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Updated: May 17, 2025
Monsieur Dufrenne, the proprietor, expects you, and will join you at once. Proceed without delay to London and report to Monsieur de Grissac, the French Ambassador. He has lost an ivory snuff box, which you must recover as quickly as possible. You will find money enclosed herewith. Monsieur Dufrenne you can trust in all things. God be with you. Lefevre."
This, of course, could be done indefinitely, although half a dozen changes would be sufficient to insure a cipher that would absolutely defy solution. Where, however, was the key? That, after all, was the important matter; without it, the snuff box would be as useless to Monsieur de Grissac as it would be to his enemies themselves.
Presently he rose and placed the candle on the table beside the pin. "This was what your servant was killed with, Monsieur de Grissac," he said, as he indicated the scarf pin with his finger. "It was thrust violently into the spine, at the base of the brain. Only a tiny blood spot remains to tell the tale. This fellow Seltz is a shrewd customer."
No there is another reason although what it is " He paused as his eyes lit upon a thin shining object on the floor beside the table. "Oh, this may tell us something." He picked up the thing, which the others saw at once to be a large scarf pin, and examined it carefully. "Did this belong to your servant, Monsieur de Grissac," he asked, holding the pin up to the light. "Yes."
"Snuff, monsieur. It was quite half-full when it came to me, last April. Monsieur de Grissac was in Paris at the time. The spring which actuates the top had become broken the box is very old, monsieur and I was required to repair it. That is all I know." "And you close your shop, and leave Paris without a word, just for a thing like that?"
"In your repairs upon this snuff box, to which so great a value is apparently attached, did you observe anything about it of a peculiar nature anything to make its loss a matter of such grave importance?" "Nothing, monsieur. It is a small, round ivory box, with a carved top, quite plain and of little value " "But the contents? What, perhaps, did Monsieur de Grissac carry within it?"
"At least we can identify the murderer by the finger print upon the seal," De Grissac remarked, eagerly. "I'm afraid not. This man Seltz cannot be quite a fool. Look!" He held up the forefinger of the dead man's right hand, upon which was a dull red burn, with bits of the red sealing wax about the nail. "He wasn't taking any chances."
De Grissac think of it they will puzzle their brains over that cipher for weeks and weeks and they will discover nothing nothing! Is it not splendid!" He grasped the Ambassador's hand and embraced him with ardor. "Magnificent! Superb!" The Ambassador was no less overjoyed. "Young man," he said, "we owe you the deepest apologies. No one could have done better.
I regret that I did not inform you at the time I placed the case in your hands, but the matter is one which, at all costs, I wished to have remain a secret. Now it makes little difference. Monsieur de Grissac has for many months been carrying on with the Foreign Office a correspondence regarding the relations of France and England in the matter of Morocco.
This correspondence, Monsieur de Grissac, unwilling to trust to the ordinary cipher in use for such purposes, carried on in a code of his own; one which he regarded as absolutely proof against all attempts at solution.
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