CHAPTER II. THE PIGEON'S HOME.
There was nothing to show whence the message came or whither it was being sent. Only these eighteen words, each composed of an equal number of letters. Could they be made into sense without the key? It was not very likely, at least unless it was by some very clever decipherer. And yet the cryptogram could not be indecipherable.
The characters told him nothing, and Sarcany, who was at first much disappointed, stood perplexed. Did the letter contain any important news, and, above all, was it of a compromising nature? Evidently these precautions had been taken to prevent its being read if it fell into other hands than those for whom it was intended. To make use of neither the post nor the telegraph, but the extraordinary means of the carrier-pigeon, showed that it must be some curious affair that it was desired to keep quite secret.
“Perhaps,” said Sarcany, “there lies in these lines a mystery that will make our fortune.”
“And then,” answered Zirone, “this pigeon will represent the luck we have been running after all morning. And I was going to strangle it! After all it is important to keep the message, and we can cook the messenger.”
“Not so fast, Zirone,” interrupted Sarcany, who again saved the bird’s life. “Perhaps the pigeon may tell us whither it was bound, providing, of course, that the person who ought to have the message, lives in Trieste.”
“And then? That will not tell you how to read the message, Sarcany.”
“No, Zirone.”
“Nor to know where it came from.”
“Exactly. But of two correspondents I shall know one, and that may tell me how I am to find the other. So, instead of killing this bird, we will feed it and recruit its strength and help it to reach its destination.”
“With the letter?” asked Zirone.
“With the letter—of which I am just going to make an exact copy; and that I shall keep until the time comes to use it.”
And Sarcany took a note-book from his pocket, and in pencil he made a careful fac-simile of the message. Knowing that in most cryptograms it was important not to alter in the least the form and arrangement, he took great care to keep the words in exactly the same order and position and at the same distances as in the document. Then he put the fac-simile in his pocket, the message in its case, and the case in its place under the pigeon’s wing.
Zirone looked on. He did not share the hopes of fortune founded on this incident.
“And now?” he asked.
“Now,” answered Sarcany, “do what you can for the messenger.”
The pigeon was more exhausted by hunger than fatigue. Its wings were intact, without strain or breakage, and showed that his temporary weakness was due neither to a shot from a sportsman nor a stone from a street boy. It was hungry—it was thirsty; that was all.
Zirone looked around and found on the ground a few grains of corn which the bird ate greedily. Then he quenched its thirst with a few drops of water which the last shower had left in a piece of ancient pottery. So well did he do his work that in half an hour the pigeon was refreshed and restored and quite able to resume its interrupted journey.
“If it is going far,” said Sarcany, “if its destination is beyond Trieste, it does not matter to us if it falls on the way, for we shall have lost sight of it, and it will be impossible for us to follow it. But if it is going to one of the houses in Trieste, its strength is sufficient to take it there, as it will only have to fly for a couple of minutes or so.”
“Right you are,” replied the Sicilian; “but how are we to see where it drops, even if it is in Trieste?”
“We can manage that, I think,” answered Sarcany And this is what they did.
The cathedral consists of two old Roman churches, one dedicated to the Virgin, one to St. Just, the patron saint of Trieste, and it is flanked by a very high tower which rises from the angle of the front pierced with a large rose window, beneath which is the chief door. This tower commands a view over the plateau of Karst Hill and over the whole city, which lies spread as on a map below. From this lofty stand-point they could see down on the roofs of all the houses, even on to those clustering on the earlier slopes of the hill away to the shore of the gulf, It was therefore not impossible to follow the pigeon in its flight and recognize the house on which it found refuge, provided it was not bound for some other city of the Illyrian peninsula.
The attempt might succeed. It was at least worth trying. They only had to set the bird at liberty.
Sarcany and Zirone left the old cemetery, crossed the open space by the cathedral and walked toward the tower. One of the ogival doors—the one under the dripstone beneath St. Just’s niche was open. They entered and began to ascend the stairs which led to the roof.
It took them two or three minutes to reach the top, They stood just underneath the roof, and there was no balcony. But there were two windows opening out on each side of the tower, and giving a view to each point of the double horizon of hills and sea.
Sarcany and Zirone posted themselves at the windows which looked out over Trieste toward the north-west.
The clock in the old sixteenth-century castle on the top of the Karst behind the cathedral struck four. It was still broad daylight. The air was clear and the sun shone brightly on the waters of the Adriatic, and most of the houses received the light with their fronts facing the tower. Thus far circumstances were favorable.
Sarcany took the pigeon in his hands, he stroked it, spoke to it, gave it a, last caress, and threw it free. The bird flapped its wings, but at first it dropped so quickly that it looked as though it was going to finish its career of aerial messenger by a cruel fall.
The excitable Sicilian could not restrain a cry of disappointment.
“No! It rises!” said Sarcany.
And the pigeon had found its equilibrium in the denser lower air; and then making a sudden curve it flew off toward the north-west.
Sarcany and Zirone followed it with their eyes.
In the flight of the bird there was no hesitation, it went straight to its home which it would have reached an hour before had it not been for its compulsory halt among the trees of the old grave-yard.
Sarcany and his companion watched it with the most anxious attention. They asked themselves if it was going beyond the town—and then all their scheming would come to naught.
It did nothing of the sort.
“I see it! I see it all the time!” said Zirone, whose sight was of the keenest.
“What you have to look for,” said Sarcany, “is where it stops, so as to fix the exact spot.”
A few minutes after its departure the pigeon settled on a house with one tall gable rising above the rest in the midst of a clump of trees in that part of the town near the hospital and public garden. Then it disappeared into a dormer window opening on the mansard, which was surmounted by a weather vane of wrought iron that ought to have been the work of Quentin Matsys—if Trieste had been in Flanders.
The general direction being ascertained, it would not be very difficult to find the weather vane and gable and window, and, in short, the house inhabited by the person for whom the cryptogram was intended.
Sarcany and Zirone immediately made their way down the tower and down the hill and along the roads leading to the Piazza della Legna. There they had to lay their course so as to reach the group of houses forming the eastern quarter of the city.
When they reached the junction of two main roads—the Corsa Stadion leading to the public garden, and the Acquedotto, a fine avenue of trees, leading to the large brewery of Boschetto—the adventurers were in some doubt as to the true direction. Should they take the right or the left? Instinctively they turned to the right, intending to examine one after the other every house along the avenue above which they had noted the vane among the trees.
They went along in this manner, inspecting in their turn every gable and roof along the Acquedotto, but they found nothing like the one they sought. At last they reached the end.
“There it is!” exclaimed Zirone.
And there was the weather vane, swinging slowly on its iron spindle above a dormer window, around which were several pigeons.
There was no mistake. It was the identical house to which the pigeon had flown.
The house was of modest exterior, and formed one of the block at the beginning of the Acquedotto.
Sarcany made inquiries at the neighboring shops, and learned all he wished to know.
The house for many years had belonged to, and been inhabited by, Count Ladislas Zathmar.
“Who is this Count Zathmar?” asked Zirone, to whom the name meant nothing.
“He is the Count Zathmar!” answered Sarcany.
“But perhaps if we were to ask him—”
“Later on, Zirone; there’s no hurry! Take it coolly, and now to our hotel!”
“Yes, it is dinner-time for those who have got something to dine on!” said Zirone, bitterly.
“If we do not dine to-day, it is possible that we shall dine to-morrow,” answered Sarcany.
“With whom?”
“Who knows? Perhaps with Count Zathmar!”
They walked along quietly—why should they hurry?—and soon reached their modest hotel, still much too rich for them, seeing they could not pay their bill. What a surprise was in store for them! A letter had arrived, addressed to Sarcany.
The letter contained a note for 200 florins and these words—nothing more:
“Inclosed is the last money you will get from me. It is enough to pay your passage to Sicily. Go, and let me hear no more of you.
“Silas Toronthal.”
“Capital!” exclaimed Zirone: “the banker thinks better of it just in time. Assuredly we need never despair of those financial folks!”
“That is what I say,” said Sarcany.
“And the coin will do for us to leave Trieste.”
“No! we’ll stop here!”
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