The Mystery of the Marbles: An Exposition

Excerpt from The Mystery of the Marbles: An Exposition "And these are your wonderful rubbings? You know that I saw Shakespeare's Tomb when I was abroad last summer and I recognize these copies of the inscriptions, but why do you call them rubbings?" "Because these facsimiles were made by rubbing a preparation of plumbago upon the sheets of paper while they lay upon the stones: just as children make paper money from coins by rubbing the paper on top of the coin with a lead-pencil. It insures true reproductions of all the characters upon the original. Did you read the inscriptions when you saw them?" "What a curious question. Of course. I read them. Do you imagine I could pass by without?" "If you really read them, my dear young lady, you are. probably, the only one who ever did, in nearly three hundred years." "Pardon my stupidity, but I don't catch the gist of your jest, my dear sir." "I am not jesting. The inscriptions were designed so as not to be read - without a key. They are great hypocrits: they profess to be what they are not." "Do not the words mean what they say?" "The words; yes. The sentences; not at all. They are the loveliest liars in Modern Latin and mixed English that ever led a learned man astray." "Really, I fancy we could see these rubbings of yours blush for very shame, if their faces were not so black. Don't you?" "No more than the originals, my dear, which never have been known to change expression since they were horn. They have a most generous heart, but a conscience as hard as Stone. For deception is their business, or rather a Fine Art: as you shall see. If you will honor me by taking this seat beside me at the table. I will show you my promised wonder - the Mystery of the Marbles. "For convenience sake we will spread out the sheets of cipher writings, for such they are, on the table, and will place the one marked Stone at the top; the one marked Monument just below it, and under these, where we can see it at a glance, this sheet of Directions and Rules. We must utterly ignore the pretences and bold declarations of these writings and use them as did their Author; simply as storehouses full of words to carry a cipher message. This we will unfold and develope by a method very like solving a jig-saw puzzle, in which the irregular little blocks fit together so beautifully and reproduce the form of the original picture, when properly matched. In our puzzle we are to use words instead of wooden blocks and. if we can pick them out of our storehouses and match them correctly, we shall have the original form of the secret message, just as it was before the words were separated and all jumbled up. as they arc in the inscriptions before us." "Who do you suppose did such a crazy thing and why did he do it?" "We will find out why it was clone as soon as we solve our puzzle. I will show you who did it afterward. Will you now please take the pencil and tablet before you and write down the words of the message as we find them. Now what words shall we choose for a beginning?" "Why, the first one on the Stone, of course. A message always begins at the upper left-hand corner, doesn't it?" "No. my clear, cipher messages don't as a rule. You happen to be right about the word, however: it is the first one we want. Not because of its position in the inscriptions, it might have been tucked in anywhere, but because it is the most obvious beginning. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com