Harry came up to me from the depths of the engine room, his face a little pallid, but his eyes a clearer, healthier blue than when I had taken him from England and given him that second chance which humanity owes to every lad who sins. He told me frankly that there had been a password in use both in England and France.
“We used to have to write the letter ‘A’ five times running from the bottom, left-hand, to the top right-hand of a slip of paper, sir. That was when we wanted to get into any of our houses in London or Paris or Brussels. If we met a friend in the streets, it was the Romany tongue we spoke—Kushto bokh or mero pal, or something of that sort—and when we had said it, one or other asked how old Five A’s was doing. Once I remember the password was ‘Fordibras.’ That was at Blois when we robbed the house of the Count of Sens, who had just bought some of the Empress’s emeralds. I never remember it being used anywhere else but there.”
I smiled, for the Jew’s perspicuity was as evident here as it had been in England and upon the island. The weaker man, Hubert Fordibras, he who by subtle cleverness and canting self-deception tried to believe himself innocent of these crimes, he would be the first prize of the police when detection came. This was obvious—as obvious as the lad’s inability to help me.
“It will not be ‘Fordibras’ upon the high seas, nor will a whole alphabet of ‘A’s’ help us, Harry,” said I, as kindly as I could. “But that’s not your fault, my lad. Had you gone aboard with them, it would have been a different story. There is some password, I am sure, and it is used only for the ships. As it is, I must go wanting it—a hundred thousand pities, if pity is ever any use to anybody.”
“Then you never met one of their sailors, Doctor Fabos?”
“No, I never—Good God! what am I saying? Never met one of their sailors? Harry, what made you ask me that question?”
“You think of everything, sir. I made sure you would have been aboard one of their ships.”
“I have not been aboard one of their ships, but—well, we shall see. Who knows, Harry, but that you were to be the destiny of this? Go up to Captain Larry and tell him that I have news for him and for Mr. Benson. It may not be Europe after all.”
He went away as quietly as he had come and left me to the instruments. That which was in my mind I would share with none. Say that it was an idea which might win or lose all by a word and you will come near to its discovery. My purpose was to send by wireless telegraphy such a message to the Diamond Ship as would lead us to the discovery both of her present situation and her ultimate destination. To do this, I needed a password to the confidence of her commander. That password I believed that I possessed. It had been given to me years gone when a dead sailor had been washed ashore upon Palling beach, and one of the most famous diamonds in Europe had been found upon his body. Judge of my excitement when I sat down to put this idea to the proof. There before me was the instrument still ticking a message I could not decipher. I sat down before our own keyboard and deliberately rapped out the words, “Captain Three Fingers.” Again and again I sent the words speeding across the lonely seas. “Captain Three Fingers”—that, and nothing more. As a spirit winging a human thought it went, to the unknown, over the silent waters, a tremor of the air, a voice of doom, an awful, mysterious power of words pregnant of discovery or wholly impotent in the mocking ether.
An hour passed, and found me still alone. There had been no response to my message, no further agitation of the receiver whose message baffled me. Faithful to my wish, neither Larry nor McShanus had interrupted me. I could hear as a distant sound the murmur of gentle seas beating upon our bows. The purr of our engines was as that of a living, sentient entity, awake to the intervals of action. My fingers had grown weary of repeating those idle words. I sat back in my chair in a bitterness of spirit foreign to me, and reflected upon the fatuity of impulse and the mockery of all human deduction. If there were a password to the deck of the Diamond Ship, I lacked it. My hasty conclusions had met with their just fate. The men aboard the distant vessel had taken alarm and signalled to me no more. What would it profit them to continue this vain employment? Answer, that obstinacy prompted me. Doggedly, persistently, reason would repeat that I was right. The words were the only words. I could imagine no others. In mockery almost I changed my key, and to prove myself right, a hundred times I tapped out the word “Fordibras” upon the ready instrument. Once, twice, thrice—thus it went speeding into the aerial wastes, losing itself under the blue heavens, a delusion upon a delusion, the mocking jest of a man who had no resource but jest. And how are wonder and the sport of chance to be expressed when I say that the word was answered, immediately, clearly, beyond all question—in a message from the Diamond Ship and from those who commanded her.
I sat as one transfixed, my hands trembling with excitement, my ears intent as though open to the story of a miracle. Plain as the talk of a friend at my side came that memorable answer, “How is old Five A’s doing?” Leaping to the lad Harry’s story, I answered them in the Romany tongue—the first, perhaps, that any student of crime should begin to learn. And now it became no longer a question of the word. Their anxiety mastered them. They were telling me their secrets across the waste—those secrets I would have paid half my fortune to learn.
“We lie at 90° 15′ by 35° 15′ 15″. Where are you?”
I flashed back a false reply, two degrees northward of our true situation. Quick as the instrument would transmit the words, I added this intelligence:
“Every port watched. Fabos in Paris; white ensign off St. Michael’s; station safe; wait coming.”
Their reply was the impatient question:
“Are you Ross or Sycamore?”
I took it to mean that there were two ships for which they waited, and that the captains thereof were named respectively Ross and Sycamore. At a hazard, I chose the first name, and waited for them to go on. Never in all this world did the flashing voice of electricity mean so much to mortal man.
“We are short of coal and water,” the tidings went. “Hurry, for God’s sake, or we are driven into Rio.”
To this, my hands hot with the fever of discovery, I rejoined:
“Rio known—keep the seas; we reach you to-morrow.”
And then for a long while there was silence. I imagined that unknown crew debating my words as though they had been a message of their salvation. A relief ship was coming out to them. They were saved from the perils of the shore and that more terrible peril of thirst. When the machine next ticked out its unconscious confession, it was to bid me hasten, for God’s sake.
“I am Valentine Imroth. What has kept you ashore?”
“The police and Fabos.”
“Then Fordibras is a traitor!”
“You have his daughter with you?”
“Is that known in Europe?”
“It is suspected.”
“By the mouth of Fabos. He has received my message. Has Sycamore sailed?”
“He is two days behind me.”
“What coal has he aboard?”
I