The Nine of Hearts

"He said that she had brain-fever, and that it had been accelerated by her having caught a violent cold through wearing damp clothing."

"Do you think she wore that clothing in the house?"

"No."

(Dr. Daincourt has certain ways and methods of his own. He is in the habit of keeping in his pocket-book a tablet of the weather from day to day.)

"If your daughter did not wear damp clothes in the house," he said, "she must have worn them out of the house."

He took his pocket-book from his pocket and consulted his weather-tablet. "I see," he said to Mrs. Rutland, "that from the 12th till the 25th of March there was no rain. The weather was mild and unusually warm during those days, but on the evening of the 25th of March it began to rain, and rained during the night. Your daughter must have been out during those hours in the bad weather. What were her movements on that evening? Remember, you must keep nothing from me if you wish me to do my best to restore your child to health."

Still, it was with some difficulty that he extracted from Mrs. Rutland the information he desired to obtain. Obtain it, however, he did. Mrs. Rutland informed him that Mabel had gone out on the evening of the 25th of March, and did not return home until nearly one o'clock in the morning. Mr. Rutland was not aware of this. Mrs. Rutland had stopped up for her daughter, and had let her in quietly and secretly. The young girl was pale and greatly agitated, but she said nothing to her mother. She kissed her hurriedly, went to her bedroom, and was found the next morning in the condition Mrs. Rutland had described.

"Being in a fever from that day," said Dr. Daincourt to the mother, "your daughter has seen no newspapers?"

"No."

"And she is ignorant of the peril through which her former lover, Edward Layton, has passed, and in which he still stands?"

"She is ignorant of it," said Mrs. Rutland.

"Have any letters arrived for her during her illness?"

"Yes, two. One in the handwriting of Mr. Layton, the other from my dear boy Eustace."

"Have you those letters?"

"Yes."

"Have you opened them?"

"No. My daughter made me give her a solemn promise that I would never open one of her letters, and I have not done so."

"But," said Dr. Daincourt, "this is a matter of life and death. I must ask you to give me those letters, and I will take upon myself the responsibility of opening them. I must ask you for something more. Your daughter has a desk?"

"Yes."

"The key of which is in her room?"

"Yes."

"Bring down the desk and the key. Ask me no questions concerning my motives. I am in hopes that I shall be able to discover the true cause of your daughter's illness, and that will enable me to adopt towards her the only treatment by which it is possible she can recover."

Mrs. Rutland brought down the desk and the key. In the mother's presence Dr. Daincourt opened the desk. There were in it no letters from Edward Layton, but it contained two of what Mrs. Rutland called the mystery-letters which Eustace was in the habit of writing to his sister. These letters were in their envelopes, the post-marks upon which indicated their order of delivery.

Dr. Daincourt could make nothing of them, and Mrs. Rutland could not assist him. They were written upon small single sheets of note-paper, and appeared to be a perfect jumble of incomprehensible words; around the margin of these words were a number of figures and alphabetical letters as incomprehensible as themselves. Searching further in the desk, he made a startling discovery-three playing-cards, each of them being the Nine of Hearts. He asked Mrs. Rutland-who appeared to be almost as startled as he was himself by the discovery-whether she could give him any explanation of the cards, and she said that she could not. Then Dr. Daincourt said that he would take the playing-cards and the letters away with him.

"At the same time," he observed to Mrs. Rutland, "if it is any consolation to you, I undertake your daughter's case, and will do the best for her that lies within my skill and power."

He then went to see Miss Rutland in her bed, wrote out a prescription, gave certain instructions, and left the house.

"I have come to you," said Dr. Daincourt to me, "with these letters and the playing-cards; I will leave them with you. You said that the Nine of Hearts was a tangible link in the chain of Edward Layton's innocence. Is it not most mysterious and strange that three of these identical cards should be found in Miss Rutland's desk, and that one should be found in the pocket of Edward Layton's ulster which he wore on the 25th of March? Does not this circumstance, in conjunction with what you now know of Mabel Rutland's movements on that night, go far to prove that the lady whom Edward Layton met in Bloomsbury Square was none other than his old sweetheart? Heaven knows what conclusions are to be drawn from the coincidence. I will make no comments indeed, I almost tremble to think of the matter. Your legal mind will, perhaps, enable you to deduce something from Eustace's letter to his sister which may be of service to you and Edward Layton. To me they are simply incomprehensible. Before I visit Miss Rutland to-morrow I will call on you. You may have something to say to me. I sincerely trust I shall not be the means of bringing fresh trouble upon her and hers."

With that he wished me good-night, and I was left alone. I set myself sedulously to the task of discovering the key to these mysterious letters. Dr. Daincourt had not opened the two sealed letters which had arrived during Miss Rutland's illness, and I did not immediately do so. I felt a delicacy with respect to Edward Layton's letter to the young lady which he had given me in prison to post for him. I put them aside, and selecting the first of the two letters from Eustace Rutland which had been found in Mabel's desk (judging from the post-marks on their envelopes which of the two she had first received, for they bore no date), I devoted myself to a study of it. This is an exact copy of the singular communication, the size of the paper and the arrangement of the words, and of the figures and alphabetical letters, being faithfully followed:

It appeared to me that the first thing I had to consider was the relation, if any, that the alphabetical letters and figures bore to the words to which they formed a frame. I did not lose sight of the suggestion which immediately arose that this framework of figures and alphabetical letters might be placed there as a blind, although the evident care and pains which had been bestowed upon them was opposed to the suggestion. But then, again, the care thus exercised might be intended to more deeply mystify any strange person into whose hands the missive might fall. In order not to deface or mutilate the original, I made two exact copies of it for my own purposes, using as a kind of ruler one of the playing-cards which Dr. Daincourt had also found in Mabel Rutland's desk.

There were two words in the missive which soon attracted me. These were the third word, "diamond," in the fifth line, and the second word, "bracelet," in the sixth line. "Diamond bracelet." I did not doubt that this was the diamond bracelet which Mr. Rutland had presented to his daughter, and which she could not wear at the dinner-party because it was not at that time in her possession. Here, then, was a clew, but here I stopped. No ingenuity that I could bring to bear enabled me to connect other words with "diamond bracelet." I cudgelled my brains for at least half an hour. Then all at once it occurred to me (what in the excitement of my pursuit I may very well be excused for not having thought of before) that the playing-card, the Nine of Hearts, must bear some relation to the missive. I placed it upon the paper. Every word was hidden by the surface of the card; only the figures and the alphabetical letters were visible. "Doubtless," thought I, "if I cut out the pips of a Nine of Hearts, and place it upon the paper, I shall see certain words which will form the subject-matter upon which Eustace Rutland wrote to his sister." In that case the mystery was confined to nine words which, whatever their arrangement, would not be too difficult to intelligibly arrange. I would not mutilate Miss Rutland's playing-cards. I had packs of my own in the house, and from these I selected the Nine of Hearts and cut out the pips. It was not an easy matter, and in my eagerness I pretty effectually destroyed the surface of my table; but that did not trouble me. My interest was now thoroughly aroused, and grew keener when, placing the Nine of Hearts upon Eustace Rutland's mystery-letter, I found these words disclosed:

Face-stares-in-send-money-death me-instantly-the.

Here, then, in these nine words, was the communication which Eustace Rutland intended his sister to understand. I copied them on a separate sheet of paper, and arranged them in different ways until I arrived at their correct solution:

"Death stares me in the face send money instantly."

Congratulating myself upon my cleverness, I came to the conclusion that Eustace Rutland, being banished from his father's house, and not being able to obtain from his father the funds necessary for his disreputable career, was taking advantage of his sister's devoted affection for him, and was in the habit of calling upon her to supply him with money-which, no doubt, the young lady did to the best of her ability. Curiosity led me to the task of endeavoring to discover whether the alphabetical letters and the figures in the framework bore any relation to this communication. With only the nine words exposed through the pips of the Nine of Hearts which I had cut away, I saw that the first word, "death," was the sixth, and the second word, "stares," was the second, and the third word, "me," was the seventh. The sequence of the figures, therefore, was 6, 2, 7. Now, how were these three figures arranged in the framework? The figure 6 came after the letter M, the figure 2 came after the letter X, the figure 7 came after the letter H. Satisfied that I had found the key, I began to study how these figures from 1 to 9, representing the nine words in the communication and the Nine of Hearts in the playing-card, were arranged in the framework in such a manner as to lead an informed person at once to the solution. There must be a starting-point with which both Eustace and his sister Mabel were acquainted. What was this starting-point? One of the letters of The Alphabet. What letter? A. Starting, then, from A in the framework, I found that the figures from 1 to 9 ran thus: 6, 2, 7, 3, 9, 1, 4, 5, 8. Upon following, in this order, the course of The words which were exposed by the playing-card with the nine pips cut out, I came to the conclusion that I had correctly interpreted this first mystery-letter. I was very pleased, believing that the key I had discovered would lead me to a correct reading of Eustace's second and third letter to his sister.

So absorbed had I been in the unravelling of this mystery-letter, which occupied me a good hour and a half, that I had lost sight during the whole of that time of the two words which had at first enchained my attention-"diamond bracelet." "Death stares me in the face send money instantly" had appeared to me so reasonable a construction to be placed upon the communication of a man who must often have been in a desperate strait for want of funds, that the thought did not obtrude itself that these words might be merely a blind, and that, in the words that remained after the obliteration of this sentence, the correct solution was to be found. The longer I considered, the stronger became my doubts: with "diamond bracelet" staring me in the face, I felt that I had been following a Will-o'-the-wisp.

I had asked Dr. Daincourt the date of the dinner-party at which Mr. Rutland had detected the absence of the diamond bracelet on his daughter's arm. That date was the 8th of September. I examined the post-mark on the envelope of Eustace Rutland's first communication; it was the 26th of September. Mr. Rutland had laid upon his daughter the injunction that the diamond bracelet was to be shown to him before the end of the month. What month? September. She had produced it in time, and her brother's missive must have conveyed to her some information respecting the missing article of jewellery. The elation of spirits in which I had indulged took flight; I had not discovered the clew.

I set myself again to work. I felt now as a man feels who is hunting out a great mystery or a great criminal, and upon the success of whose endeavor his own safety depends. It seemed to me as if it were not so much Edward Layton's case as my own in which I was engaged. Never in the course of my career have I been so interested. I determined to set aside the words, "Death stares me in the face, send money instantly," and to search, in the words that remained, for the true meaning of Eustace Rutland's first communication. I copied them in the order in which they were arranged, and they ran as follows:

I counted the number of words; there were twenty-two. Now, was the true reading of the communication contained in the whole of these twenty-two words, or in only a portion of them, and if in only a portion, in what portion? In how many words? There lay the difficulty. The words "diamond bracelet" gave me a distinct satisfaction, but there were other words which I could not by any exercise of ingenuity connect them with, such as "birds" – "trees" – "river" – "gayly" – "cherry" – "singing." Undoubtedly the communication was a serious one, and these words seemed to be inimical to all ideas of seriousness. How to select? What to select? How to arrange the mystery? What was the notation? Ah, the notation! I had discovered the notation of the sentence I had set aside for the time. What if the same notation would lead me to the clew I was in search of? The arrangement of the figures from 1 to 9 was arbitrated by the first letter in the alphabet, A. I would try whether that arrangement would afford any satisfaction in the twenty-two words that remained. It would be an affectation of vanity on my part if I say that this idea occurred to me instantly. It did not do so. It was only after long and concentrated attention and consideration that it came to me, and then I set it immediately into practical operation. The first figure in the sentence I had discovered was 6. I counted six in the present arrangement of the words. It ended with the word "Got." Crossing out the word "Got," and placing it upon a separate sheet of paper, I proceeded. The second figure in the sentence I had discarded was 2. I counted two on from the word "Got," and arrived at "Your." I crossed out this word "Your" and proceeded. The third figure in the sentence I had discarded was 7. I counted seven words on from "Your," and came to "Diamond." I treated this word in a similar way to the last two, and continued the process. "Got your diamond." Now for "Bracelet." The next figure was 3. I counted on three words from "Diamond" and came to "Bracelet."

I was more excited than I can describe. There is scarcely anything in the world that fills a man with such exultation as success, and I was on the track of success: "Got your diamond bracelet." The following figure was 9. I counted on nine and came to the word "Back." "Got your diamond bracelet back." I continued. The next figure was 1. This was represented by the word "I." The next figure was 4, represented by the word "Won." The next figure was 5, represented by the word "Four." The next figure was 8, represented by the word "Hundred." I continued the same process and came back to the figure 6, represented by the word "On." The next figure was 2, represented by the word "Cherry."

I stopped here, for a reason, and I read the words I had crossed out and written on a separate sheet of paper. They ran thus:

"Got your diamond bracelet back I won four hundred on Cherry."

It was not without a distinct reason that I paused here. Mixing with the world, and moving in all shades and classes of society, I must confess-as I have no doubt other men would confess if they were thoroughly ingenuous-to certain weaknesses, one of which is to put a sovereign or two (seldom more) upon every classic horse-race, and upon every important handicap during the year. I nearly always lose-and serve me right. But it happened, strangely enough, that in this very month of September, during which Eustace Rutland sent his mysterious communications to his sister Mabel, one of the most celebrated handicaps of the year was won by a horse named Cherry, and that I had two sovereigns on that very horse. It started at long odds. I remembered that the bet I made was two sovereigns to a hundred, and that I had won what is often called a century upon the race. I was convinced that I had come to the legitimate end of Eustace Rutland's letter: "Got your diamond bracelet back. I won four hundred on Cherry."

This young reprobate, then, was indulging in horse-racing. His sister Mabel had written to him an account of the scene between herself and her father at the dinner-party. She had given him her diamond bracelet to extricate him from some scrape, and he had been luckily enabled, by his investment on the horse Cherry, to redeem it most likely from the pawnbroker-in time for his sister to exhibit it to her father. So as to be certain that I had got the proper clew, and had arrived at the gist of Eustace's communication, I wrote down the words that remained, which were,

"Birds-the-the-in-are the trees-runs-rivers-gayly-singing."

It was an easy task now for me to apply the same test to these remaining words, and I found that they formulated themselves in this fashion:

"The river runs gayly. The birds are singing in the trees."

I was curious to ascertain whether there were any special sign in the framework of Eustace Rutland's communication by which the person engaged with him in the mystery-letter could be guided. I counted the words in each sentence. The words in the first sentence were nine-the Nine of Hearts. The number of words in the second sentence was eleven. The number of words in the third sentence was eleven. After the alphabetical letter A in the framework I saw the figure 11, and I was satisfied, the last eleven words being meaningless, that it was the second sentence of eleven words, referring to the diamond bracelet and to his winning on Cherry, that Eustace wished his sister Mabel to understand. At the same time I was satisfied in my own mind that, without the Nine of Hearts to guide him, a man might spend days over the cryptograph without arriving at the correct solution.

I had taken no count of the passing time. Engrossed and absorbed in my occupation, I was surprised, when it had reached what I believed to be a successful termination, to find that it was nearly six o'clock in the morning.

IV

Dr. Daincourt called while I was dressing, after a few hours' sleep. I am not usually a dreamer, but I had a dream so strange that I awoke with the memory of it in my mind. It was of hands-ladies' hands-every finger of which was covered with rings. Holding the theory, as I have already explained, that the imagination during sleep is not creative, but invariably works upon a foundation of fact, I was endeavoring to trace the connection between my singular dream and some occurrence or circumstance within my knowledge, when Dr. Daincourt entered.