by Kin Platt
I manage to say: “About how old were you then, Mr. Bagler?”
“Oh, about your age, Steve, I reckon.”
I felt like crying so I just walked away. I didn’t even say goodbye. I wished I could have told Mr. Bagler that I felt just the same way he did. That his father wasn’t a crook. But I just couldn’t say anything. When I left he was still sitting there looking at the end of a dead cigar.
The sun was so bright on Main Street I had to shield my eyes. Someone whistled. It was that fellow, Don Defoe, the reporter. He had a tie on now and his shirt buttoned and he wore a jacket and looked like a regular businessman. He was sitting behind the wheel of a sleek tan Jaguar. The XKE.
“Can I give you a lift?” he asked.
I pointed out my bike parked against the building.
“Get all the dope you wanted, kid?”
I said I did.
“How come a kid like you knows about Palladian windows?” he asked.
“I got nothing else to do,” I told him, mumbling.
He grinned at that. “Well, I’ll shove off. If you need any more of that dope, you know where to come now.”
I knew I didn’t give him a good answer. I could have told him about all the long walks with my pop and how he loved all these things and explained them patiently and in great detail. And how because he loved them I got to love them, too. But I was thinking of somebody else now. A kid my age whose father didn’t explain anything. And how this kid had to grow up and not be sure.
So naturally I couldn’t talk. But when I got on my bike I found out I could cry.
CHAPTER 21
The Million Candlepower Brain Of Herky Krakower
I finally stopped blubbering like a nut. “Cheer up, you dope,” I told myself. “Remember old Mr. Newbury says you got four hundred dollars for sure. Maybe some of the other silver dollars are valuable, too. Maybe there’s even one of those de luxe special 1804 jobs worth thirty thousand dollars!”
It would have been enough to cheer me up normally but I guess I wasn’t normal exactly then. A lot of things were still confusing.
Mr. Bagler certainly knew a lot about the River Queen. Yet, when I first asked him about it, he acted like it happened a hundred years ago or like he was on some other planet. Well, he had good reason not to want to talk or even think about it. If I’d have been him I probably would have told me to take off and get lost in the first place.
Also, I’d caught Mrs. Teska in another lie. In another and older newspaper in the morgue I’d come across a picture of that hawk-nosed man, that Big Nick Murdock, sitting at a table with a pretty girl in what looked like a yacht club or restaurant that went in for nautical decorations. It was definitely the same man I saw in Mrs. Teska’s old picture, the man she tried to hide. And the girl looked like her as she said she used to be fifty years ago. But the newspaper caption read:
“Big Nick Murdock and companion, the lovely Anna Myszka, celebrating champagne supper.”
Now I could see why she hid that picture. She didn’t want to take a chance that anybody might recognize that Miss Anna Myszka she was pretending to be. Maybe she was a friend of hers from the old days. And, maybe she liked to say she used to be pretty once. It was just one of those little white lies that didn’t hurt anybody. Naturally I wouldn’t have known the truth. It was way before my time. But now that I knew, it explained the pretty silk dress she said was wearing.
I suddenly discovered I didn’t like this Big Nick Murdock. For one thing, getting Mr. Bagler’s father’s reputation ruined so he had to kill himself. Mr. Bagler told me these people could charm you and make you lose your mind. I felt different about the older Murdock, Captain Billy. I kind of liked him.
I got thinking of Captain Billy and the writing in the cave. I’d never be able to figure out the riddle on the tombstone, but it would be great to beat Minerva with the cave markings. Just as I was thinking this I saw Herky Krakower walking down Main Street.
Herky is about my age but little and kind of deformed. His back is twisted because he had that polio when he was younger, only not the fatal kind.
He’s okay now and able to move around without a crutch. He’s no athlete, of course. He doesn’t have to be, because Herky has this great mind. In fact he’s the only real genius I ever met. It’s too bad the kids fastened this nickname on him. I guessed it’s short for Hercules which, of course, he’s anything but. His real name is Herman. But I got swept in and call him Herky, too.
He’s a human computer. You could walk up to Herky Krakower and say: “By the way, Herky, how many seconds is it since Paul Revere took that famous ride from Boston?”
He could actually look you right in the eye and say, “You mean from the time he started or the time he finished?” (Allowing for those twenty odd miles Paul rode, warning everybody.) Then he’d look off for a few seconds and say very casually: “One million, six hundred and fifty thousand!” (Or whatever it happened to be.)
He can add up columns of five figures in an instant and no teacher has ever dared to question his square root!
So whenever I saw him, naturally lights flashed and bells rang in my head saying: BRAIN! BRAIN! This time I got the same effect. And I was very happy. Because I knew what I had wasn’t going to be enough.
I jumped my bike up the curb. “Herky,” I said, “What do you know about codes and like that?”
His black eyes gleamed. “You mean codes and ciphers?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, which?”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“Well, they’re related but different,” Herky said. “A code is a message that’s secret but can be decoded with the aid of a code book.”
“What’s that?” I asked. I told you I’m not too bright.
“The message has its own vocabulary or key word. They have what they call a code group. Or code word. They can be numbers or real words.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s say we want to send this secret message: Start rocket attack at once! The vocabulary is in three parts: Start; rocket attack; at once. Opposite each in the code book is the code symbol. For start, it’s number 1122. For rocket attack it’s SELLING LOTS. For at once, it’s 900,2900.”
“So then what?” I said.
“Then we send the secret message. Only now we send it in the code symbol. So the message that’s sent is: SELLING LOTS 1122, 900, 2900!”
“Okay,” I said. “Then what?”
“The person who gets the message opens his code book that has the same alphabet and vocabulary and figures it out. They’ll have different numbers for things like armored cars, or bomb bridges, or order slow retreat!”
“And what happens if you get the secret message and you don’t happen to have your code book?” I asked.
He grinned. “You either call on me or you lose the war!”
“You mean you could figure it out without the code book?” I asked.
Herky shrugged. “You try to find a key word and then you can usually break it down. Sometimes it takes time.”
“What if a message is just crosses and circles, just X’s and O’s?”
He pursed his lips. “Just those two symbols?”
“That’s all.”
“How are they arranged?”
“Five across. Four sections. Three, two, three and three.”
“Hm,” he says. “Fifty-five in all, huh?”
Just like that.
Herky was silent for a second. His bright black eyes glittered in his pale white thin face. You give Herky a problem and it’s like showing a bloodstained flag to a patriotic bloodhound.
“The Marconi code uses five letters,” he said.
“The Marconi code? What’s that?”
“It’s for sending commercial cables. The code words are composed of five letters each and correspond either to a word or a short sentence used in trade or commerce.”
“Five letters across? That sounds good, Herky.”
&nb
sp; “The code word for A or an, for example, sounds like yours. Its ABABA. Using your code, that could be translated to XOXOX.”
“Swell,” I said.
“Or it could be OXOXO,” he said.
I got the idea so I shut up. His mind worked too fast for me.
“The code number for the first word is OOOOO.”
“That’s it,” I said excitedly. “I’m sure I got one just like that. Thanks, Herky.”
“The word for Abandon, in Marconi code, is ABALC. For Abandon all claims it’s ABAND.
“No kidding,” I said.
“The code symbol for ABALC is 00002, and the one for Abandon all claims is 00003. So it can’t be your code,” said Herky.
“Why not?” I demanded. I liked this code. It seemed exactly what I wanted.
“You said yours had just the two symbols. Crosses and circles.” Herky never got excited. “In the Marconi code each code word has a two letter difference from every other code word, so no four letters can ever be in the same position. Listen,” he said. “The first four code words. ABABA, ABAHB. ABALC. ABAND. Don’t you notice the last two letters of each word have changed?”
“How about the code numbers?”
“Just the final figure, after the start. In sequence it’s 00000. 00001. 00002. 00003.” He looked at me. “Get it? In your code, you would need something beside crosses and circles. Possibly a triangle. Or a hook, anchor, something different again.”
Well, who am I to argue with that kind of reasoning? I shook my head. “It was just the two, Herky. Crosses and circles. X’s and O’s.”
“That eliminates the Marconi,” he said cheerfully.
“It does?” I groaned, not feeling at all cheered up.
Herky smiled. He had nice small white teeth, and really a nice face. This, and his fantastic mind made you forget he looked just a little lopsided.
We got to be good friends when I once explained to him the difference between the real English, medieval-style Tudor and the dumb imitations now being built in the suburbs. I told him then it took a lot more than that diaper pattern, stucco and brick and fieldstone, to make a manor house. And he appreciated knowing the real facts.
“Anyway,” said Herky. “You ought to be glad it’s not the Marconi code. It has over 17,050 possible combinations.”
“Okay, I’m glad,” I said. “So now what?” That many combinations would have taken me the rest of my life.
“I’m beginning to think yours is a cipher, not a code,” Herky said. “How many were there of each symbol?”
“Eighteen crosses and 37 circles,” I said. “What’s the difference?”
“Sometimes extra letters are used in ciphers to throw you off the track. But as a rule, ciphers come in groups of five,” he said, “which yours has. The trick will be to discover which kind.”
“Which kind of what?” I asked. It was like I was two years old when I discussed anything with Herky.
“There are three major types. Concealment, transposition, and substitution.”
Well, three didn’t seem too bad. It was better than that 17,050 one.
“In concealment cipher,” Herky continued, “the true letters are hidden or disguised. I could send a message that says: Speeding 80. But if you take the last letters alone it reads GO. That’s one type of concealment cipher.”
I remembered solving cryptograms years ago when I was younger. I don’t think I knew even then what I was doing, but I must have been smarter when I was young.
“Transposition cipher is when the true letters of the message are rearranged according to any pattern agreed upon.”
“Like TAC for cat? I said.
He nodded. “Or TCA. Or CTA. ACT. ATC,” said Herky, fast.
“Which brings us to substitution, I guess,” I said.
“This kind can be tough,” he said. “The original text is replaced with substitutes or cipher symbols, arranged in the same order as in the original. They can be combinations of types, or combinations of several forms that belong to a single type.”
I didn’t like the word combinations. But Herky had even worse news for me.
“I think yours is made up of two ciphers. The first and third. Concealment and substitution. So,” said Herky, “If I were you, I’d start substituting letters for the symbols. Consider it as a biliteral or binumeral alphabet.”
I groaned. “Come on, Herk. Talk English.”
He was very patient. His eyes sparkled but now his pale face was a little flushed. Any puzzle heated Herky up. “You’ll have to assume it has 26 groups. Like any alphabet. With five in a group each five could very possibly represent a single letter. All you have to do is find out how many crosses or circles equal the letter A. Then proceed from there to construct your own alphabet. For one possibility, A could be represented by five circles or five crosses. Z could be opposite. Five crosses or five circles. Depending upon which you start with. Or they can be broken up. Or,” he added finally, “the whole thing can be a fake cryptogram.”
“What makes you so cheerful today?” I asked him.
“In that case,” he continued brightly, “your crosses and circles might be vowels or consonants.”
I happened to suddenly think of something and I groaned. “What’s the matter?” he asked and I told him.
“I told you five across. But I’m not sure the message was meant to be read that way. What if it’s to be read sideways? That way it would be different. Right?”
“Naturally. Then you’d see four sections, five lines deep, and eleven across.” He hadn’t forgotten a thing. He’s got what teachers call “total recall.” I’ve got total forget.
“Okay, Herk. So what if it’s to be solved that way?”
“Still the same method. Still a substitute cipher with attempt at concealment. You might get a garbled message. But at least you’ll get something.”
“Yeah.” I said. “I’ll get a big headache.”
“You want me to solve it for you?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks, Herky. I guess it’s my problem.”
“Okay,” he said. “If you change your mind—”
“Hey,” I said next. “Are you any good at riddles?”
He stopped and shrugged. “Try me,” he said.
“What’s yellow and goes click click click click?” I asked him.
He thought and thought. “I give up,” he said.
“A ball point banana,” I told him.
Herky looked at me. “Hey, that’s right,” he said.
“What’s long and green and travels great distances?”
He couldn’t guess. In the time he spent thinking he could have added all the money that bank across the street took in or gave out that day. “I don’t know,” he said.
“An intercontinental cucumber missile,” I said.
Herky smiled weakly. “Those are good,” he said.
I didn’t think so, at first, when Minerva Landry told them to me. I felt a lot better about them now after finding out that sometimes Herky Krakower couldn’t think any better than I could.
CHAPTER 22
The Girl I Made Stop Laughing
I was again on my trusty iron steed going through town. Meeting Herky Krakower had done me a lot of good. My brain was stimulated and I could feel all that unleashed power we’re supposed to have at work in there. I still hadn’t thought of anything brilliant. It was more like real philosophical thinking, the gist of it being that you couldn’t tell anything about people.
Here was Herky Krakower, for instance, who had such a fantastic photographic mind he could remember perfectly anything he had ever seen or heard. There were times when I thought I had a photographic mind, too, but pretty often it turned out there wasn’t any film in there.
Like all that stuff from the Marconi code book.
Once Herky let the school talk him into a contest between him and two real experts, both men, one with an electric adding machine, the other with that oriental abacus. Well, the fellow wit
h the abacus actually beat the man with the electric adding machine. But Herky trimmed them both.
He also could diagram rocket ships and explain their power and potential. He knew three languages, a lot of science, and could recite perfectly from memory, word for word, practically any book he’d ever read.
So Herky was one you couldn’t tell anything at all about from just looking. Because you would only see this little kid with black hair and black eyes and the shy smile. Plus the fact he was crippled.
To look at Mr. Bagler at the newspaper office, you’d never know he got his nose broken because he was mad at the world for not trusting his father. That’s how he became an All-American tackle.
To look at Mrs. Teska, you’d never know she wanted, more than anything, to be remembered as a pretty girl in a pretty dress.
I didn’t even know my own father.
I remembered once, when I was very little, on one of our long walks together trying to tell him about an old house I’d seen. Only I couldn’t think how to describe the important things about it. He kept listening and finally he said: “I guess you’ll have to learn to pay more attention to detail. Now you’ve seen me often enough. Without looking, how would you describe me?”
“Well,” I said, “you’re tall and thin and you like your bacon well-done. You hate to wear new clothes and you love to argue.”
“Love to argue?” he said. “Who, me?”
“That’s what Mom always says.”
“Defense rests,” he said glumly. But I could tell I had him all wrong.
So I was up to this point in figuring out people when the light on Plymouth changed and I heard two people laughing. I saw that tan Jag XKE sport car parked at the curb on my right, and this Don Defoe, the reporter, getting out and going around to open the door with a flourish for a tall, good looking, red-headed girl. She blew him a kiss and walked into a real estate office. He gave her a big smile and then he saw me and looked surprised. I waved. I guess he couldn’t figure out how somebody who left so long ago could make such slow time, even in our village.