respect reckon on chance, was it
impossible to proceed by reasoning? Decidedly not! And so it was "to
reason till he became unreasoning" that Judge Jarriquez gave himself up
after vainly seeking repose in a few hours of sleep. He who ventured
in upon him at this moment, after braving the formal defenses which
protected his solitude, would have found him, as on the day before,
in his study, before his desk, with the document under his eyes, the
thousands of letters of which seemed all jumbled together and flying
about his head.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "why did not the scoundrel who wrote this separate
the words in this paragraph? We might--we will try--but no! However, if
there is anything here about the murder and the robbery, two or three
words there must be in it--'arrayal,' 'diamond,' 'Tijuco,' 'Dacosta,'
and others; and in putting down their cryptological equivalents
the number could be arrived at. But there is nothing--not a single
break!--not one word by itself! One word of two hundred and seventy-six
letters! I hope the wretch may be blessed two hundred and seventy-six
times for complicating his system in this way! He ought to be hanged two
hundred and seventy-six times!"

And a violent thump with his fist on the document emphasized this
charitable wish.

"But," continued the magistrate, "if I cannot find one of the words in
the body of the document, I might at least try my hand at the beginning
and end of each paragraph. There may be a chance there that I ought not
to miss."

And impressed with this idea Judge Jarriquez successively tried if the
letters which commenced or finished the different paragraphs could be
made to correspond with those which formed the most important word,
which was sure to be found somewhre, that of _Dacosta_.

He could do nothing of the kind.

In fact, to take only the last paragraph with which he began, the
formula was:

P = D h = a
y = c f = o
s = s l = t
y = a

Now, at the very first letter Jarriquez was stopped in his calculations,
for the difference in alphabetical position between the _d_ and the
_p_ gave him not one cipher, but two, namely, 12, and in this kind of
cryptograph only one letter can take the place of another.

It was the same for the seven last letters of the paragraph, _p s u