“Having once recognized, however, that the symbols stood forletters, and having applied the rules which guide us in all forms ofsecret writings, the solution was easy enough. The first messagesubmitted to me was so short that it was impossible for me todo more than to say, with some confidence, that the symbolstood for E. As you are aware, E is the most common letter in theEnglish alphabet, and it predominates to so marked an extent thateven in a short sentence one would expect to find it most often.
Out of fifteen symbols in the first message, four were the same,so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is true that in somecases the figure was bearing a flag, and in some cases not, but it wasprobable, from the way in which the flags were distributed, thatthey were used to break the sentence up into words. I accepted thisas a hypothesis, and noted that E was represented by .
“But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order ofthe English letters after E is by no means well marked, and anypreponderance which may be shown in an average of a printedsheet may be reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly,T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in whichletters occur, but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of eachother, and it would be an endless task to try each combinationuntil a meaning was arrived at. I therefore waited for freshmaterial. In my second interview with Mr. Hilton Cubitt he wasable to give me two other short sentences and one message, whichappeared—since there was no flag—to be a single word. Here arethe symbols. Now, in the single word I have already got the twoE’s coming second and fourth in a word of five letters. It mightbe ‘sever,’ or ‘lever,’ or ‘never.’ There can be no question that thelatter as a reply to an appeal is far the most probable, and thecircumstances pointed to its being a reply written by the lady.
Accepting it as correct, we are now able to say that the symbolsstand respectively for N, V, and R.
“Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy thoughtput me in possession of several other letters. It occurred to methat if these appeals came, as I expected, from someone whohad been intimate with the lady in her early life, a combinationThe Return of Sherlock Holmes 903
which contained two E’s with three letters between might verywell stand for the name ‘ELSIE.’ On examination I found thatsuch a combination formed the termination of the message whichwas three times repeated. It was certainly some appeal to ‘Elsie.’
In this way I had got my L, S, and I. But what appeal could it be?
There were only four letters in the word which preceded ‘Elsie,’
and it ended in E. Surely the word must be ‘COME.’ I tried allother four letters ending in E, but could find none to fit the case.
So now I was in possession of C, O, and M, and I was in a positionto attack the first message once more, dividing it into words andputting dots for each symbol which was still unknown. So treated,it worked out in this fashion:
.M .ERE ..E SL.NE.
“Now the first letter CAN only be A, which is a most usefuldiscovery, since it occurs no fewer than three times in this shortsentence, and the H is also apparent in the second word. Now itbecomes:
AM HERE A.E SLANE.
Or, filling in the obvious vacancies in the name:
AM HERE ABE SLANEY.
I had so many letters now that I could proceed with considerableconfidence to the second message, which worked out in thisfashion:
A. ELRI. ES.
Here I could only make sense by putting T and G for the missingletters, and supposing that the name was that of some house orinn at which the writer was staying.”
Inspector Martin and I had listened with the utmost interest tothe full and clear account of how my friend had produced resultswhich had led to so complete a command over our difficulties.
“What did you do then, sir?” asked the inspector.
“I had every reason to suppose that this Abe Slaney was anAmerican, since Abe is an American contraction, and since a letterfrom America had been the starting-point of all the trouble. I hadalso every cause to think that there was some criminal secret inthe matter. The lady’s allusions to her past, and her refusal to takeher husband into her confidence, both pointed in that direction. Itherefore cabled to my friend, Wilson Hargreave, of the New YorkPolice Bureau, who has more than once made use of my knowledge904 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
of London crime. I asked him whether the name of Abe Slaneywas known to him. Here is his reply: ‘The most dangerous crookin Chicago.’ On the very evening upon which I had his answer,Hilton Cubitt sent me the last message from Slaney. Working withknown letters, it took this form:
ELSIE .RE.ARE TO MEET THY GO.
The addition of a P and a D completed a message which showedme that the rascal was proceeding from persuasion to threats, andmy knowledge of the crooks of Chicago prepared me to find thathe might very rapidly put his words into action. I at once came toNorfolk with my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, but, unhappily,only in time to find that the worst had already occurred.”
“It is a privilege to be associated with you in the handling of acase,” said the inspector, warmly. “You will excuse me, however, ifspeak frankly to you. You are only answerable to yourself, but Ihave to answer to my superiors. If this Abe Slaney, living at Elrige’s,indeed the murderer, and if he has made his escape while I amseated here, I should certainly get into serious trouble.”
“You need not be uneasy. He will not try to escape.”
“How do you know?”
“To fly would be a confession of guilt.”
“Then let us go arrest him.”
“I expect him here every instant.”
“But why should he come.”
“Because I have written and asked him.”
“But this is incredible, Mr. Holmes! Why should he comebecause you have asked him? Would not such a request ratherrouse his suspicions and cause him to fly?”
“I think I have known how to frame the letter,” said SherlockHolmes. “In fact, if I am not very much mistaken, here is thegentleman himself coming up the drive.”