However, public opinion has taken a 180-degree turn in the case of death row inmate Joam D'Acosta.Anger then turns to sympathy.Residents no longer go to Manao Prison screaming about executions, quite the opposite!Those who had accused Joam of being the culprit in the Tijuca case now declared his innocence and demanded his immediate release, and that's how the crowd went—from one extreme to the other.
This shift is understandable.
Indeed, what happened in the last two days, Benito dueling with Torres, looking for dead bodies, which reappeared so uncharacteristically, found documents whose lines, if we may say so, were "unreadable" ", people are convinced, or willing to be convinced, that this document contains physical evidence of the innocence of Joam Dacosta, because it comes from the hands of the real murderer, all of which have caused public opinion to change. Forty-eight hours What people have thought of and urgently demanded before has become something that everyone is worried about and afraid of, that is, receiving orders from Rio de Janeiro.
But it's not too late.
True enough, Joam Dacosta was arrested on August 24th.He was tried the next day and the judge's report was issued on 26 August.Today is the 28th.In three or four days at most, the minister will make a verdict on the death row inmates. "The court will uphold the original verdict." This cannot be more certain.
Yes, no one doubted that it would be so!But the documents exonerated Joam D'Acosta, and there was no doubt about it, not only the Joam family, but even the mercurial inhabitants of Manao, who followed the drama of events eagerly.
But, then again, those bystanders who have no interest or say they don't care can't feel the seriousness of the situation. In their eyes, how valuable is this document?And how can one be sure that this document has anything to do with the diamond murders?There is no doubt about the existence of documents.It was absolutely certain that the documents had been found on Torres.It is even certain that the document was not written by the adventurer, judging from Torres's letter of accusation against Joam da Costa.However, as Judge Jarry Gates said, wouldn't the scoundrel forge a document for extortion?What's more, Torres once claimed that he would not hand over the documents until after he married Joam da Costa's daughter, that is to say, when the raw rice was cooked and cooked, which is more likely to be a forgery.
All these arguments always hold water one way or the other, but we can understand that this case deserves the utmost attention.The situation of Joam D'Acosta, then, was indeed very bad.As long as the document cannot be deciphered, it means that it does not exist at all, and if the answer to the code cannot be magically guessed or revealed within three days, Tijuka's condemned prisoner will definitely pay with his blood.
Why, this miracle, someone claims to be able to achieve it!That man was Judge Jarry Gates, and he was busy now, more in the interests of Joam Dacosta than with his own analytical passion.yes!There was a complete shift in his thinking.Was it not just a moral riddle more important than any other that this man had voluntarily given up his seclusion in Iquitos and risked his life to clear his name in a Brazilian court?Therefore, if the judge can't find the password number, he will not give up the document for a day!So, he pondered crazily, forgot to sleep and eat, and spent all his time making number combinations so that he could assign a key to this difficult-to-open lock!
On the first evening, the idea lingered in the mind of Judge Jarry Gates.He was furious and roared.The whole house seemed to shake.None of his servants, black or white, dared to step forward.He was still a bachelor, which was fortunate, otherwise Mrs. Jarrigates would have had a hard time.Never had a question driven the strange man so madly, and he was determined to find out the answer, as long as his head had not exploded under the pressure of steam like a boiling boiler.
However, Judge Jarry Gates racked his brains and pondered all day long on August 28 with a superhuman frenzy for such a downright drudgery.
Trying to find that number by chance, as he said, is like looking for a needle in a haystack of millions of combinations, and it would take the life of a first-class calculator for nothing.But if you don't try your luck, wouldn't you lose the possibility of reasoning?No, maybe not. Judge Jarry Gates dozed off for several hours, trying to take a rest, but failed.
At this moment, whoever rushes up to him despite the prohibition not to disturb him when he is alone will surely see him sitting in his study, at his desk, with the papers in front of him just as he was the day before, and he feels that there are thousands of papers on it. Tens of thousands of letters were blurred and confusing, as if flying around his head.
"Ah!" he sighed, "why did that bastard who wrote the document, whoever he was, didn't separate the words in this paragraph! Otherwise, it might be possible... maybe it could be tried...but it wouldn't work! However, if this If this document really refers to this murder and theft case, it is impossible for words like arrayal (escort team), diamants (diamonds), Tijuco (Tijuca), Dacosta (Dacosta) not to appear, who And you know! Comparing these words and their code words, we can find out the code number! But there is nothing! ... Not a single space! The whole thing is one word! Only one! ... 276 letters A single word! . . . Ah! Let him be cursed 276 times! The troublemaker! For that alone, he shall be hanged 276 times!"
As he spoke, he punched the document heavily, and cursed viciously.
He cursed so viciously, and punched the document hard.
"But after all," continued the judge, "if I cannot find such a word in this document, shouldn't I at least try to find it at the beginning or end of each paragraph. Perhaps this is an opportunity not to be ignored. .”
Following this line of thought, the judge sequentially tests the letters at the beginning or end of each paragraph of the document.See if they correspond to the letters that make up the most important word, the word Dacosta, which is sure to appear somewhere.
Still nothing.
Indeed, taking the first seven letters of the last paragraph as an example, the resulting formula is
p=D
h=a
y=c
J=o
s=s
l=t
y=a
However, Judge Jarry Gates stopped at the first letter.Because the interval between P and d in the alphabet is not a single digit, but two digits, that is, 12, and a letter in this type of ciphertext can only be replaced by a single digit.
The same is true for the last seven letters psuvjhb of this paragraph. This group also begins with p, which cannot represent the D in Dacosta (Da Costa) in any case, because there are also 12 letters between the two.
In this way, the surname is not in this position.
After trying arrayal and Tijuco in turn, the same result was obtained. The structure of these two words does not quite match the letter combination of the ciphertext.
Judge Jarrigates was dizzy after finishing all these tasks. He stood up, paced around in the study, and went to the window to get some air. He yelled loudly, and a group of yelling among the branches of the acacia trees flew away. buzzing hummingbird, and then he returned to pondering the papers.
He closed the file, turning it over and over.
"Bastard! Scoundrel!" muttered Judge Jarry Gates. "He's going to drive me crazy! No, wait! Calm down! Let's not lose our minds! It's not time yet!"
Then he took a cold shower and woke up;
"Try another way," he said, "since I can't work out the numbers for those damned alphabets, let's see what numbers the author of the document can choose, assuming he's also a Tijuka case." murderer!"
The judge is then committed to another method of reasoning, and he may well be right to do so, since there is some logic to it.
"Let's try the four digits of the year first!" he said. "Why doesn't the rascal choose the year of Joam da Costa's birth, and let this innocent man be tortured in his place—even if Is it not to forget this number that is so important to him? And Joam Dacosta was born in 1804. Just use 1804 as the password number to try and see what results you get. !"
Judge Jarry Gates wrote down the initial letters of the last paragraph, rewritten the number 1804 on it, repeated it three times, and obtained the following new formula:
1804 1804 1804
phyj slyd dqfd
Then push forward the numerical value on each letter according to the alphabetical order to get the following letter combinations:
O． yfr dy. cif.
Meaningless!Moreover, there are still three letters missing, so a period has to be used instead, because the numbers 8, 4, and 4 that determine the meaning of the letters h, d, and d cannot deduce the corresponding letters in the alphabet.
"That's not it!" Judge Jarry Gates roared, "Let's try another number!"
So, he thought, if it wasn't for the thousand digits representing the year, would the person who wrote the document choose the year when the crime occurred?
That was in 1826.
Then, according to the above method, he obtained the following formula:
1826 1826 1826
Phyj slyd dqfd
This leads to: o. vd rdv. cid．
Another string of meaningless letters, still the same as the previous formula, always missing a few letters, for the same reason.
"A damned amount!" cried the judge, "this one too! Another! Wouldn't the scoundrel choose the "" amount representing the value of the stolen thing?
It is estimated that the value of the stolen diamonds is as high as 834 gondos.
Thus, the following formula is obtained:
834 834 834 834
Phy jsl ydd qf
The result is also unsatisfactory:
bet bph pa. ic.
"To hell with the document and whoever figured it out!" Judge Jarry Gates yelled, throwing the document and it floated across the room. "Even a saint would be troubled by it, and would rather be punished by heaven!"
But after a burst of anger, the judge was still not to be outdone, and picked up the documents again.What he had tried for the first letters of each paragraph, he tried again for the last letters of each paragraph—in vain.Then, his mind ran at high speed, trying all the possibilities imaginable.Tried the age of Joam D'Acosta - the murderer must have known the number - the date of the arrest, the date of the sentence pronounced by the Vera Rica court, the date of the fixed execution, etc., etc., even all the time Count the victims of the Tijuca murders.
Nothing!Always get nothing!
Judge Jarrigates was so furious that one could not help but worry about his sanity.He racked his brains and desperately, as if he was fighting a hand-to-hand combat with an enemy!Suddenly, he sighed:
"Take your luck, and God help me, now that logic has run its course!"
He reached out and tugged on a bell cord hanging by the desk.At this moment the bell rang loudly, and the judge went straight to the door, opened it, and cried:
"Bobo!"
after awhile.
Bobo was an emancipated black slave, the favorite servant of Judge Jarry Gates, but he was not seen at the moment, obviously afraid to enter the master's room.
The bell rang again!He called out "Bobo" again, perhaps, he thought it was better to obediently pretend to be deaf and dumb.
Finally, the third ring of the bell broke the organ and the rope snapped.This time, Bobo showed up.
"Master, what are your orders?" Bobo asked cautiously standing at the door.
"Come here, don't say a word!" answered the judge, with fire in his eyes, that made the nigger shiver with terror.
Bob came over.
"Bobo," said Judge Jarry Gates, "listen to the question I'm about to ask, and answer me right away, without even thinking about it, or I—"
Bobo was dumbfounded, his eyes were staring straight, he was tongue-tied, and with his feet together, he took a military posture without a gun, waiting for an order.
"Are you ready?" the master asked him.
"Ready."
"Attention! Don't think about it deliberately, listen up, and tell me the first number that comes to your mind!"
"76223."' Bobo said in one breath.
He may want to report a large amount to please the owner.
Judge Jarry Gates rushed to the table, picked up a pencil, and then made a formula according to the number Bobo said-this Bobo is now only the messenger of luck.
Everyone understands that if the number 76223 happens to be the "key" of the file, it would be incredible.
The result can only be that Bobo was scolded by Judge Jarry Gates and quickly slipped away.
Notes:
Notes: