by Bill Peschel
“‘Act IV., Scene III. Within the tent of Brutus.’
“Our author has set his city on a hill, has placed his cypher as prominently as possible, which is perfectly natural.”
He paused, and try as I would, I could not restrain a cry of admiration. However, I was all eagerness and would not permit him to desist long, as, indeed, he seemed inclined to do. “Do you think you can get it all up as cleverly as Watson, Mustie?” he demanded.
Though a modest man by nature, I assured him I could, whereupon he exclaimed in a tone of intense satisfaction:
“Ah, Sherlock, you overrated humbug! I’ll have you down and out in no time—But, to proceed,” he went on at once, referring to the folio: “We discover that the extremely important first line of this tent scene goes:
“‘That you have wronged me doth appear in this.’
“This is the third line we are to make use of, and its significance is immense. I wonder if it fits well into the text, sheer secret message to the cryptographer that it is? Write down this line, and turning to your alphabet, place the proper numerals under the letters in the line.”
Hastily I did, and got:
Mycroft Holmes seized the paper and proceeded with the utmost rapidity. “In this line of numerals take the first i and the numeral of the letter next after it. But, you say, the following letter has no numeral. Very well. Take, instead, the numeral of the letter next before it, and what have you? 13. The rule is now established. Find the next i. Put it down. 131. Put down the numeral of the letter next before it. 1312. Find the third i and so act once more. The whole result? 131216. There?” exclaimed Mycroft triumphantly. “Three ones, a three, a two, and a six; twice three is six, and thrice two is six; three into six goes twice, and two into six goes thrice. Now, referring to your alphabet and its numerals, fit a word to this 131216.”
I did so, and got RAGIME!
“Heavens?” I cried, aghast. “Could it be ‘ragtime?’”
“Probably not,” replied Holmes; “you have found a wrong combination. But one thing is made clear: whatever the right word, it lacks one letter. Try again. Ragtime is, of course, inappropriate to the line in question.”
I tried a half-dozen times, and at length produced GASTRE. Then, Mycroft rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
“Now you have it?” he exclaimed. “Of course, the missing letter is an L, to be tacked on at the last, making GASTREL. And now you see the extreme subtlety of the cypher which says to Gastrel “That you have wronged me doth appear in this!’ Certainly Gastrel, the Rev. Mr. Gastrel—who pulled down Shakespere’s home and pulled up Shakespere’s mulberry tree, in sheer malevolence—had wronged him; and certainly—as plain as the light of the sun—GASTREL ‘doth appear in this.’”
Mycroft Holmes leaned back in his chair and surveyed me with an air of unmitigated self-satisfaction. I was speechless.
“And so,” he went on presently, “an expert, like myself, carries out the cypher, step by step, until he obtains this alphabet in marks of punctuation, etc.:
He put it into my trembling hand, when he had written it out. “And then,” continued he at once, “I turn to a certain indicated play, and tracing out the marks of punctuation, etc., in a certain indicated passage, I find this:
This, too, he handed me on a slip of paper.
“And it tells you that the author of Shakespere’s plays is—?” I cried in the utmost eagerness.
“It tells us,” replied Holmes, quite seriously, “that the author of Shakespere’s plays is—. But, my dear Mustie, I will not insult your intelligence by translating for you a cypher so completely and simply self-evident!”
And so, like Mycroft Holmes, I will not insult my reader’s intelligence: at this point I will leave him to work out for himself the name of the author of Shakespere’s plays.
Trembling with intense emotion, I left the great historical detective, resolved that, on the morrow, he should unravel for me The Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask.
III.—He Solves the Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask.
The great historical detective received me for the third time on the third morning after my arrival in London, in the Strangers’ Room of the Diogenes Club, as usual.
“And what, my dear Mustie,” he asked, after the greetings, “is to be our child’s-play for to-day?”
“Mycroft” said I, a little hurt by his levity, “to-day you are to solve for me, and incidentally, for the readers of The Daily Saffron, and, equally incidentally, for the entire civilised world, that deep and perplexing mystery of the reign of Louis the Grand, namely, the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask.”
“So?” observed Holmes, quizzically. “And what, my dear fellow, is the most striking fact in connection with this matter?”
Involuntarily I struck an attitude and recited from memory this quotation: “The mystery of the identity of the Iron Mask remains unsolved; but the field of inquiry has been greatly narrowed, and further investigation will not improbably discover this strange historical secret.”
“Just so!” said Mycroft, with a smile of superiority. “And there you have an evident reference to myself, my dear Mustie: in the language of one of your American poets, I believe, he who penned that sentence ‘builded better than he knew.’ Now, as a student of history, tell me something of this mysterious fellow.”
Which I did, declaring that the Man in the Iron Mask was a French state prisoner, who died in 1703, for many years guarded by Saint-Mars in various prisons, who was variously suspected to have been one Mattioli, a diplomatic agent of the Duke of Mantua, or a son of Oliver Cromwell, or the Minister Fouquet, or Avedick, the Armenian patriarch, or the Duke of Monmouth, or the Duke of Beaufort, or the Count of Vermandois, Louis XIV’s natural son, or a natural son of Anne of Austria, or, indeed, a twin brother of the Grand Monarch himself, efficiently suppressed by Cardinal Richelieu.
Mycroft Holmes surveyed me with a smile and said, “Pardon me for resorting once more to that old and unworthy mind-reading stunt of Sherlock’s, but—you have been reading up for the occasion on the subject of the Mask.”
I had to admit that it was true, though again I managed to restrain any display of unusual admiration.
“However,” continued Mycroft, “that is neither here nor there. The fact remains that this Mask is suspected to be one of many persons and is undoubtedly none of them.”
“Then you know—” I began eagerly, but he interrupted me with an uplifted hand.
“Gently, gently, my dear Mustie,” he protested; “all will come out in due time, and we must not be guilty of so egregious an error as the spoiling of the artistic effect by revealing anything important in the beginning. We proceed quite orderly: The Mask was imprisoned by Louis XIV; we will say, then, that the King had a grievance against him. Now, this grievance may have been personal or political—political, you say, because we are told the Mask was a prisoner of state. You assume that much. I, on the contrary, assume nothing. I observe; and I combine my observations with my wealth of special knowledge; and then I deduce. Yes, I admit that it’s Sherlock’s process over again—only quite perfected and in every way superior.
“To resume, then: a ‘prisoner of state’ is not necessarily a political prisoner—our Mask may have meant or done no harm to France. To any other country? Not likely, else the malevolent Louis would have rewarded, instead of imprisoning him. However, for the present we will let that go.
“Mustie, this is—as you, an American, should best know—the age of advertising. As day unto day is folded into the hazy past, the value, the necessity, the indispensability of advertising, the desire, the greed, the mania for publicity advances with gigantic strides. And, remarking this state of affairs from our respective vantage-points, you and I observe sagely: ‘This is the age of advertising; a short time ago—’ And so on, indefinitely.
“But to return to our prisoner: Louis’s motive for detaining him was either personal or political. Say the latter: he had plotted, con
spired against the welfare of the government, either as a foreign or an internal enemy, and the King had had him imprisoned. So far, so good; but why the mask? There were other state prisoners who wore no black velvet over their faces; and scarcely any one ever heard of them, or if he did, paid any attention to them. They were state prisoners, some of recent date, many of the dead past; and they were all neglected. Now, listen to me, Mustie!”
“I am but one great eager ear!” I assured him hastily.
“Mustie, the Iron Mask was not an offender against the state. You say, ‘Then he had offended the King personally.’ Let us consider that: many persons were imprisoned for such a cause. Were they better known or more thought of than the political prisoners? Not in the least. Now, observe this question, Mustie: did they wear masks?”
I must confess that a sort of diabolic glee possessed me; it was highly evident that Holmes expected and desired me to answer in the negative. I grinned in a species of minor triumph, therefore, as I replied, “There were others whose faces were concealed.”
Much to my surprise, Mycroft’s features, instead of expressing discontent, expanded into a smile of complete satisfaction. “Precisely!” he exclaimed. Then he arose slowly and began to walk back and forth before the window, his narrow eyes vacantly fixed on the fog and drizzle of the typical London atmosphere. This occupation he followed for full five minutes, the while I sat observing him in total mystification. Once only he paused to remark, looking at me straightly, “If only I had some particularly devilish habit, like that of consuming hasheesh by the half-pint, what a telling moment to indulge it this would make!”
Presently he paused abruptly and stood glaring down at me in a most singular fashion. Then he opened his lips and framed this enigmatical word: “Competition!” He repeated it a number of times, saying, “Competition, my boy, competition is the word, competition.”
Then he sat down again and resumed, quite as though there had been no interruption. “You say, then, Mustie, that the Mask had personally offended King Louis; your reason for saying this is that Louis imprisoned the Mask; and here your undeveloped powers of deduction pause, impotent to proceed further. Sherlock Holmes could do much better; he could go on reasoning by the day, no doubt; and, probably, he would arrive at very creditable conclusions—mind, I always give the devil his due! But I can do vastly better than he—Dr. Watson himself would admit it, has admitted it practically, so mind you don’t fail to follow suit. You say the King had a grudge against the Mask—that seems perfectly obvious to you. But I say—now, listen attentively, Mustie—(small need for him to warn me!) I say the King had no grudge against the Mask!”
“But—but—” I began, stammering and uncomprehending.
“But me no buts,” went on Mycroft imperturbably. “Louis XIV hadn’t a closer friend or a greater favorite than this same Man in the Iron Mask.”
He paused again—to drive the strange statement home and let it clinch itself in my confused mind. Then he forestalled my question.
“My dear Mustie,” he said, “there were other prisoners, some of whose faces were concealed: can you, a student of history, recall the names of any of them on the spur of the moment? No; certainly not: you scarcely ever hear of them, and so they were scarcely ever heard of even in their own day. But the Iron Mask—who has not heard of him! Was he an object of curious mystery even in his own lifetime?”
I could but admit he had been such.
“Surely! And now, isn’t it perfectly clear to you? Remember what I said a while ago about advertising? Remember Competition? Well, this is the age of advertising, but—put your finger on the Father of modern advertising!”
In my confusion, I could not, and he put his own finger on—the Iron Mask!
“There?” he continued, abruptly. “The Mask was Louis’s great friend; the Mask was a man of surpassing cleverness; the Mask was neither a political nor a ‘personal’ prisoner, although he was a conspirator—inasmuch as he and the King conspired to effect one of the greatest and most lasting advertising coups of all time. Mustie, you understand the value of advertising: did the Mask need to employ a press agent?”
“But,” I protested wildly, “the man died in his prison after he had spent his life in it! Who could ever want such advertising as cost him his existence to procure?”
Mycroft Holmes looked me straight in the eyes and chuckled softly. “That,” said he, “is precisely the point. In your blind, clumsy way, my dear Mustie, you have stumbled upon the key to the whole matter. Who, indeed, could want such advertising as cost him his life to procure but a man who had lives to waste. And what man in history is so endowed, Mustie?”
I threw up my hands in a species of horror. “The Wandering Jew!” I cried.
“Yes,” said Mycroft Holmes; “no other. The Wandering Jew, at that time making great preparations to manifest himself in the guise of Joseph Balsamo, Count Cagliostro—Cagliostro, who now is—” He checked himself.
“But that,” he added, “is another story.—Oh, I have my fingers crossed,” he explained, in answer to my unspoken remonstrance against this audacious violation of unwritten copyright; and, indeed, he had.
And so I left him again, my mind whirling in its effort to select the mystery I should ask him to unravel on the following day.
The Affair of the Lost Compression
“Croton Oyle”
Illustrated by W. Durac Barnett
Although the internal combustion engine was invented early in the 19th century, it wasn’t until 1902 that the first large-scale production of cars began by Ransom Olds (1864-1950) at his Michigan factory. Soon, magazines and journals were addressing the needs of newly minted motorists. “The Affair of the Lost Compression” appeared in The Car Magazine: A Monthly Review of Travel. The illustrator, Walter Durac Barnett (1876-1961), was a painter from Leeds who served in the Artists Rifles regiment during World War I.
“He was curled up in his big easy-chair.”
“I am about to be visited by a motorist,” said Romes, as I entered his room on a dull morning in November. My wife was away on a visit to some friends, and I was spending a few days with my old friend.
He was curled up in his big easy-chair, puffing moodily at a very old and foul pipe. I could see no indication whatever which could lead him to anticipate such a visit.
“I know you will have a simple explanation of the mystery,” I said; “but I cannot fathom it,” and I looked inquiringly at him. I might have guessed, but to do so would not be acting up to approved methods. The public loves consistency; to alight upon an explanation by a mere guess would, in a way, defraud them of their rights.
“You are right, my dear Scotson; it is quite simple,” laughed Romes, “and any one who understands my methods could arrive at it by an easy course of deduction; but as no such person exists, I must give you the clue to the chain of reasoning which led up to my statement.
“A moment before you entered the room,” he continued, “I heard a noise as of a train passing through a tunnel; then I noticed several women look out interestedly from the windows opposite at an object which could not have been a burst main, a cab accident, a barrel organ out of gear, or a dog fight—”
“But—” I interposed.
“And finally,” Romes continued, “I heard the ‘toot-toot’ of a motor horn, and the confirmatory ‘pip-pip’ of a small boy.”
Even as he spoke there was a knock at the door, and a young man was ushered in. He had a leather cap in his hand and wore a large motor coat. His face was pale, and he was of medium height. I tried in vain to form some idea of his occupation or character.
Romes motioned him to a chair.
“You are a motorist. Is it not so?” he asked, quietly.
The young man started in surprise. “How did you find that out?” he gasped.
Romes smiled slightly and pointed at his boot.
“There’s a viscid, oleaginous speck on the upper of your right foot,” he said, quietly. “Probably
you have not read my little monograph on lubricants, which was withdrawn from circulation some years ago? No? Well, it dealt with 1,765 varieties of oils, and gave, amongst other secrets, an infallible test by which paraffin could be distinguished from olive oil.”
“Marvellous!” cried the young man.
“Yes,” mused Romes, “it was bought up by the Anglo-American Oil Company after that little adventure which my friend Dr. Scotson has so well told under the title of ‘The Sign of 680’.”
“Yes—yes!” said the young man, “I know that story.”
“I see,” continued Romes, “that you drive a fast car.”
The young man smiled.
“Every motorist does—until stopped by the police.”
“Then there are marks of goggles on the right side of your nose,” explained Romes, “which indicate the wind-pressure caused by high speed; they also show that the wind was on your right side. You come from Surrey, if I mistake not?”
“Well, I was born there, certainly,” said the young man; “but I came from Norfolk today.”
“Ah!” said Romes calmly. “The wind has changed!” and sank into a deep reverie.
“Oh, Mr. Romes!” broke in the motorist, after a few moments of painful waiting. “I have come to you for aid! My case is a desperate one!”
“Go on, my friend,” spoke Romes, soothingly. “I knew you were in trouble. Tell your story; and, if it is of sufficient interest, my good friend, Dr. Scotson, will give it full publicity at the usual rates. Go on, fear nothing. The laws of copyright are sacred.”
“I am a motorist,” spoke our visitor, with deep emotion. “I am young, I am wealthy, but I am very unhappy!”
“Fallen into a police trap, have you?” I asked, quickly, resolving to score before Romes this time.
