Inspector French's Greatest Case (27 page)

The stockbroker took the paper and glanced rapidly down it; then he began to re-read it more slowly. French sat watching him, puffing the while at his cigar. Finally the other made his pronouncement.

“Hanged if I know, French. It is evidently a statement of some one's dealings in the money market, but it's not in the form a professional man would use. In fact, I never saw anything quite like it before.”

“Yes?” French prompted. “In what way is it different from what you're accustomed to?”

Hewett shrugged his shoulders.

“I suppose if I said in every way, I shouldn't be far wrong. First place, there are no dates for the transactions. Of course if the statement was only intended to show the net result of the deals, the dates wouldn't so much matter, but a stockbroker would have put them in. You see here that 4 per cent. War Loan was sold and 5 per cent. War Loan was bought; Great Westerns were sold and North-Easterns bought; while Australian 6 per cent. was sold and British East Africa 6 per cent. bought. These stocks there were all pretty much the same in value, and nothing to be gained by selling one and buying another. Same way no sensible man would sell Alliance Assurance and buy Amalgamated Oils. You get what I mean?”

“Quite. But mightn't the operator have been ignorant or misled as to the values?”

“Of course he might, and no doubt was. But even allowing for that, he's had a rum notion of stock exchange business. Then these small items are unusual. What does ‘balances' mean? And why are ‘telegrams' shown as a sale and not a purchase? I don't mind admitting, French, that the thing beats me. It's the sort of business you'd expect to be done on the stock exchange in Bedlam, if there is one.”

“I tried to get at the operator through the secretaries of some of those companies, but that was no good.”

“Which ones?”

“
The Daily Looking Glass
, James Barker, and the Picardie Hotel.”

“And they couldn't help you?”

“They said no transactions of those exact figures had been carried out. The nearest were within a few pounds of what I wanted. I wondered would the amounts include brokers' fees or stamp duty or taxes of any kind which would account for the difference?”

“I don't think so.” Hewett pored in silence over the paper for some seconds, then he turned and faced his visitor. “Look here,” he went on deliberately, “do you want to know what I think?”

“That's what I came for,” French reminded him.

“Very well, I'll tell you. I think the whole thing is just a blooming fraud. And do you know what makes me sure of it?”

French shook his head.

“Well, it's a thing you might have found out for yourself. It doesn't add. Those figures at the bottom are not the sum of the lines. The thing's just a blooming fraud.”

French cursed himself for his oversight, then suddenly a startling idea flashed into his mind. Suppose this list of sales and purchases had nothing whatever to do with finance. Suppose it conveyed a hidden message by means of some secret code or cipher. Was that a possibility? His voice trembled slightly, as with a haste verging on something very different from his usual Soapy Joe politeness he took his leave.

He hurried back to the Yard, eagerly anxious to get to work on his new inspiration, and reaching his office, he spread the list on his desk and sat down to study it. It read:

STOCK AND SHARE LIST

The first question which occurred to French was whether, assuming the list did contain some secret message, this was hidden in the names of the stocks or in the money, or in both?

Taking the former idea first, he began trying to form words out of certain letters of the names, selected on various plans. The initials, W, A, G, A, A,… were not promising, even when read bottom upwards, J, D, M, B, C. … Nor were the final letters, downwards and upwards, any better. Those next the initials and the penultimates were equally hopeless, nor did diagonal arrangements promise better.

French tried every plan he could think of, working steadily and methodically through the various cases of each, and not leaving it until he was satisfied that he was on the wrong track. He came on no solution, but he did make one discovery which seemed to indicate that the message, if such existed, was contained in the money columns rather than in the names. He noticed that in the majority of cases the names of the various stocks began with one of the earlier letters of the alphabet, and where this did not obtain, the stock in question was one of the first of that kind of stock to be quoted. He picked up a
Daily Mail
and looked at the financial page. The stocks were divided under various headings, British Stocks, Overseas Dominions, Home Railways, Canadian and Foreign Railways, and such like. The first division was British Stocks, and the first item in it was War Loan 5 per cent. But the first item on Mrs. Vane's list was War Loan 5 per cent.

The second item on the list was Australia 6 per cent., and referring to the
Daily Mail
once more, French saw that Australia 6 per cent's was the first item on the second division. This was sufficiently interesting, but when he found that the next five items, Great Western, Associated News, Aerated Bread, Barclay's Bank, and Alliance Assurance were each the first of their respective divisions, he felt he had stumbled upon something more than a coincidence.

He re-examined the list on this new basis, only to find his conclusions verified. Apparently the person writing it had simply copied down the stocks given in some paper—probably the
Daily Mail
. In order to obtain variety and to make an unsuspicious-looking list, he had not simply copied them consecutively; he had taken the first out of each division. Then he had gone over the divisions again, using the second name in each case, and so on until he had obtained the whole twenty-five names that he had required. It had not been done with absolute accuracy, but there was no doubt of the general method. From this it followed that any message which the list might convey was contained in the money columns, and French accordingly transferred his attention to the latter.

and varied surprisingly between these extremes. There were none in the £100's or the £600's, but all the other hundreds were represented. Speaking broadly, there were more of the £800's and £900's than of the lower numbers. But he could not see where any of these facts tended.

There being no obvious line of research, he began a laborious and detailed investigation into the possibilities of substitution, that is, one of those ciphers in which a number or other sign is used to denote a letter. It was clear that single numbers were insufficient for this purpose, as in that case only ten letters of the alphabet could be used. Some combination was therefore involved, and French tried various schemes of addition to meet the case. But though he got three men to assist him in the details of his various tests, he could not find anything which gave the least suggestion of an intelligible combination.

While engaged in this manner, he noticed that so far as the pounds were concerned there were no less than three similar pairs, numbers 2 and 22, 3 and 15, and 10 and 21. He examined these pairs for some time, and then he suddenly made a discovery which seemed to show that at last he was on the right track. He had put the figures down beside each other, so:

when suddenly he noticed that if the shilling and pence of each item were added the result would be the same: 5 + 0 = 5; 2 + 3 = 5. Eagerly he turned to the other pairs and wrote them out similarly: