Previous - Next

The
letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the
seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret
which appeared to exist, or it might come from
Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a
betrayal was imminent. So far it seemed clear enough.
But then how could this letter be trivial and
grotesque, as describe by the son? He must have
misread it. If so, it must have been one of those
ingenious secret codes which mean one thing while they
seem to mean another. I must see this letter. If
there were a hidden meaning in it, I was confident
that I could pluck it forth. For an hour I sat
pondering over it in the gloom, until at last a
weeping maid brought in a lamp, and close at her heels
came my friend Trevor, pale but composed, with these
very papers which lie upon my knee held in his grasp.
He sat down opposite to me, drew the lamp to the edge
of the table, and handed me a short note scribbled, as
you see, upon a single sheet of gray paper. 'The
supply of game for London is going steadily up,' it
ran. 'Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now
told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for
preservation of your hen-pheasant's life.'

"I dare say my face looked as bewildered as yours did
just now when first I read this message. Then I
reread it very carefully. It was evidently as I had
thought, and some secret meaning must lie buried in
this strange combination of words. Or could it be
that there was a prearranged significance to such
phrases as 'fly-paper' and 'hen-pheasant'? Such a
meaning would be arbitrary and could not be deduced in
any way. And yet I was loath to believe that this was
the case, and the presence of the word Hudson seemed
to show that the subject of the message was as I had
guessed, and that it was from Beddoes rather than the
sailor. I tried it backwards, but the combination
'life pheasant's hen' was not encouraging. Then I
tried alternate words, but neither 'the of for' nor
'supply game London' promised to throw any light upon
it.

"And then in an instant the key of the riddle was in
my hands, and I saw that every third word, beginning
with the first, would give a message which might well
drive old Trevor to despair.

"It was short and terse, the warning, as I now read it
to my companion:

"'The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your
life.'

"Victor Trevor sank his face into his shaking hands.
'It must be that, I suppose,' said he. "This is worse
than death, for it means disgrace as well. But what
is the meaning of these "head-keepers" and
"hen-pheasants"?'

"'It means nothing to the message, but it might mean a
good deal to us if we had no other means of
discovering the sender. You see that he has begun by
writing "The...game...is," and so on. Afterwards he
had, to fulfill the prearranged cipher, to fill in any
two words in each space. He would naturally use the
first words which came to his mind, and if there were
so many which referred to sport among them, you may be

Previous - Next