Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 28, 2024
It is obvious that it was most unlikely that a number such as 76223 was the key of the document, and it produced no other result than to bring to the lips of Jarriquez such a vigorous ejaculation that Bobo disappeared like a shot! THE MAGISTRATE, however, was not the only one who passed his time unprofitably.
After he had got so far, Judge Jarriquez, with his head nearly splitting, arose and paced his office, went for fresh air to the window, and gave utterance to a growl, at the noise of which a flock of hummingbirds, murmuring among the foliage of a mimosa tree, betook themselves to flight. Then he returned to the document. He picked it up and turned it over and over.
The bell rang furiously, and the magistrate strode up to the door, which he opened. "Bobo!" he shouted. A moment or two elapsed. Bobo was a freed negro, who was the privileged servant of Jarriquez. He did not appear; it was evident that Bobo was afraid to come into his master's room. Another ring at the bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, pretended to be deaf on this occasion.
"Not only on that subject," answered Dacosta, "but on the subject of all the circumstances of my life which I have brought to your knowledge, and which are none of them open to question." "Eh! Joam Dacosta," quickly replied Judge Jarriquez. "You protest your innocence; but all prisoners do as much! After all, you only offer moral presumptions. Have you any material proof?"
A few more presumptions, a half-certainty that the adventurer had invented nothing, certain circumstances tending to prove that the secret of the matter was contained in the document and that was all that the gallant fellow brought back from his visit to the chief of the gang of which Torres had been a member. Nevertheless, little as it was, he was in all haste to relate it to Judge Jarriquez.
Was it impudent folly on the part of the doomed man of Tijuco, who was tired of his life, or was it the impulse of a conscience which would at all risks have wrong set right? The problem was a strange one, it must be acknowledged. On the morrow of Joam Dacosta's arrest, Judge Jarriquez made his way to the prison in God-the-Son Street, where the convict had been placed.
And now he had done. "Let us read!" he exclaimed. And he read. Good heavens! what cacophony! The lines he had formed with the letters of his alphabet had no more sense in them that those of the document! It was another series of letters, and that was all. They formed no word; they had no value. In short, they were just as hieroglyphic. "Confound the thing!" exclaimed Judge Jarriquez.
"And why," he continued, "should Brazilian justice pursue you?" "Because I was sentenced to death in 1826 in the diamond affair at Tijuco." "You confess then that you are Joam Dacosta?" "I am Joam Dacosta." All this was said with great calmness, and as simply as possible. The little eyes of Judge Jarriquez, hidden by their lids, seemed to say: "Never came across anything like this before."
Judge Jarriquez took off his spectacles and wiped the glasses; then he put them back again and bent over the table. His special alphabet was in one hand, the cryptogram in the other. He commenced to write under the first line of the paragraph the true letters, which, according to him, ought to correspond exactly with each of the cryptographic letters.
THE WARRANT against Joam Dacosta, alias Joam Garral, had been issued by the assistant of Judge Ribeiro, who filled the position of the magistrate in the province of Amazones, until the nomination of the successor of the late justice. This assistant bore the name of Vicente Jarriquez.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking