldn't make anything of it. Yousee, the cipher message contains all the letters of the word Palafox,but there are a number of J's and other letters that have nothing to dowith it."
"And you gave it up!" exclaimed Juanita, with some scorn. "Just like aboy!"
"Really, Juanita--" began Jack, but she interrupted him.
"Don't talk. Let me see if I've a little more perseverance. I count sixP's, three A'S, one L, three F's, two O's, and one X; that accounts forPALAFOX. Why are there so many P's? Besides, there are four E'S, sixJ's, and three S's. What can EJS stand for? EJS, ESJ, JES, JSE--I seeit! Take an O out of PALAFOX and you have JOSE. That is the name of ourold servant, and of the Captain-General too. Now, do you see, Senor DonJuan?--the key to the cipher is JOSE PALAFOX."
"What an ass I am!" said Jack. "It never struck me that Palafox'sChristian name might be included. But what then? The only ciphering Iever did was in money sums, and weights and measures. How do you workout the thing now?"
"Why, it's clear that my father's message is made up of the words JOSEPALAFOX, which have only nine different letters. It's not likely thatthe message contains only nine letters; therefore one letter of thecipher probably stands for several, and I shouldn't wonder if all theletters of the alphabet were represented by those nine. Suppose we putdown the letters of the alphabet and the other letters underneath, andsee what can be made of it then."
"We don't know what language it is in."
"Probably Spanish, like the letter itself. Let us try."
She wrote down the twenty-seven letters of the Spanish alphabet, andunder each the corresponding letter of the key words:--
a b c ch d e f g h i j l ll m n n o p q r s t u v x y z J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P
"There you are, Jack. Now look. The first letter of the cipher, s, maystand for either _c_ or _m_ or _x_; we can't tell which of the threeuntil we get a little further."
"It's a pretty puzzle," said Jack. "The next letter is E; that may beeither _ch_ or _n_ or _y_, and if we put either of them after _c_, _m_,or _x_, we sha'n't begin to make any Spanish word that I know of."
"No," agreed Juanita, putting her pencil to her lips. "It looks as ifthe sentence can't be Spanish."
"Don Fernan wrote to me in English. Let us try that. I'll do it thistime."
Jack wrote down the letters of the English alphabet, placing thekey-words below as before:--
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E
"S is either _c_, _n_, or _y_ this time, and E is either _d_, _o_, or_a_. We can drop _d_ and _e_, because they can't follow any of the firstthree; that leaves _co_, _no_, and _yo_. This is getting interesting,Juanita."
"Yes, I am getting quite excited. Now for the next letter, O. That canstand for _b_, _j_, _m_, _u_, _x_. I'll write down all thecombinations, and see how they look."
They were fifteen, as follows:--
cob nob yob coj noj yoj com nom yom cou nou you cox nox yox
"Some of these are too comical for anything," said Jack; "but we've onecomplete word, _you_. Let us see what the next comes to. S again;that's _c_, _n_, or _y_. Then F; that's _i_ or _t_. No English wordbegins with _ct_, _nt_, or _yt_, so _t_ goes out. Now for L; that's _g_or _r_; and the combinations now are:--
cig nig yig cir nir yir
I say, your father wouldn't begin by addressing me as 'you nigger',would he? The next letter is S; _c_, _n_, or _y_ again. Not a singleone of them helps to make a word. We are on the wrong track, Juanita."
"Perhaps the first word is not _you_ at all."
"Well, let's go back and see how many of the fifteen combinations of thefirst three letters will fit on to the fourth. It's quite clear thatyou can't make a word by putting c or y after any of them; there's onlyn left, and all we can make is _coun_ and _noun_. Don Fernan wouldn'tgo in for grammar, would he? If we drop _noun_ we've only coun, andthat looks most unlikely."
"Be quick with the next letter, Jack. Why do you talk so much? I couldjump with excitement."
"Don't be in a hurry; perhaps the whole thing will come to grief again.The next letter is F; that stands for _i_ or _t_; _i_ won't do, but _t_will, and we get _count_; that's a word at any rate. I wonder whatwe're to count. Now for L; that's _g_ or _r_; and S again; that's _c_,_n_, or _y_. And unless I'm a Dutchman, that makes the word _country_."
Juanita clapped her hands and laughed.
"You _are_ getting clever!" she said.
The irony escaped Jack, who was busy working out the next word. In afew minutes he had made out _house_.
"Country house!" exclaimed Juanita. "Oh, you are slow, Jack; do bequick! What about the country house?"
But the same process had to be gone through with every letter, and itwas quite half an hour before the whole message was deciphered. Theexcitement of Juanita and himself increased with every fresh discovery,and when the task was finished, and the simple English words werewritten down, each gave a gasp of relief. The message consisted of butsix words:--
_Country house old well twelve feet_.
"I see it! I see it all!" exclaimed Juanita. "Oh, Jack, we shall getit after all! I don't care for the treasure itself one bit really, notone bit; but I could dance with joy at defeating that wretch Miguel, andI should like to have some money to give to the poor people ruined inSaragossa. You must go, Jack. The well is in the garden behind thehouse, near the wall. It has not been used for many years; we got waterfrom a new well by the kitchen. Only to think that all is coming rightafter all!"
"Yes," said Jack; "Pepito and I will go to-morrow. How deep is the well,Juanita?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Twelve feet means something. Youwill find out what, Jack. And then--"
"Then, Juanita, for England!"
Boys of the Light Brigade: A Story of Spain and the Peninsular War Page 36
