Chapter XVII: A Change in Ciphers

For some moments there was a complete silence in the room. The members of the wireless patrol looked at one another in astonishment, questioning with their eyes the meaning of this new turn of events. Captain Hardy sat staring at the message before him, his brow wrinkled, his eyelids drawn close together, trying to find some new clue to the puzzle before him. And until he spoke, the lads of the little patrol forbore to utter a sound. So for some time the room remained as silent as a tunnel.

At last the captain glanced up from his paper and noted the intent looks bent upon him, and the deep silence. He shook off his abstraction.

"It looks as though we were up against it," he said. "Every minute I feel more certain that something serious has happened. Why should they be sending radio messages at this hour, when they have never sent them before excepting after the transports sailed? And why should they now use a new cipher? Their plan evidently was to use radio communication as little as possible, lest they be detected. So they sent nothing by wireless but the most important news--the news of ship movements, which had to be got to Germany at once. All other messages they conveyed in some slower but safer way. We know they used the telephone, and sent messages by a boy, and wrote on dollars, and carried messages by motor-car, and probably sent code letters through the mails. For all ordinary correspondence they used these slower, safer methods. Only when they absolutely had to, did they employ the wireless. So we must assume that they had to now."

He paused and glanced from face to face. "But why the change of cipher?" he continued. "It must be because they fear that the old cipher will be understood."

Again the captain fell silent. "What can have happened?" he inquired soberly, "that makes the use of wireless so imperative? What can it be? Only something new and unforeseen. And what could there be new and unforeseen except the detection of their plot? More and more I am convinced that these plotters have been alarmed."

He fell into a brown study for a moment. "This message can mean nothing else," he said after a little. "It is imperative that we learn what it is at the earliest possible moment. Make four copies of the message you took, Henry."

Captain Hardy's first lieutenant took the paper from his leader's hand and on four sheets of paper copied the string of letters he had picked from the air.

"Now, boys," said the leader of the patrol, when the copies were complete, "put your thinking caps on. Each of you take one of these copies and see what you can make of it. You know how we deciphered the other cipher."

In another moment four boys were wrinkling their foreheads as they bent over the cryptic strings of letters. And over the room came a hush deep as midnight's.

For a few moments nobody broke the silence. Each boy was busy with his own thoughts.

Henry was scowling at his paper. Willie was studying the letters before him, as in earlier days he had studied the landscapes about Camp Brady and the Elk City reservoir. Lew already had a hopeless look on his face. At threading the forest he was second to none in skill; but at untangling mental puzzles, he had small ability. The nimble-witted Roy was already setting about his task with that keenness so characteristic of him.

"Sixty-five letters," he said to himself. "If this cipher is anything like the other, those letters must be arranged in columns of equal size."

For a second he sat scanning the letters. Then he muttered, "What will divide sixty-five evenly?" And a moment later, he answered his own query by adding, "Five, and thirteen."

He paused and again ran his eye along the row of letters. "If this cipher works like the other there must be five rows of thirteen letters each, or thirteen rows of five each. I'll try the five rows first. That's more like the other cipher."

Swiftly he set down the five rows of letters, thus:

E E A N N R D B O E U N R
Y W S E U T T E R O N S N
N F E E I A Y W M N V T T
A S A N X J U L E I G O K
W S N V A T Y I Z L E T K

Eagerly he ran his eye down the columns of letters, as he had become accustomed to doing with the old cipher, but the letters were unintelligible. Next he read the letters across the rows, but with no better result. The eager look faded from his eyes.

"I'll have to try the other," he said, and began to make his letters into rows of five each, thus:

E E A N N
R D B O E
U N R Y W
S E U T T
E R O N S
N N F E E
I A Y W M
N V T T A
S A N X J
U L E I G
O K W S N
V A T Y I
Z L E T K

With renewed eagerness he ran his eye down the first column. "E-R-U-S-E-N-I-N----" he began, then stopped short in disgust. "Nothing doing that way," he muttered.

Then he read the letters across the rows: "E-E-A-N-N----"

"They've got me stopped," he said. And he threw down his pencil and sat staring at the paper before him, twisting the letters into every shape he could think of, but to no avail.

Meantime each of the other members of the patrol was going through much the same process. Lew gave up first, acknowledging himself beaten. Henry sat scowling and working away industriously. Dr. Hardy tried first one combination of letters, then another, but in vain. Willie had laid out the letters in exactly the same way Roy had. But Willie worked differently from any boy in the group. The rest had been feverishly setting down letters as new combinations presented themselves to their minds, whether the combinations seemed logical or not. Willie first arranged his letters in the long rows and sat for many minutes looking intently at them.

At Camp Brady it was Willie who had learned, better than any other member of the patrol, the lesson of observation. When the patrol was practising scouting, which is only another name for close observing, Willie had sat for hours studying the landscapes, even when his fellows teased him. Thus he had learned to see everything within sight and make note of it. And when a guide was needed later, to conduct a party through the midnight woods in quest of the dynamiters' lair, Willie was the scout who was able to do it. He had observed perfectly and so carefully noted what he saw that even in the darkness he could find his way.

So now he examined his long rows of letters until he knew everything about them; and he was certain they told no story. When he was certain, he rearranged the letters, as Roy had done, in rows of five each. Then he laid down his pencil and began another careful search. He read the topmost line from left to right, and from right to left. It made no sense. He took the second and found no meaning in it. Another boy might have skipped the others, but not Willie. Each of the thirteen rows he studied forward and backward.

Then he ran his eye down the first column, just as Roy had done. It spelled nothing. But when he began at the bottom and came upward, an eager light leaped into his eyes. He could make nothing of the lowest five letters; but the eight above certainly spelled two words: "nine sure." If the message was in English, Willie knew he had found something definite to work on. He could make nothing of the second column, either upward or downward. But the third column gave him distinctly the words "twenty four." The next column yielded more words: "Six twenty."

By this time Willie's eyes were flashing. He turned to the bottom of the last column and began to read upward. A single glance confirmed his suspicion.

"Captain Hardy," he cried, jumping over to his chief, and laying his paper on the captain's desk, "begin at the bottom of the last column and read upward. I believe this cipher is exactly the opposite of the other."

Willie's fellows dropped their pencils and gathered eagerly about their leader as he slowly read the letters, beginning at the bottom of the last column and reading upward and backward in the exact opposite of the way the former messages had been deciphered.

"K," he read, "I-N-G-J-A-M-E-S-T-W-E-N-T-Y-S-I-X-T-W-E-N-T-Y- O-N-E-T-W-E-N-T-Y-F-O-U-R-B-A-L-A-K-L-A-V-A-N-R-E-N-D-E-Z-V- O-U-S-N-I-N-E-S-U-R-E."

"Hurrah for Willie!" cried Roy, who had been putting down the letters as Captain Hardy read them off. "He's solved the problem. Who says boys aren't any good? I'll bet you----"

But Roy was interrupted by his mates. "Read it to us," they demanded.

"It's a funny message," said Roy, and slowly he read the following: "King James twenty six twenty one twenty four----" Then he stopped. "I can't read the next words," he said.

Captain Hardy took the paper from Roy and read the entire message. "King James twenty six twenty one twenty four Balaklavan rendezvous nine sure."

"What a queer message," said Henry. "What does it mean?"

"It means," said Captain Hardy, "that the Germans have done their very best to deceive us. They not only changed their cipher, but they sent their message in code. We have read their cipher, but we know no more than we did before. We can never work out their code. All we can do is to guess at the meaning. Our difficulties, instead of being ended, are just beginning. I am more and more convinced that this message is important."