CRIMINAL CODES

Evening Star, Issue 19776, 28 January 1928, Page 12

CRIMINAL CODES

UNRAVELLING THE SECRETS FRENCH SHERLOCK HOLMES A French detective, Dr Edmond Locat’d, lias concluded a fascinating study of secret codes used by criminals. Ho has deciphered code messages that make the reading of Captain Kidd’s rebus in Edgar Allan Poe’s tale, ‘ The Goldbug ’ (says •the Paris correspondent of the ‘Daily Express’) seem like child’s play, confirming the old proverb that truth is stranger than fiction. Dr Locat’d, who is chief of the remarkable police technical laboratory at Lyons, said: “1 find that modest and uneducated apaches often invent codes ns complicated as those of staff officers. The secret correspondence of Bonnot, the notorious Paris motor car bandit, and his mistress has never been deciphered, and 1 could mention many, other examples of the same sort. Tito Bonnot messages were particularly baffling because they were short, as the shorter cryptograms are the harder they are to read.” It is a common practice among the French apaches to use secret codes—they also have a jargon called the “jar,” which is absolutely unintelligible to the average Frenchman—and the Lyons police frequently pick up valuable clues Toy seizing cryptograms, either on suspects or while being smuggled out of prison, and handing them to Dr Locat’d and his seven assistants in the police laboratory to be deciphered. THE MOST SIMPLE CODES. The most simple code is the “monoalphabetic,” in which a letter is always represented by the same sign, letter, or unmetal, as is tbs Sherlock Holmes story of ‘The Dancing Men.’ For example, the police, seized a cryptogram which was being smuggled to a burglar in prison in Lyons which began as follows : 0 4 5 I 7 2 D I) 2 7 3 2 K (5 4 5 1 K -1 5 K 2 7 2 K K 2 1 9 9 1 3 1 3 Dr Locat’d simply counted all tho letters and numerals in this message and compared them with tho frequency table. In the French language tho letter E occurs 170 times in every 1.000 letters, N 87.3 times, I and R and_S 68.0 times each. A 72.6 times, T 67.3 times, and so on. By tho use of this table bo discovered that the numeral 2 represented. E, he letter D in the text had tho same frequency as L in tho alphabet, and so on. The message warned the burglar to remain silent about a certain “job,” and so tho mystery of a safe-cracking was cleared up. A VERY JUMBLED MESSAGE. ]n another case the police found tho following message on a suspect;— 2lt t 894 14 R 24.34 14 14 3 11 8 t 146 dl4 929 t 14 147 3 u 14, 1023c2d 14 t 129 u 14 t 215 4 c 14 162 v 4 16 16 14 38 10 23 49 IS Dr Locard decided it was a “ monoalphabetic” code, but written with a key word or key phrase. He took it for granted that 14, which was the most frequent expression, represented E, and he finally hit on Paris-Lyons-Marseillc, the railway system passing through Lyons. P stood for 1, A for 2, 11 for 3, and so on. The letters in tho message retained their alphabetical value. His assistants worked out the message mathematically, and, although there were many mistakes in the coding, it read clearly enough that a certain Antoine living in the Hotel dc Xante, in the Rue Marcadet, was going to rob a house in the Rue Romariu the same night “ We hurried to Ibc house in the Rue Romarin,” Dr Locard calmly explained. “ Examining the lock, we discovered traces of wax, as Antoine bad already been there to take an impression of the keyhole in order to have master keys of exactly tho right size. We waited in the darkness for several hours. He finally tip-toed into the vestibule, inseited his master key in the lock, and opened the door. Then we grabbed him.” The “polyalphabetic” codes, which are also commonly used by the apaches, are much more difficult to decipher, as a, letter is often represented in a cryptogram by a dozen different signs, letters, or numerals. A SIMPLE KEY NUMBER. The simplest method is to use a key number, as in the following example:— (Clear) BEEN ARRESTED (Kev) , 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 (Code) D H 1 P DVTHWVHH In trying to decipher one of those messages one discovers immediately that it is a polyalphabetic code, as, instead of there being 170 E’s in every 1.000 letters, there may be only fifty. The Dolyalohabetic system is gene-

rally used with a key number, and the problem is to line! the length of the key and afterward the key itself. in an important case at Lyons several years ago Dr Locat'd seized a long code message, which began in this way;— MGWQGLFWWQ S V F AV I ill V E I G AV ide discovered by a highly complicated mathematical method that the key number was 13(252, and the message then read as follows: MG W QGL FW W QS A' FAV 1 134.35213 4 2 5 3 1 3 4 LESOBJETB 0 N T E T E K F E i G AV 2 5 2 .1 3 4 C A C H JO S The English translation of this in dear is that “the objects have been bidden,” and by deciphering this complicated code be uncovered and arrested a daring gang of bandits. ANOTHER CRIMINAL AFFAIR. In another criminal affair, Dr Locat'd bad this text to decipher:— fVMBEIJUEA AV A U L E T E X NQtN QN U SBEDJOT U 0 N U 0 I E C L J DIL N fn tin’s code the letters occurred with their normal frequency in the French language, and, whatever the code was it was deciphered by arranging them in their normal sequence. The first step was to arrange two columns in this way:— n n Q U N E U A 8 AV The next step was to work out the sequence further:— E N U X Q U N N E Q U A I 8 AV The final result was:— J’ai obtenu du vieux qu il me donne les cinquante louis The translation is: “1 have persuaded the old man to give me fifty lonis.” Tim use of codes goes back for many centuries, and Dr Locard has found a iargon used by Cardinal Richelieu in 1031 in the National Library m Paris. In his researches he lias also found a jargon used by Monsieur de SiHery, til. French Ambassador to the Vatican, in 1622.