by Kin Platt
Part Three
CHAPTER 27
How I Attacked The Puzzle And Vice Versa
When I got back to the house Sinbad was so glad to see me he practically shook himself right out of his skin. Tail wagging isn’t enough for Sinbad. He shakes everything.
After that I had to let him grip my hand in those viselike jaws for at least five minutes before he would calm down. Like I said, that’s his way of hugging me. With his eyes shining with all that love, and that big husky body shaking like a leaf, and those terrible jaws clamped on to you, you just can’t miss what he’s trying to tell you.
Of course it’s not a one-sided affair either. I socked him on his back and pounded that broad chest a few times to let him know I cared too. All in all it was quite a homecoming. And after what I’d been through it made the whole day right again.
In a little while I regained the use of my fingers so I fed him and took him out for his constitutional.
“Let’s hurry it up,” I told him. “We’ve got a lot of figuring out to do.”
He got the idea and listened to me. For a change.
Back in the house I washed the blood off my face and cleaned the cut, just an ugly swelling bruise now. I looked pretty terrible, but to me it was like I’d won a battle star or something. Even though the expedition was a flop.
I took a hot shower and got into some dry things, grabbed a fast peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich and some milk and opened a can of tuna and had some cheese and an apple and a couple of doughnuts and finally I felt okay. I hadn’t eaten all day so I didn’t blame myself for being reluctant about tearing myself away from the food.
Then I put in a call to my friend, Mr. Bagler, at the newspaper. The switchboard operator said he was out. I asked for that Don Defoe fellow. She said she’d connect me with editorial.
The man in editorial had a gruff voice. “Defoe’s not in now. He’s working the dogwatch tonight.”
“What?” I yelled.
“Dogwatch,” he repeated. “That’s the late shift. From midnight on.”
“Till when is that?” I asked.
“Till he’s relieved,” he answered.
“Thanks a lot,” I said happily and hung up. I grabbed Sinbad around his big thick white neck and hugged him with all my might. “It’s our first breakthrough,” I yelled. He kissed me right on the nose. I returned the compliment.
Then I ran to the dictionary. In all the excitement I’d been forgetting Forrester’s Law. In our house, if you don’t know anything, look it up. That’s Forrester’s Law, passed by my old man a long time ago.
I felt a little foolish when the dictionary didn’t give me the newspaper definition but the nautical one, which I should have known: Dogwatches: Half the normal four-hour watch; two two-hour watches between 4 and 6 P.M. and 6 and 8 P.M. to permit the entire crew to have supper.
I called Minerva Landry.
“Chief Landry’s residence,” she said. “Sheriff of Suffolk County.”
“I know, I know,” I said.
“Did you solve it yet?” she asked right away.
“No,” I said. “And there are some more now.”
“I know,” she said. “I went back there myself.”
“Well, for Pete’s sake, why didn’t you call and tell me like I’m telling you?”
“I did,” she said patiently. “Only you weren’t home and Sinbad didn’t pick up the phone. He’s not so smart. Where were you anyway?”
I told her everything fast.
“Do you think Mr. Snowden blew it up?” she asked.
“Blew what up?”
“The cave, you dummy,” she said.
I hadn’t even thought of that. He could have been coming from the cave when I bumped into him.
“Why would he want to do that?” I asked.
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “He’s your science teacher.”
I couldn’t answer that one. Then I told her about the dogwatch definition. She didn’t even seem impressed. “Don’t you get it?” I yelled. “Now we have the first line of Captain Billy’s riddle. The first watch was to follow him.”
“Oh, I knew that,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I yelled again.
“I wanted to solve it first,” she admitted. “Do you want to hear another riddle?”
“Are you kidding?” I was practically screaming.
“What has two million hairs, a head like a rock, and moves by itself?”
“Never mind, Minerva,” I said. “I got enough riddles.”
“A remote-controlled coconut,” she said before I could hang up.
This was one time when Minerva was a little too merry for me.
I called Sinbad over and gave him the hand motion for “down” but he went down anyway. He brought his two big front white paws almost together and rested his big head on them. He blinked once, snuggled down a little flatter. And waited.
“Okay,” I said. “Now hear this. If we’re not careful somebody’s liable to get hurt real soon.”
Sinbad blinked. He agreed so far.
“We’ve got a lot of problems. Besides the riddles and the code and ciphers we got others. For one thing there’s this kum thing worrying Mrs. Teska.” I explained that to him. “Then, if Big Nick Murdock disappeared in 1920 and a Defoe didn’t die until 1930 that means Big Nick didn’t go down with his ship like everybody says. He must have laid low and hung around until he had a shot at that last Defoe. That reporter’s old man. It’s part of the feud.”
I explained the Murdock-Defoe feud to Sinbad.
“Okay. So for all we know Big Nick might still be living.”
Sinbad thumped the floor with his tail.
“Okay. Motion carried. Now, Mrs. Teska said something about another man being bumped off by her creepy kum. Along with Murdock. Some nice man friend. Only she didn’t say who. Make a note we got to find out.”
I suddenly remembered my meeting with Mr. Newbury, the old coin dealer. “Holy mackerel,” I yelled. “My silver dollars!”
I rushed upstairs without adjourning the meeting. Sinbad raced right up behind me. I yanked my dresser drawer open. There wasn’t a single dollar with an 1804 on it.
“We just lost thirty thousand bucks,” I told Sinbad so he’d know why I felt so let down. “Okay. Let’s go finish the meeting.”
We resumed our positions downstairs. I wouldn’t know if any of those other old coins I had were worth anything until my next visit with Mr. Newbury.
“Also, we got a date coming up with a Mr. Gideon Pickering,” I told the other member of the meeting. “He’s a lawyer.”
I was beginning to wish my folks would arrive soon or call or something. The phone rang. It was my mom.
“Are you two all right?” she asked right away.
“Sure,” I said. “How’s Pop’s bum ankle?”
“It’s coming along,” she said slowly. “It’s his hand that’s broken now.”
“How did that happen?”
“Well, you know your father and his temper,” she started to say. I heard a voice shouting from the distance and guessed it was my pop yelling he didn’t have any temper. “Anyway, he became so angry over the accident and leaving you two alone that he hit the wall.”
“He what?”
“He hit the wall,” Mom said. “You know. Punched it.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“So now he has three small bones broken.”
“How about the wall?” I asked.
“Oh, they build good strong solid walls up here.”
I figured he must have given it some wallop to break his hand because he has hands that can rip a deck of cards apart or a telephone directory.
“So when are you coming back?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Mom said. “By the time his hand mends he may decide to kick the door down. That way he’ll break a couple of toes. When they heal he’ll probably decide to jump through the window, get his face all cut, and require a l
ot of stitches.”
“Wow,” I said.
“We’ll probably be home in a year or so,” she said. “Maybe more. But before you’re ready for college. I promise.”
“Well, have a nice summer,” I said.
“I think it’s all a plot to keep me making slip covers,” Mom said darkly. “I’ve made twelve since I’ve been here. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop.”
She went on and on about that and she was pretty funny. Then she got serious. I told her again we were okay and still not starving. She reminded me to put out the garbage and wear a clean shirt to school and finally said they really should be home in two more days and hung up very sad.
After that I felt a little sad too. It was hard picking up the meeting but Sinbad was waiting. I told him the new riddle:
Jonah Jaws
Bald With Claws
One From Two
Double Your Due
He didn’t have any bright ideas about it. I didn’t either. The only thing I could think of that was bald and had claws was an eagle. Jonah Jaws could mean something about a whale. One from two left one. When it came to “Double Your Due” I drew a blank. What was due? Double what?
“Okay. That’s it for now,” I said. “The meeting’s hereby over. But don’t be like Minerva Landry and keep any bright ideas to yourself.”
My arm still hurt. I didn’t tell Sinbad about the beating, not wanting him to get any wrong ideas about Mrs. Teska.
I went roaming through the bookcases that cover most of our walls from floor to ceiling.
The big code or cipher in the cave was troubling me the most. I figured I couldn’t do any better than listen to Herky Krakower but I don’t have his kind of quick mind. So I used Forrester’s Law again and went back to the dictionary. It told me Marconi, Guglielmo, was an Italian inventor, 1874-1937, who perfected the wireless telegraph. If Captain Billy had written that cipher in the cave, he certainly wouldn’t have known about Marconi’s code. He died in 1800.
I had to go along with Captain Billy being the one who wrote it because he was so good at making up riddles. I figured it was natural for him to keep right on mystifying people.
So what I was looking for was something old. Something written before Captain Billy died. Something that might have given him the idea. After all, he was supposed to be some kind of pirate or privateer. They went in more for walking the plank stuff than inventing ciphers, which was more mental. I saw Captain Billy with a big sword or flintlock pistol rather than with pencil and paper. Except once in a while. Just for kicks.
So I kept mumbling to myself: Old. Old. It’s got to be old.
Then I found what I was looking for. Or rather it found me.
I was looking in the upper left corner of our drama section, already holding a lot of books in my arm, old ones but still not exactly what I thought I wanted. I reached higher and got another one tipped out so I could see what it was.
That’s how it found me.
I tipped it too far. It kept on going. I couldn’t put my armful of books down in time. So I caught this one with my head.
De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum.
It was a book written by a fellow named Francis Bacon a long time ago. In 1623.
I was right, in a way. Captain Billy didn’t get his code from that fellow Marconi. Because Marconi got his code, too, from this fellow, Francis Bacon.
Only Francis Bacon wasn’t supposed to be an inventor.
CHAPTER 28
Captain Billy’s Ghost Decides To Pay Me A Visit
I guess the main reason Sir Francis Bacon hit me is because my father is some kind of a nut.
His drama collection is quite a big one. It has all the plays from Aristophanes and Euripides and Sophocles and Moliere and Ibsen right up to the present. It includes William Shakespeare, of course, too. But he’s in a special section above.
My old man is a very stubborn guy. According to him there was no such man as William Shakespeare, the playwright. So Shakespeare is on another shelf.
He’s surrounded by books by Francis Bacon and Peele and Marlowe and Ben Jonson. And that’s the whole point of it. According to dear old dad all these books were written by the same man. You guessed it.
Francis Bacon.
I suppose you know that this argument has been going on a long time. My old man isn’t the only one who goes for Bacon in this matter. There are quite a few other people who fell the same way. I’ve got nothing against William Shakespeare and if he wants to say he wrote all his plays that’s okay with me. The big trouble is he didn’t say it.
Francis Bacon took the trouble to say it. Once my dad was pretty heated up about evidence turned up in one of William Shakespeare’s early works. The first edition.
There was a poem. All in cipher. When they broke down the cipher they found Bacon taking the credit for himself.
I looked in the frontispiece of the old book. My pop had written it down, I guess, to remind him he had a good case. Here’s what it said:
“Francis of Verulam is the author of all the plays heretofore published by Marlowe, Greene, Peele and Shakespeare, and of the twenty-two (plays) now put out for the first time. Some are altered to continue his history.”
FR. ST. A.’
Anyway I found what I was looking for in this old book by Francis Bacon with the long Latin title.
It was the code he invented to use in ciphers, wherever he felt like fooling people. If they didn’t catch on, he had the joke on them.
So he was great kidder and liked to tease people. Just like Captain Billy. I guess that’s what brought them together.
Now watch and see how close it was to that Marconi one:
I figured if three great brains like Francis Bacon’s, Guglielmo Marconi’s, and Herky Krakower’s decided that five letters could represent a single letter, in a code, that was good enough for me.
I got my little memo book out and opened it to the page where I had copied out the cipher. I studied it.
X X O X O
X O O O O
O X O O O
X O O O O
X O O O O
O O X O O
O X O O X
O O O O O
O X O O X
X X O O X
X O X X O
Now the trick was to turn Francis Bacon’s cipher code into the crosses and circles that Captain Billy Murdock used in his cipher.
I figured any message would use more of the letter A than the letter B. There were 37 circles and only 18 crosses. That meant, if I was right, that the circles could be the letter A or in the Bacon code, aaaaa, and that the crosses would be the letter B. That would be the second code.
I drew a blank on the first one. That XXOXO. On the second line I got an R. That was for XOOOO, in Captain Billy’s, or baaaa, in Francis Bacon’s.
The next line was OXOOO. That checked with Francis Bacon’s abaaa for I or J.
So far I had BLANK, the letter R, the letter I.
The next three lines gave me, R R E
The next two: K A
The last three: K BLANK Y.
It was a great secret message. As far as I was concerned, it was still a big secret.
“Okay,” I said. “So A isn’t the most popular. We’ll switch.” This time the cross would stand for the letter A and the circle for letter B.
The first three lines gave me F Q Z. The next three was: Q Q BLANK. The next two: Y BLANK. The last three: Y G K.
I glared at book VI of that green-bound De Dignitate etc.
“Francis Bacon,” I said, “You’re a no good rat fink!”
Sinbad whined. I told him what I was so steamed about. “FQZ!” I muttered. “Do we know any FQZ?”
The last one had a chance. That YGK. But only if it was YIK. “Then it would be the way I feel right now,” I told Sinbad.
But I needed a letter “I” for the middle and XXOOX didn’t exactly make it.
“So now what?” I asked Sinbad. He just looked
at me. He cocked his head and made a little sound in his throat. Then he came over, rested his big heavy head on my knee, and looked up with the love light turned on, his little tail wagging. Then he just stayed there quietly.
It was as plain as could be. Sinbad was letting me know he loved me and was going to stick with me until I solved the cipher.
“Okay,” I told him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
I got more paper. I tried maybe fifty more times, skipping every letter, then two letters, then three, then five.
I remembered that Herky Krakower had said I might get a garbled message. He wasn’t kidding. Not only was I getting a garbled message, I was getting a garbled head.
I made myself a couple more sandwiches so I could think better. I gave Sinbad a couple of the big dog biscuits so he could encourage me better. Then back to it.
I was beginning to disagree with my dad about Francis Bacon and to pull for William Shakespeare, who came right out and said what he had to say without trying to foul anybody up.
I was even beginning to get a little annoyed with Captain Billy. Sinbad still had his old head on my knee, as patient as ever, but I got to admit his loyal loving master was chickening out fast.
Then, about down to my last ounce of brain power, I got to thinking a little more clearly. About Captain Billy. And why he ever put that silly cipher up in the cave in the first place. And who he ever expected to figure it out and why.
In the riddle on the tombstone, he was hinting at something but hiding it. Why did he want to be so mysterious? It was kind of stupid to go to all that trouble for nothing.
I was sure this whole thing had something to do with finding his treasure. Captain Billy wanted someone to find it. But having probably gone to a lot of trouble getting it he didn’t want just any dope to find it!
I figured in all the years the riddles and the cipher had been up, hundreds of people smarter than I must have seen them and tried to figure them out. But the treasure had not been found or I would have heard.