TheCodeBreakers
laid, if one so wishes, to the poor devil's confusion and despair," but no
one has raised the equally likely possibility that the squire may have
made the mistakes while copying the messages
to bring them to Holmes. In fact, however, the errors are neither
Slaney's nor the squire's, for the errors were not present when Holmes
solved the cryptograms. If the same symbol had been used for v and p in
the originals, Holmes would have produced the partial plaintext vrevare
in the fifth message after guessing Never instead of the ?re ?are that he
shows, with the two p's as unknowns. Similarly, if the r and b had been
confounded in the original, he would have shown a partial solution ?re
(for the correct Abe) after guessing Never, but in fact he shows a partial
solution ??e with the b still unknown. Holmes' own account thus proves
that the errors did not exist in the original messages—and it is fortunate
annaabi.ee 
