The Voynich Cypher Read Online Free PDF Page B

what Steven had calculated the true value to be, which was not unexpected. He invited the wizened dealer into the dining room to partake of some vintage port, and they sipped the seventy-year-old wine with approval as they negotiated back and forth. Eventually, they arrived at a price both could live with – considerably more than Steven had hoped, but still within reason. Delighted that he’d struck a bargain so quickly, he ducked back into his study and wrote a check for the dealer, who exchanged the toolbox of parchments for the payment.
    Their business concluded, Steven bade the old gentleman farewell and walked him to his car, where the driver was still standing in the same position as when they entered the house – the only giveaway of the passage of time, the seven cigarette stubs collected around his feet. Steven and the dealer said their goodbyes by the side of the vehicle, which were cut short by the jangling of the phone in the kitchen. Steven waved at them and sprinted back to the house, but the phone had gone silent by the time he reached it.
    That was sort of how his whole day had gone – he felt like he’d been running a few minutes late since he’d woken with Antonia an hour past their usual time. He returned to his study and surveyed the parchments, ruminating over which one he would begin to decrypt first. The phone started ringing again. This time he made it into the kitchen by the fourth ring and snatched the handset from the cradle of the heavy mid-Seventies base station.
    Outside, the olive trees stirred in the careless breeze as the day’s warm light faded. The flocculent clouds drifted lazily across the mackerel sky as the sun made way for the encroaching night. It was an idyllic dusk in the valley, a thing of tour book photos, travel brochures and chocolate boxes.
    Inside the house, the telephone handset clattered to the floor, and an otherworldly moan echoed around the rustic stone walls; an animal sound of raw, tortured pain.
     

CHAPTER 3
     
     
    Present Day, Palm Desert, California
     
    Winston Twain glumly regarded the phone on his desk, which was nearly completely blanketed with papers, reference books, and two laptops. He groaned out loud and then noisily slurped at a cup of Earl Grey tea before he resumed studying a letter addressed to him by Dr. Steven Cross. He appraised the concise script with approval and nodded to himself. He’d just gotten around to studying a note Cross had sent him about a working theory on the Voynich Manuscript: an obscure document from the Middle Ages written entirely in an indecipherable code – a code that Twain had dedicated himself to trying to decrypt for the past thirty years.
    The study’s screen door moved slightly as a light wind hummed through the room. Twain wheeled around and looked out at the desert night as the door once again settled into place. Twain had lived all over the world, but swore by the Coachella Valley and the surrounding desert, only a two hour drive from Los Angeles. The sun had long since set over the mountains that jutted eleven thousand feet into the sky, and Twain was burning the midnight oil, as was his custom. It was the perfect time of year in Palm Springs – late May – when the temperature rarely deviated from ninety-three degrees at the height of day, dropping into the sixties at night. He preferred the tranquility of night for contemplation and rarely slept more than five hours now that he was of a certain age, which afforded him ample time for his projects as the rest of California slept.
    Twain wheeled his chair around and, again, considered his desk and the materials of a lifetime scattered across the top of it. Most of the area was occupied by a high-resolution copy of his fascination – the Voynich Manuscript – which, in loosely strewn unbound form, covered every inch of a work surface in desperate need of reorganization.
    Lost and rediscovered through the centuries, the Voynich was a seemingly innocuous