He set about writing the master word over and over in a table.
He then marked the horizontal lines on the Vigenère Square corresponding to the master word. Taking the first letter of the ciphertext, E, he picked out the letter E along the horizontal ‘M’ line in the Vigenère Square. From this point he read the corresponding letter at the top line of the square and found the letter S.
He worked through the ciphertext until he had deciphered the whole line.
‘Six churches hold the key . . .’
He continued with the second line:
XSJWOFVLPSGGGGJAZ
‘The secret of Poussin . . .’
And the third line:
MQTGYDCAXSXSDRZWZRLVQAFFPSDAPW
‘Completes the demon guardian of midday . . .’
He soon had the entire six lines deciphered in French:
La clef tenu pars six eglises
Le secret de Poussin
Accompli le gardien du démon de midi
Aucune tentation pour un berger
Dans l’église de juste et le bezu –
Derrière le voile de la Déesse cherchez
Six churches hold the key
The secret of Poussin
Completes the demon guardian of midday
No temptation for one shepherd
In the church of Just et le Bézu
Search beneath the veil of the Goddess
Rahn’s face broke out in a wide smile of disbelief. ‘We’ve done it!’ he said. ‘Look, the secret is hidden in six churches, so that no one priest would be tempted. Now I know why Cros and Saunière both had reproductions of Poussin’s painting Les Bergers d’Arcardie. From memory there’s a tomb and some shepherds and the goddess Venus. And there’s a famous inscription, but I can’t remember what it is.’
‘Do you think Poussin belonged to one of the brotherhoods?’ La Dame asked, blowing smoke rings in the already choked air of the Peugeot.
Rahn considered it. ‘I don’t know. Let’s see what we know now: it looks like there are six churches and each one must have one part of the secret, whatever it is, and when one brings all the parts together one can complete the demon of midday, that is, one can find the treasure of the Cathars that completes Le Serpent Rouge. At least, this is my guess! So, the first church is Just-et-le-Bézu, where’s that?’
‘Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu . . . I know where that is,’ said Eva.
‘Well let us go then, we’re losing light!’ Rahn was single-minded and absorbed.
But La Dame must have seen something, because he said, ‘Hold on!’
What happened next was so sudden that Rahn didn’t so much think as act by instinct. He slipped the parchment and the note with his calculations into his left shoe a moment before La Dame’s door was flung open and he was pulled savagely out of the car. In a blink Rahn himself was being dragged out and thrown onto the icy ground next to his friend.
41
Three’s Company and Five’s a Crowd
‘You look frightened out of your wits what’s the matter?’
‘A great misfortune I fear.’
Emile Gaboriau, The Clique of Gold
Rahn was sitting beside La Dame, who was nursing a broken lip. He looked up and saw a man standing over them, pointing a gun in their direction. Meanwhile, a second man was holding Eva, a gun to her temple.
She struggled. ‘Let go of me, you brute!’
But the man’s oily face was a mask. Obviously he wasn’t the principal of the two because the other man was the first to speak. He was impeccably dressed in a double-breasted suit, and from this angle Rahn could see the sky reflected in his shoes.
‘You’re a difficult man to catch, Monsieur Rahn,’ he said, a wry smile wrinkling his smooth face.
‘You’re Russians,’ Rahn said, recognising the accent.
The grin widened. ‘Serbians, actually.’
‘Who are you?’ Rahn was indignant.
The man leaning over Rahn drew his face into a concerned frown and shook his head. ‘We are friends . . . and we are concerned for Deodat, just as you are.’
Trust no one!
‘What do you know about Deodat?’ Rahn said.
The man raised a hand to stop him. ‘We were there at the house, but we didn’t see you. Perhaps you were hiding?’
‘Hiding! I don’t like what you’re suggesting! I was bashed unconscious and left in the trunk of the Tourster – I’m lucky to be alive.’
There was a momentary illumination and the man whistled. ‘So, that’s what that man was doing in the barn? He was going to set fire to it with you in it! You would have suffered the fate of your heroes, a purifying death in the flames . . .’ He smiled a crooked smile. ‘Had it not been for your friend Dragomir.’
Dragomir nodded his head in appreciation of his superior’s acknowledgement.