A red wagon, red seat, orange rumble, red mudguards, blue
steering-wheel, red bumpers, blue wheels, red engines, red varnish, red
open body, red machinery, red all over, in fact, except where it
isn't--is for sale.
So much of this somewhat extraordinary letter Halkett very carefully and
slowly perused; then, still studying this first paragraph intently, he
wrote down on his pad the following letters in the following sequence,
numbering each letter underneath:
R O Y G B I V S W A
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
The letters represented, up to and including the letter V, the colors of
the solar spectrum in their proper sequence: red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, and violet. The letter S, which followed the letter V,
stood for _schwarz_, which in German means black. The letter W stood
for weiss, white; the letter A for _argent_. Every letter, therefore,
represented some color or metallic luster; and these, in turn,
represented numbers.
And now Halkett took the opening salutation in the first paragraph of
his letter--"Dear Green." The color green being numbered 4, he found
that the fourth letter in the word "dear" was the letter R. This he
wrote down on his pad.
Then he took the next few words: "A red wagon, red seat, orange rumble,
red----" etc.
The first and only letter in the word "A" he wrote down. The next word
after "wagon" was "red." The color red indicated the figure 1. So he
next wrote down the first letter of the word "wagon," which is W.
Then came the word "seat." The word "orange" followed it. The color
orange indicated number 2 in the spectrum sequence. So he found that in
the word "seat" the letter E was the second letter. This he wrote.
Very carefully and methodically he proceeded in this manner with the
first paragraph of the letter, as far as the words "all over," but not
including them or any of the words in the first paragraph which followed
them.
He had, therefore, for his first paragraph, this sequence of letters: