"I found it this morning quite accidentally, just as it is, in a secret drawer in the old bureau in my father's dressing-room," she explained.

"He must have placed it there for security before leaving for Scotland."

I held it in my hand utterly stupefied, yet with the most profound gratification. Did not the very fact that Blair had taken it off and placed it in that box rather than risk wearing it during that journey to the North prove that he had gone in fear of an attempt being made to obtain its possession? Nevertheless, the curious little object bequeathed to me under such strange conditions was now actually in my hand, a flat, neatly-sewn bag of wash-leather that was black with age and wear, about half-an-inch thick, and containing something flat and hard.

Within was concealed the great secret, the knowledge of which had raised Burton Blair from a homeless seafarer into affluence. What it could be, neither Mabel nor I could for a moment imagine.

Both of us were breathless, equally eager to ascertain the truth.

Surely never in the life of any man was there presented a more interesting or a more tantalising problem.

In silence she took up a pair of small b.u.t.tonhole scissors from the little writing-table in the window and handed them to me.

Then, my hand trembling with excitement, I inserted the point into the end of the leather packet and made a long sharp cut the whole of its length, but what fell out upon the carpet next instant caused us both to utter loud exclamations of surprise.

Burton Blair's most treasured possession, the Great Secret which he had carried on his person all those years and through all those wanderings, now at last revealed, proved utterly astounding.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

GIVES AN EXPERT OPINION.

Upon the carpet at our feet lay scattered a pack of very small, rather dirty cards which had fallen from the little sachet, and which both of us stood regarding with surprise and disappointment.

For my own part I expected to find within that treasured bag of wash-leather something of more value than those thumbed and half worn-out pieces of pasteboard, but our curiosity was instantly aroused when, on stooping, I picked up one of them and discovered certain letters written in brown faded ink upon it, similar to those upon the card already in my possession.

It chanced to be the ten of diamonds, and in order that you may be able to the more clearly understand the arrangement of the letters upon them, I reproduce it here:--

"How strange!" cried Mabel, taking the card and examining it closely.

"It surely must be some cipher, the same as the other card which I found sealed up in the safe."

"No doubt," I exclaimed, as, stooping and gathering up the remainder of the pack, I noticed that upon each of them, either upon the front or upon the back, were scrawled either fourteen or fifteen letters in a treble column, all, of course, utterly unintelligible.

I counted them. It was a piquet pack of thirty-one, the missing card being the ace of hearts which we had already discovered. By the friction of having been carried on the person for so long the corners and edges were worn, while the gloss of the surface had long ago disappeared.

Aided by Mabel I spread them all upon the table, utterly bewildered by the columns of letters which showed that some deep secret was written upon them, yet what it was we were utterly unable to decipher.

Upon the front of the ace of clubs was scrawled in three parallel columns of five letters each, thus:--

E H N W E D T O L I E H W H R

Again, I turned up the king of spades and found on the reverse only fourteen letters:--

Q W F T S W T H U O F E Y E

"I wonder what it all means?" I exclaimed, carefully examining the written characters in the light. The letters were in capitals just as rudely and unevenly drawn as those upon the ace of hearts, evidently by an uneducated hand. Indeed the A's betrayed a foreign form rather than English, and the fact that some of the cards were inscribed on the obverse and others on the reverse seemed to convey some hidden meaning.

What it was, however, was both tantalising and puzzling.

"It certainly is very curious," Mabel remarked after she had vainly striven to construct intelligible words from the columns of letters by the easy methods of calculation. "I had no idea that my father carried his secret concealed in this manner."

"Yes," I said, "it really is amazing. No doubt his secret is really written here, if we only knew the key. But in all probability his enemies are aware of its existence, or he would not have left it secreted here when he set forth on his journey to Manchester. That man Dawson may know it."

"Most probably," was her reply. "He was my father's intimate acquaintance."

"His friend--he says he was."

"Friend!" she cried resentfully. "No, his enemy."

"And therefore your father held him in fear? It was that reason which induced him to insert that very injudicious clause in his will."

And then I described to her the visit of the man Dawson on the previous night, telling her what he had said, and his impudent, defiant att.i.tude towards us.

She sighed, but uttered no reply. I noticed that as I spoke her countenance went a trifle paler, but she remained silent, as though she feared to speak lest she should inadvertently expose what she intended should remain a secret.

My chief thought at that moment, however, was the elucidation of the problem presented by those thirty-two well-thumbed cards. The secret of Burton Blair, the knowledge of which had brought him his millions, was hidden there, and as it had been bequeathed to me it was surely to my interest to exert every effort to gain exact knowledge of it. I recollected how very careful he had been over that little bag which now lay empty upon the table, and with what careless confidence he had shown it to me on that night when he was but a homeless wanderer tramping the muddy turnpike roads.

As he had held it in his hand, his eyes had brightened with keen antic.i.p.ation. He would be a rich man some day, he had prophesied, and I, in my ignorance, had then believed him to be romancing. But when I looked around that room in which I now stood and saw that Murillo and that Tintoretto, each of them worth a small fortune in themselves, I was bound to confess that I had wrongly mistrusted him.

And the secret written upon that insignificant-looking little pack of cards was mine--if only I could decipher it!

Surely no situation could be more tantalising to a poor man like myself.

The man whom I had been able to befriend had left me, in gracious recognition, the secret of the source of his enormous income, yet so well concealed was it that neither Mabel nor myself could decipher it.

"What shall you do?" she inquired presently, after poring over the cards in silence for quite ten minutes. "Is there no expert in London who might find out the key? Surely those people who do cryptograms and things could help us?"

"Certainly," was my answer, "but in that case, if they were successful they would discover the secret for themselves."

"Ah, I never thought of that!"

"Your father's directions in his will as to secrecy are very explicit."

"But possession of these cards without the key is surely not of much benefit," she argued. "Could you not consult somebody, and ascertain by what means such records are deciphered?"

"I might make inquiries in a general way," I answered, "but to place the pack of cards blindly in the hands of an expert would, I fear, simply be giving away your father's most confidential possession. There may be written here some fact which it is not desirable that the world shall know."

"Ah!" she said, glancing quickly up at me. "Some facts regarding his past, you mean. Yes. You are quite right, Mr. Greenwood. We must be very careful to guard the secret of these cards well, especially if, as you suggest, the man Dawson really knows the means by which the record may be rendered intelligible."

"The secret has been bequeathed to me, therefore I will take possession of them," I said. "I will also make inquiries, and ascertain by what means such ciphers are rendered into plain English."

I had at that moment thought of a man named Boyle, a professor at a training-college in Leicester who was an expert at anagrams, ciphers, and such things, and I intended to lose no time in running up there to see him and ascertain his opinion.

Therefore at noon I took train at St. Pancras, and about half-past two was sitting with him in his private room at the college. He was a middle-aged, clean-shaven man of quick intelligence, who had frequently won prizes in various compet.i.tions offered by different journals; a man who seemed to have committed Bartlett's _Dictionary of Familiar Quotations_ to memory, and whose ingenuity in deciphering puzzles was unequalled.

While smoking a cigarette with him, I explained the point upon which I desired his opinion.

"May I see the cards?" he inquired, removing his briar from his mouth and looking at me with some surprise, I thought.

My first impulse was to refuse him sight of them, but on second thoughts I recollected that of all men he was one of the greatest experts in such matters, therefore I drew the little pack from the envelope in which I had placed them.

"Ah!" he exclaimed the moment he took them in his hand and ran quickly through them. "This, Mr. Greenwood, is the most complicated and most difficult of all ciphers. It was in vogue in Italy and Spain in the seventeenth century, and afterwards in England, but seems to have dropped into disuse during the past hundred years or so, probably on account of its great difficulty."

Carefully he spread the cards out in suits upon the table, and seemed to make long and elaborate calculations between the heavy puffs at his pipe.