Jacob nodded his head in agreement. “Yes, I see what you mean.” He studied the sentence for a moment. “Have you tried rearranging the letters in each group? For example, ‘emil’ becomes ‘mile’ and ‘sher’ become ‘hers’.”
“Aye, but that is as far as it goes. None o’ the other word groupings make actual words.”
Jacob pursed his lips in thought. “What if you removed all of the spaces between the words and just used the letters? I know that it would produce a great many words, but there cannot be very many of them that uses all of the letters and fits together as a comprehensive sentence.”
Arthur looked at the page and rewrote all of the nonsensical words as a simple string of letters.
e m i l s h e r p o n e s e g t h e t a e t h o t a n g i l f r y e.
He then began writing down every possible word that he could think of that could be spelled from the letters. Taking up a quill, Jacob did the same. The two friends worked well into the night.
“I was wrong,” Jacob sighed. “This is not going to work. There are too many possible solutions. We have no way of knowing which combination of words or letters that the professor intended, but I have yet to find a sentence that uses them all.”
“Aye,” Arthur tossed down his quill, feeling equally frustrated, if not more so. Standing, he went to pour each of them a snifter of brandy, then sat back down to stare at his work. “There must be a better way tae do this.” He set aside his papers and returned to staring at the original message.“Emil sher pones eg theta et hot angil frye.”He looked back at his list of words and sentences, then back again to the original message. “We are missing something. Clearly the professor thought his daughter capable of translating this or he would not have written it as he did.”
“I agree. From what you have said, she appears to be a young lady of intelligence, but even the most brilliant of minds would be hard pressed to make sense of this in the way that we are going about it.”
“Then we must once again change our way o’ looking at it. I dinnae ken what it is as o’ yet, but we will discover its hidden message, nae matter how long it takes.”
“Perhaps a night’s rest would provide greater clarity of mind.”
“Aye, I think that ye are right, my friend.” Arthur rubbed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair, sighing. “Let us begin anew upon the morn.” Arthur arose and climbed the stairs to his bedchamber with a weary step. It had been a long day and the night was nearly over. He would be fortunate to get a few hours of sleep before morning dawned.I would rather nae return tae Henry’s daughter empty handed.
He thought about the day ahead and their plan to return to the professor’s office. He did not believe that they would find anything more than he already had during his time packing the professor’s belongings, but one never knew. Perhaps she would see something that he had missed. Undressing, he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes. His back, eyes, and head ached, causing him to groan as he laid upon the mattress.
“Och,” he grunted attempting to adjust his body into a more comfortable position. Once he had settled, his thoughts turned back to the problem at hand. He whirled the words and letters around in his mind, unable to resist the need to solve the riddle. Groaning, he attempted to clear his mind so that he might sleep, but it would not clear. Instead, the image of Cleo Wallace floated through his mind like a beautiful specter.
“Cleo Wallace,” he whispered into the night.
Just the mere thought of her caused his body to come alive; Dustshore had been right about her being a beauty of the rarest quality. Arthur did not like the way that Dustshore had looked at Cleo even though he himself had been guilty of the same. He could not help himself. If she was anywhere near him, he could not keep from watching her, from admiring her. It had been the reason why he had left Henry’s memorial early. He had not wanted her to see it, to disrespect Henry’s memory in such a way.
Sleep would not come easy. She remained in his thoughts as he drifted off to sleep, entering his dreams. Her glittering dark eyes and shining ebony hair floated toward him, her skin offset by a dress of creamy lace. In his dreams, she stepped into his arms and he kissed her rose petal lips with a tender passion that rivaled anything that he had ever felt before.
The rush of sensations from his dream world had followed him into wakefulness and his heart raced with the intensity of it. Rising from the bed, he walked over to the washstand in the corner and splashed water on his face. Cleo Wallace had had an unexpected effect on him, and it was interfering with his purer intentions to help her without causing further entanglements.
Entanglements…the word triggered a thought about the professor’s message, so he threw his clothes back on and descended the stairs to the library.
Sitting down at the desk, Arthur picked up the piece of paper and stared for a moment at the order of the letters. “It is an anagram! O’ course!” Grabbing a quill, Arthur began to untangle the letters.“Her smile opens the gate to the Fairy Glen.”Arthur puzzled over the sentence for a moment. “Well that makes nae more sense than anything’ else that I have scribbled down. Mayhap the lass will ken its meaning.”
Excited that he might have finally found something of note, Arthur ran back up the stairs, quickly bathed and dressed for the day, then left the house. He knew that he was a bit earlier than would be usual to make such calls, but he could not wait a moment longer to share with her what he had discovered.
When Arthur arrived at the house, to his surprise, Cleo met him at the door with her outerwear already on. She looked as if she had been awake for a while and had been waiting for him. “My Lord,” she dropped a quick curtsy.
“Miss Wallace,” he greeted with a smile. “I believe that I asked ye tae call me Arthur. If we are going’ tae be working’ together tae find yer faither’s murderer, then it would be best I think tae simplify things a bit between us.”
“Yes, you did ask it of me, and I agree that simplicity would be best,” she smiled, blushing slightly. “If I am to call you by your given name, then you must call me Cleo.”
Arthur’s heart beat a bit faster at her smile. “It is my pleasure, Cleo.”
They stood smiling at each other awkwardly for a moment, before Mrs. McGrath entered the hall, disrupting the unspoken emotions that were passing between them. “My Lord,” Mrs. McGrath greeted as she donned her bonnet and cloak.
“Mrs. McGrath,” Arthur inclined his head in respect of the older woman.
“I have asked Mrs. McGrath to accompany us to my father’s office for the sake of propriety. Aunt Caroline has returned to her own home to pack her belongings and arrange with her solicitor to lease her house during her absence. She will not be returning for a day or so. It will give us a bit of time to work on the problem at hand with minimal complications.”
“O’ course. I thank ye, Mrs. McGrath, for takin’ the time out o’ yer day tae do this for us.”
“Nae at all, My Lord. I would do anything for my dear Cleo and her faither’s memory.”
