Saying this, she opened the paper which she held and displayed it to Gualtier:
"In that writing," said she, "there are twenty lines. I have been able to do any thing with ten of them only, and that partially. The rest is beyond my conjecture."
The paper was written so as to show under each character the corresponding letter, or what Miss Krieff supposed to be the corresponding letter, to each sign.
"This," said Miss Krieff, "is about half of the signs. You see if my key is applied it makes intelligible English out of most of the signs in this first half. There seems to me to be a block of letters set into a mass of characters. Those triangular portions of signs at each end, and all the lower part, seem to me to be merely a mass of characters that mean nothing, but added to conceal and distract."
"It is possible," said Gualtier, carefully examining the paper.
"It must mean something," said Miss Krieff, "and it can mean nothing else than what I have written. That is what it was intended to express. Those letters could not have tumbled into that position by accident, so as to make up these words. See," she continued, "here are these sentences written out separately, and you can read them more conveniently."
She handed Gualtier a piece of paper, on which was the following:
_Oh may God have mercy on my wretched soul Amen O Pomeroy forged a hundred thousand dollars O N Pomeroy eloped with poor Lady Chetwynde She acted out of a mad impulse in flying She listened to me and ran off with me She was piqued at her husband's act Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynd Expelled the army for gaming N Pomeroy of Pomeroy Berks O I am a miserable villain_
Gualtier read it long and thoughtfully. "What are the initials 'O. N.?'"
"Otto Neville. It is the General's name."
Silence followed. "Here he is called O Pomeroy, O N Pomeroy, and N Pomeroy."
"Yes; the name by which he is called is Neville."
"Your idea is that it is a confession of guilt, written by this O. N. Pomeroy himself?"
"I don't want to inquire into the probability of the General's writing out this and leaving it in his drawer, even in cipher, but I look only at the paper itself."
"In the first place your interpretation is very ingenious."
"So it does to me. That is the reason why I want your help. You see that there are several things about it which give it an incomplete character. First, the mixture of initials; then, the interchange of the first and third persons. At one moment the writer speaking of Pomeroy as a third person, running off with Lady Chetwynde, and again saying he himself fell in with her. Then there are incomplete sentences, such as, 'Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynde--'"