“I daresay my face looked as bewildered as yours did just nowwhen first I read this message. Then I re-read it very carefully. Itwas evidently as I had thought, and some secret meaning must lieburied in this strange combination of words. Or could it be thatthere was a prearranged significance to such phrases as ‘fly-paper’
and ‘hen-pheasant’? Such a meaning would be arbitrary and couldnot be deduced in any way. And yet I was loath to believe thatthis was the case, and the presence of the word Hudson seemedto show that the subject of the message was as I had guessed,and that it was from Beddoes rather than the sailor. I tried itbackwards, but the combination ‘life pheasant’s hen’ was notencouraging. Then I tried alternate words, but neither ‘the of for’
nor ‘supply game London’ promised to throw any light upon it.
“And then in an instant the key of the riddle was in my hands,and I saw that every third word, beginning with the first, wouldgive a message which might well drive old Trevor to despair.
“It was short and terse, the warning, as I now read it to mycompanion:
“ ‘The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life.’
“Victor Trevor sank his face into his shaking hands. ‘It must bethat, I suppose,’ said he. “This is worse than death, for it meansdisgrace as well. But what is the meaning of these “head-keepers”
and “hen-pheasants"?’
“ ‘It means nothing to the message, but it might mean a good dealto us if we had no other means of discovering the sender. You seethat he has begun by writing “The...game...is,” and so on. Afterwardshe had, to fulfill the prearranged cipher, to fill in any two words ineach space. He would naturally use the first words which came tohis mind, and if there were so many which referred to sport amongthem, you may be tolerably sure that he is either an ardent shot orinterested in breeding. Do you know anything of this Beddoes?’
“ ‘Why, now that you mention it,’ said he, ‘I remember that mypoor father used to have an invitation from him to shoot over hispreserves every autumn.’
“ ‘Then it is undoubtedly from him that the note comes,’ saidI. ‘It only remains for us to find out what this secret was whichthe sailor Hudson seems to have held over the heads of these twowealthy and respected men.’
“ ‘Alas, Holmes, I fear that it is one of sin and shame!’ cried myfriend. ‘But from you I shall have no secrets. Here is the statementwhich was drawn up by my father when he knew that the dangerfrom Hudson had become imminent. I found it in the Japanesecabinet, as he told the doctor. Take it and read it to me, for I haveneither the strength nor the courage to do it myself.’
“These are the very papers, Watson, which he handed to me,and I will read them to you, as I read them in the old studythat night to him. They are endorsed outside, as you see, ‘Someparticulars of the voyage of the bark Gloria Scott, from her leavingFalmouth on the 8th October, 1855, to her destruction in N. Lat.
15 20’, W. Long. 25 14’ on Nov. 6th.’ It is in the form of a letter, andruns in this way.
“ ‘My dear, dear son, now that approaching disgrace begins todarken the closing years of my life, I can write with all truth andhonesty that it is not the terror of the law, it is not the loss of myposition in the county, nor is it my fall in the eyes of all who haveknown me, which cuts me to the heart; but it is the thought thatyou should come to blush for me—you who love me and whohave seldom, I hope, had reason to do other than respect me. Butif the blow falls which is forever hanging over me, then I shouldwish you to read this, that you may know straight from me howfar I have been to blame. On the other hand, if all should go well(which may kind God Almighty grant!), then, if by any chance thispaper should be still undestroyed and should fall into your hands,I conjure you, by all you hold sacred, by the memory of your dearmother, and by the love which had been between us, to hurl it intothe fire and to never give one thought to it again.
“ ‘If then your eye goes on to read this line, I know that I shallalready have been exposed and dragged from my home, or, as ismore likely, for you know that my heart is weak, by lying withmy tongue sealed forever in death. In either case the time forsuppression is past, and every word which I tell you is the nakedtruth, and this I swear as I hope for mercy.
“ ‘My name, dear lad, is not Trevor. I was James Armitage in myyounger days, and you can understand now the shock that it wasto me a few weeks ago when your college friend addressed me inwords which seemed to imply that he had surprised my secret. AsArmitage it was that I entered a London banking-house, and asArmitage I was convicted of breaking my country’s laws, and wassentenced to transportation. Do not think very harshly of me,laddie. It was a debt of honor, so called, which I had to pay, and Iused money which was not my own to do it, in the certainty thatI could replace it before there could be any possibility of its beingmissed. But the most dreadful ill-luck pursued me. The moneywhich I had reckoned upon never came to hand, and a prematureexamination of accounts exposed my deficit. The case mighthave been dealt leniently with, but the laws were more harshlyadministered thirty years ago than now, and on my twenty-thirdbirthday I found myself chained as a felon with thirty-seven otherconvicts in the ’tween-decks of the bark Gloria Scott, bound forAustralia.
“ ‘It was the year ’55, when the Crimean War was at its height,and the old convict ships had been largely used as transports inthe Black Sea. The government was compelled, therefore, to usesmaller and less suitable vessels for sending out their prisoners.