The Caves of Fear: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story. Goodwin Harold Leland

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      Mrs. Brant couldn't have caused a more sudden reaction had she tossed a lighted firecracker into the middle of the roast.

      Barby knocked over her water glass.

      Scotty gasped, "Great grasshoppers! A book code!"

      Rick strangled on a sip of milk, and when he could get his breath again, he ran around the table to his mother, kissed her soundly and lifted her hand high in token of victory. "The new champ," he proclaimed. "Mom, you're a genius!"

      "But, Rick, I didn't say anything except…"

      "You said just enough, dear," Hartson Brant replied. "We all had the answer right in that second, because you gave us a clue. Do you remember the code our former friend used when he was sending messages off the island?"

      The "former friend" Hartson Brant referred to was a member of the staff who had turned renegade and helped Manfred Wessel's gang in their efforts to build a moon rocket, using the Spindrift design, in order to win the Stoneridge Grant of two million dollars. The traitor scientist had used code messages to keep the gang informed of new developments on Spindrift while he had used the cloak of false friendship to slow up the building of the Spindrift rocket.

      "He used a double code," Rick explained. "Part of it was a regular cipher, but the first step was a book code."

      "I do remember!" Mrs. Brant exclaimed. "He used a copy of that book Hartson's friend wrote. What was it? Psychiatry Simplified. The code was numbers that gave the page of the book, and the position of the word on the page, and unless you found the book, as Rick and Scotty did, you couldn't break the code!"

      Barby jumped up in her excitement. "And I know what book Chahda was using!"

      The rest of the group spoke as one. "The World Almanac!"

      Scotty ran for the library, Rick on his heels.

      "We told him about that code," Scotty said. "Now I remember when, too. It was right after we got back from India, when we were showing him around the lab."

      "I remember, too," Rick agreed. "We were telling him how the gang used my plane, with me flying it, to smuggle their coded messages, and he asked us about it because he had never heard of codes before!"

      They reached the shelf that held the Almanac and stopped short. Because of the year-to-year news summaries in the famous annual, Hartson Brant had kept each edition as a reference source. There were over a dozen of them on the shelf.

      "They're all different," Rick said. "The pages change each year. Which one did he use?"

      Scotty's forehead furrowed. "Which one did he memorize? It was an old one, but I can't remember the date."

      "Got it," Rick said. "Remember the letter L? The twelfth letter of the alphabet. It must be the 1912 edition."

      Scotty surveyed the shelf. "Which we don't have," he said.

      Rick groaned. "No!"

      Hartson Brant called from the dining room. "Haven't you solved that cipher yet?"

      The boys walked dejectedly back to join the others. Rick explained that the right volume was missing. The Spindrift files just didn't go back that far.

      "Sit down and eat your dinner," Hartson Brant said. He sliced roast for them, his eyes thoughtful. "Something's wrong with your reasoning," he said, as he filled Rick's plate. "Would Chahda have a 1912 edition with him in Singapore? I doubt it. More likely he'd have a more recent one."

      "But the letter L has to mean something," Barby protested.

      "What could it mean but twelve?" Rick asked, and the answer struck him before the words were out. He shouted, "I know! It could mean fifty! L is the Roman numeral fifty."

      Barby clapped her hands. Scotty reached over and pounded Rick on the back.

      "That's it," Hartson Brant said approvingly. "I'll make a wager on it. Chahda used the 1950 edition."

      Rick pushed back his chair, but the scientist's voice stopped him.

      "Let's rest on our laurels, Rick. Finish dinner first, then we'll all retire to the library and work it out."

      Because they were burning with impatience, the three younger members of the Spindrift family did not enjoy the meal, but they made a pretense of eating. Then, an eternity later, Hartson Brant took the last sip of his coffee and grinned at Rick. "Shall we get to it?"

      "Shall we!" Barby led the way, holding the cable high.

      The first part was easy. Since most pages in the Almanac had three numbers, they assumed that the first three numbers in each code group referred to the page. Similarly, they assumed that the second two numbers referred to the line. That left two numbers for the position of the word on the line.

      With nervous fingers Rick turned to Page 521 of the 1950 edition and counted down 30 lines. He hesitated over the subtitles, then decided to count them too. At the proper line, he looked up at Scotty and Barby who were watching over his shoulder.

      "But there are two columns."

      "Don't worry about the columns," Scotty advised. "I don't think Chahda would pay any attention to the columns, because it would mean extra numbers in each group. Count right across and don't pay any attention to the dividing line."

      Rick did so. "It doesn't come out right," he complained. "The number is 39, but there are only 17 words on the whole line."

      Barby sighed. "Maybe we're wrong all the way around."

      "I don't think so," Hartson Brant said. He was sitting in a comfortable chair, smoking an after-dinner pipe. "The logic of the thing appeals to me. Do you suppose Chahda would know about nulls?"

      "What's a null?" Scotty asked.

      "In cryptography it's a number, or letter, thrown in for the sake of appearance, or to confuse."

      "Chahda might know," Rick said. "That brown head of his is crammed full of more odd chunks of information than you could imagine. But if there's a null in this, which figure is it?"

      "Try it both ways," Barby urged. "Here, I'll do it." She counted across the line. "The third word is 'seventeen.'" She wrote it down. "The ninth word is 'come.'"

      "Could be either," Scotty mused. "But 'come' sounds more likely. Let's try the next group."

      That was 6231581. Rick turned to Page 623 and counted down 15 lines, including the title. However, he didn't count the page heading. The heading was on the same line as the page number. Both were above a line drawn across the top of the page, and it seemed sensible to start below the line.

      "There aren't 81 words on the lines," he said. "So that means another null, maybe. The first word is 'both' and the eighth word is 'may.'"

      Barby wrote them down. "It all makes sense," she pointed out. "It could be, 'Seventeen may,' or 'come both.'"

      "Keep going," Scotty urged. "Try another one."

      The third group gave them a choice of "Cheyenne," which seemed unlikely, or "bad."

      "He couldn't be talking about Cheyenne," Rick said. "The word must be 'bad.' СКАЧАТЬ