User blog:Mooimimi/Beale Cipher and the Author

January 1820
A stranger comes to the Washington hotel in Linchburg, a hotel with its owner, Robert Morriss,  famed for his nice personality and honesty. Thomas J. Beale, was the name of the stranger.

"In person, he was about six feet in height", remenisces Morriss, "with jet black eyes and hair of the same color, worn longer than was the style at that time. His form was symmetrical, and gave evidence of unusual strength and activity; but his distinguishing feature was a dark and swarthy complexion, as if much exposure to the sun and weather had thoroughly tanned and discolored him"

In all of his stay at the hotel, he said not a word about himself.

Morriss continues, saying that Beale was "favored by the ladies and envied by men. To the first he was reverentially tender and polite; to the latter, affable and courteous, when they kept within bounds, but, if they were supercilious or presuming, the lion was aroused, and woe to the man who offended him."

And then, in late March, he left the hotel.

January 1822
Beale came to the hotel once again, as mysterious as ever. Came in winter, left in spring.

However, this visit was not exactly like the last one, because at the end of his visit, the man of mystery left a locked iron box, containing "papers of value and importance".

Morriss got a letter, sent from St Louis at the 9th of May of that year. It was from Beale. The letter said that the chest has documents that he and people involved with him, in the manner of business