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."