CHAPTER XX
SOLVING THE CIPHER
Much as he would have liked to go to work on it at once, Mr. Newton was obliged to postpone his beginning of solving the problem. There were a number of stories he had to go out on, and Larry, likewise, was kept busy. It was late in the afternoon when they found a chance to speak of the strange letter again.
“I tell you what,” said Mr. Newton, “suppose you come over to my house this evening, and we'll tackle the cipher. It may be important for us to solve it as soon as possible.”
“I'll come,” said Larry.
Mr. Newton lived in a sort of bachelor hotel. He had several rooms, and when Larry called that evening, he found his friend seated at a large table, on which were spread out a number of sheets of paper, several pencils, and some books. In the center of the table was the cipher letter Larry had received, which he had given Mr. Newton that afternoon.
“Are you making any headway?” asked Larry.
“Not very much,” confessed Mr. Newton. “I have been studying the thing, trying to see where to start. Take a look at it yourself, and see if it suggests anything to you. Two heads are better than one, any day.”
Larry puzzled over the paper for several minutes, but was obliged to admit that the more he looked at it the more of a puzzle it became.
“What sort of a cipher is it, anyhow?” he asked. “What is a cipher? I've often heard of them, but I never saw one before.”
“A cipher is merely a message from one person to another,” said Mr. Newton. “It is written in such a way as to prevent any third person, in whose hand it may fall, from learning the contents. Each of the persons in the secret has a key to the cipher.
“There are simple ciphers and elaborate ones. There is one used by the United States war and other officials that is very elaborate, and when messages are sent in it, there is a lot of work getting at the real meaning. That is done to prevent enemies learning what the message contains.
“But I do not suppose this cipher is very difficult. The trouble is, it is so simple that it is puzzling. I have tried a number of methods used on fairly hard ciphers, but I can make nothing of it.”
“What in the world do you suppose they wrote in cipher for, anyhow?” asked Larry.
“To try and scare you a bit, I reckon. The more mystery they throw around it the worse they think they have you frightened.”
“How have you tried to solve it?”
“Well, first I went on the supposition that it was a letter cipher. That is, that you must pick out certain letters in each word, and then put them together to make sense. I tried several different methods on this line, but all I get is a lot of words as meaningless as those in the cipher.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“I'm going to take out all the words that seem to have any bearing on our matters. I'll set them down, and try to make sense of them.”
Accordingly, with Larry to help, Mr. Newton wrote down the following: blue, marks, ink, farm, door, and deed.
“Those are all that I see that concern us directly,” he said. “There is 'blue,' for the blue-handed man; 'marks,' which he had on his hand; 'ink,' which might refer to Mr. Hosfer's attempts; 'farm,' which certainly refers to you; 'door,' which is what had the blue mark on it when I went into Chinatown; and 'deed,' which is what we're after. Now we'll see if I can get anything out of them.”
Mr. Newton tried by combining various letters in each word to get a meaning from the cipher. It was of no avail. Then he started on still another method.
This was to string all the words together so they formed a meaningless jumble of letters.
“Now we'll go along and take every second letter regardless of the words they are in,” he said.
He did this, and after making several selections, he had this as a result:
OMOSBEHSDENSBYOEEW.
“That's no go,” he announced, after staring at the combination. That would never make sense. I'll try every third letter.”
This time he got:
IOIEEDNSOO.
“Stuck again,” he commented. “Too many vowels to get any words that would mean anything out of that.”
However, he was not discouraged. He tried the same plan, using respectively the fourth to the tenth letter in the conglomeration. But each time he had to admit defeat.
“It gets me,” said Mr. Newton, at length. “If I could only stumble on one or two words I think I could find out the system. The rest would be easy.”
“Have you tried taking every seventh word?” asked Larry. “We boys in the country used to consider seven a lucky number.”
“We'll try it, just for luck, then,” spoke Mr. Newton. He quickly set down every seventh word, and had this result when he had gone a little way:
WHO DELIVERY WE FURNACE UP COWS THE AUTOMOBILE.
“That's odd,” commented Mr. Newton. “We can make a sentence of that anyhow. Listen: 'We, the furnace who deliver up automobile cows, though it doesn't make any sense.”
“Try some other way of taking the words,” went on Larry. “Maybe we'd better begin at the end, and work up.”
“Well, we'll try your plan for a change,” agreed Mr. Newton. “Take every seventh word from the end. This is what we get: 'Sign be dog name teapot of evidently,' and so on. Not much to that.”
Then, in very weariness he and Larry sat staring at the paper which they felt sure contained a hidden message for them.
“Let's give it up,” suggested Larry. “If they want to send us any word let them do it in the right way.”
“No, I'm not going to give up so easily,” said Mr. Newton. “I'll have another try at it. Hand the cipher over.”
Larry, who had been scanning the mysterious paper, passed it across the table to Mr. Newton. To do so he had to move it in front of a drop gas lamp. As the paper came between Mr. Newton's eyes and the light the reporter gave a sudden cry. He fairly grabbed the paper from Larry, and looked at it closely. He seemed somewhat disappointed. Then he held it up to the light again.
“Did you put those marks on this?” he asked of Larry.
“No, what marks?”
“These tiny dots on the back.”
“I haven't touched the cipher,” said Larry, wondering what Mr. Newton meant.
“Then I think I have it solved!” exclaimed the reporter. “I wonder I didn't think of this before. Come here!”
Larry came around to that side of the table. He looked through the half-transparent cipher, and saw below certain of the words a small, black dot. The dots were made on the back of the document, and only showed through when it was held to the light.
“We're on the track at last!” cried Mr. Newton. “Here, Larry, you write down the words I call off.”
Then, with fingers that trembled so he could scarcely hold the pencil, Larry set this down:
“To the boy who found the paper with blue marks, we give you one week to make up your mind. after that look for the loss of the small one who bears the name of a martyred president he will be taken from you when you least expect, sign deed at once.”
“What does that mean?” asked Larry.
“We'll soon see. The first sentence is easily enough set off. 'To the boy who found the paper with blue marks.' You see, they have simply used every other word in the cipher. It was so easy it was hard. Now, then, we'll go on. 'To the boy, etc.,' that means you. The next sentence reads: 'We give you one week to make up your mind.' The rest reads, properly punctuated: 'After that, look for the loss of the small one who bears the name of a martyred President. He will be taken from you when you least expect. Sign deed at once.'”
“What does that mean about the small one bearing the name of a martyred president?” asked Larry.
“First consider who were the martyred presidents,” suggested Mr. Newton.
“Well, there were Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley,” replied Larry.
“Is there anyone in your family with either of those names?”
“Let me see—of course—there's Jimmy—James. But why do they refer to him?”
“That's the point,” replied Mr. Newton, “why do they? I wish they had not.”
“Why?”
“Because this looks as if they meant to make trouble, and force you to do what they want. It is nothing more nor less than a threat to kidnap your little brother.”
“Kidnap Jimmy?”
“That's what they practically threaten unless you sign the deed.”
“But how can they kidnap persons in New York, with so many police around?”
“Haven't you read enough in the papers of late how it is done?” answered Mr. Newton. “It is very easy, especially for some Italian gang. I would be on my guard if I were you, and tell your mother to have an eye out for Jimmy at all times. But don't scare her.”
“What good would it do if they did take Jimmy?”
“You'd find out soon enough,” answered Mr. Newton. “How long do you suppose you would refuse to sign, or your mother—how long do you think she would refrain from signing, if she knew by doing so she could get Jimmy back? We are fighting a desperate gang, I'm afraid, and we'll have to be on our guard. Be careful of every move, be suspicious of all strangers, and keep a lookout for the blue-handed man.”
“Can't we notify the police?”
“Oh, we could, but it would be worse than useless. In the first place we have nothing but suspicions and vague threats. The police could not act on them. Besides you couldn't have a bluecoat detailed to watch Jimmy all the while.”
“I wonder what we had better do,” mused Larry, who was much alarmed over the turn things had taken.
“We have several days yet,” said Mr. Newton. “They give us a week to make up our minds. In that time something may turn up. We've done enough work for to-night. Let's rest until to-morrow.”
So, with his brain filled with thoughts of the possibility of Jimmy's being kidnapped, and pondering over the strange web he was being tangled up in, Larry went home.