================ Mr Mulliner Speaking ================ It was only when he reached the drawing-room at eight o’clock that he discovered that the younger members of the house-party had gone off in a body to dine and dance at a hospitable neighbour’s, leaving him to waste the evening tie of a lifetime, to the composition of which he had devoted no less than twenty-two minutes, on Aurelia’s aunt. Dinner in these circumstances could hardly hope to be an unmixedly exhilarating function. Among the things which helped to differentiate it from a Babylonian orgy was the fact that, in deference to his known prejudices, no wine was served to Archibald. And, lacking artificial stimulus, he found the aunt even harder to endure philosophically than ever. Archibald had long since come to a definite decision that what this woman needed was a fluid ounce of weed-killer, scientifically administered. With a good deal of adroitness he contrived to head her off from her favourite topic during the meal: but after the coffee had been disposed of she threw off all restraint. Scooping him up and bearing him off into the recesses of the west wing, she wedged him into a corner of a settee and began to tell him all about the remarkable discovery which had been made by applying the Plain Cipher to Milton’s well-known Epitaph on Shakespeare. ‘The one beginning ‘‘What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones?’’ ’ said the aunt. ‘Oh, that one?’ said Archibald. ‘ ‘‘What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones? The labour of an Age in pile`d stones? Or that his hallowed Reliques should be hid under a starry-pointing Pyramid?’’ ’ said the aunt. Archibald, who was not good at riddles, said he didn’t know. ‘As in the Plays and Sonnets,’ said the aunt, ‘we substitute the name equivalents of the figure totals.’ ‘We do what?’ ‘Substitute the name equivalents of the figure totals.’ ‘The which?’ ‘The figure totals.’ ‘All right,’ said Archibald. ‘Let it go. I daresay you know best.’ The aunt inflated her lungs. ‘These figure totals,’ she said, ‘are always taken out in the Plain Cipher, A equalling one to Z equals twenty-four. The names are counted in the same way. A capital letter with the figures indicates an occasional variation in the Name Count. For instance, A equals twenty-seven, B twenty-eight, until K equals ten is reached, when K, instead of ten, becomes one, and T instead of nineteen, is one, and R or Reverse, and so on, until A equals twenty-four is reached. The short or single Digit is not used here. Reading the Epitaph in the light of this Cipher, it becomes: ‘‘What need Verulam for Shakespeare? Francis Bacon England’s King be hid under a W. Shakespeare? William Shakespeare. Fame, what needst Francis Tudor, King of England? Francis. Francis W. Shakespeare. For Francis thy William Shakespeare hath England’s King took W. Shakespeare. Then thou our W. Shakespeare Francis Tudor bereaving Francis Bacon Francis Tudor such a tomb William Shakespeare.’’ ’ The speech to which he had been listening was unusually lucid and simple for a Baconian, yet Archibald, his eye catching a battle-axe that hung on the wall, could not but stifle a wistful sigh. How simple it would have been, had he not been a Mulliner and a gentleman, to remove the weapon from its hook, spit on his hands, and haul off and dot this doddering old ruin one just above the imitation pearl necklace. Placing his twitching hands underneath him and sitting on them, he stayed where he was until, just as the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour of midnight, a merciful fit of hiccoughs on the part of his hostess enabled him to retire. As she reached the twenty-seventh ‘hic’, his fingers found the door-handle and a moment later he was outside, streaking up the stairs. ================
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 15:44:44 +0000
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