Aisha has a friend named Jayathri, who lives in a big house on a hill south of River Valley Road.
Notice that I introduced Jayathri as Aisha’s friend, not mine.
Jayathri doesn’t like me. She thinks I’m naughty and irresponsible for being expelled from boarding school. It’s pretty obvious that she hates it when Aisha spends time with me.
Anyway, I told Aisha and Pui that we had to see Jayathri as soon as possible.
Which meant, right away.
I remembered how Aisha once told me that Jayathri had an uncle who worked on ships. He owned a special set of flags which were used to send signals from one ship to another. He also taught Jayathri a way to communicate by making clicking sounds with your tongue, or tapping on the table with your fingernail.
We got to Jayathri’s house within twenty minutes. As I expected, she wasn’t pleased to see me.
“Do you know how late it is?” she grumbled. “Any decent person would be at home getting ready for bed.”
But Aisha told her about Miss Priya, and she agreed to hear me out.
“I heard a strange sound in Miss Priya’s room this morning,” I said. “I didn’t think much of it at first. But then I suspected that it could be a coded message.”
“What did it sound like?” Jayathri asked. “Do you remember?”
I kept still and cleared my thoughts until I could hear the sound again inside my head. Then I tapped slowly on the table and recreated the pattern as accurately as I could, over and over again. It’s a good thing I have a great memory.
As Jayathri listened, her eyes opened wide. She grabbed my shoulder so hard that it made me squirm.
“Is this another one of your silly pranks?” she shouted in my ear. “Are you trying to trick me into saying a bad word or something?”
“No!” I protested. “I really need your help to solve this!”
Pui just stood back and looked sheepish. I guess he was scared of Jayathri too.
“Is this the same code that your uncle once taught you?” Aisha asked Jayathri. “Can you tell us what it means?”
Jayathri released me. She shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe not. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
I rubbed my shoulder and tried to sound as respectful as I could. “Please, Jayathri, I’m sorry if I offended you in any way. Could you just tell us what the code means? We really need your help with this”
Jayathri gave me a funny look and mumbled something.
It sounded like, “nam ho chi tao.”
Before we left, Jayathri wrote down the entire code for me. She explained that this was known as the Morse code, and that people around the world use it to send messages over long distances.
It was all dots and dashes.
You could send a message by using electric circuits to create buzzing sounds. A dot would be one quick buzz, while a dash would be three quick buzzes.
Or you could use flashes of light from a lamp. A dot would be one quick flash, and a dash would be a long flash.
You get the idea.
The person receiving the message just needed to record the dots and dashes, and later convert these into letters.
In my case, I wondered if each tap could be a dot, and each scrape could be a dash.
Jayathri wrote this down for me:
A • –
B – • • •
C – • – •
D – • •
E •
F • • –
G – – •
H • • • •
I • •
J • – – –
K – • –
L • – • •
M – –
N – •
O – – –
P • – – •
Q – – • –
R • – •
S • • •
T –
U • • –
V • • • –
W • – –
X – • • –
Y – • – –
Z – – • •
Nam ho chi tao!
I tried saying it in different ways, but still the phrase made no sense.
I went into my father’s study and asked if he knew what it meant.
He thought for a bit and then replied, “It’s definitely not English. In this region, the people speak over fifty different languages and dialects. Sorry, I would like to help, but it’s hard to tell.”
At that point, we heard a bell jangle out on the street. Pa went to his cabinet and pulled out a long grey coat.
“My friends are here,” he said as he put it on. “I’ll be back late tonight. Some thugs have gathered outside the Adelphi Hotel, and it seems like they might cause trouble. My friends and I offered to help Constable Flint watch the place.”
It sounded dangerous.
“Do you think this is related to Miss Priya’s kidnapping?” I asked.
Pa looked grim. “Yes, but I don’t know how or why. And I hope we get the book back, before the Hanlin Academy finds out about this.”