Chapter Thirteen

There was a bit of uneasiness in the taproom. I wondered what our worthy host was up to. Blathers was rolling his eyes and scratching the back of his neck. Alice was wrinkling her brow as if to ask what was going on, and Clara seemed to be hoping that Barkis, himself, would not make a fool of himself. In the back of the building, where Clara and Barkis maintained their personal quarters, there were the sounds of banging and what might have been some swearing. Finally, we heard, “Ah! Here it is.”

It was only a matter of seconds before Barkis appeared in the doorway with a diary or notebook of some kind and a small bronze disc. “I found them. This here’s a cipher disc I brought from the war as a souvenir. I were sick o’ killin’, so’s I didn’t want no knives or guns or that sort. This here book and the disc belonged ta me mate what were part of the spies at one time. I’ll show how it works. There’s a few pages on decipherin’ things. I thinks I can make use o’ these on this here cipher.”

Barkis pulled a chair up to the table where the rest of the party was gathered. There was a sense of awe among most of the group, although Clara seemed to still have some feeling of apprehension. “Now, love, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I feels quite sure I can make sense out o’ this. First, let’s see what the book says ’bout decodin’, and then we should look at the things Mr. Duff has listed, the things he has found strange.” I produced another copy of my analysis. “Then we’ll use the disc.”

Barkis took charge of the analysis. “Says here one thing we can do is—what’s that word, Mr. Duff?” Barkis pointed to the book.

“Frequency.”

“Right, frequency analyzin’. We counts the number o’ each letter, and then we arranges them ’cordin’ to how letters appear in the English language. Like it says here, “e” is the most frequent letter.”

Alice said, “Well, let’s give it a try. Lets each count the letters and see if we can spot the most frequent one.” Everyone counted the letters separately.

Clara finally said, “How many letters are there in all?”

Alice answered, “Seventy-one and a dash. The dash must mean something.”

Clara began to count again. “I only have sixty-eight.”

Blathers said, “I have sixty-five,” and began his recount.

At last everyone agreed on the count of seventy-one. “This don’t make any sense.” Barkis studied the results of the count. “The most of any letter is five and that happens four times. Next is four letters and that happens four times, as well. That’s half the letters. It don’t look—what’s the word, Mr. Duff?”

“Frequency.”

“That’s it. It don’t look like there be any frequency ta make note o’.”

Clara said, “Oh! I’m sorry, dear. Let’s try to figure out another approach with Mr. Duff’s list. He makes the most lovely lists, doesn’t he?”

Barkis balked. “How ’bout this here decodin’ wheel? Let’s give it a try. Says here in the book that it works ta help find the message when one letter is substituted fer ’nother.”

I asked, “May I see your wheel, Mr. Barkis?”

The device was two different size circles of bronze connected on a hub at the center. The bottom disc was larger. The one on the top rotated on the center hub. Each disc had the alphabet imprinted on it. “Here’s what we does, ya see. We figures that one letter in the code is equal ta ‘A’, and we sets the letter ‘A’ on the small disc to that letter. What letter does ya want ta try first?”

“Why, ‘C’ for Clara, my dear.”

“Then we’ll do ‘C’, and ta keep us from bein’ confused, we’ll use large letters for the code and small letters ta show our answer. So, if ‘C’ is equal to ‘a,’ what we does is set the decoder so that ‘a’ on the small disc is below ‘C’ on the large disc.”

Barkis started writing letters on a sheet of my paper. When he finished, we looked at the results.

pcpzph bmljzi xcqnaj qosmby

gdghcz thedia bnpoeb ugpvtc

xvwhgd xsqife dymjtf xjkx~g

I took the wheel and checked Barkis’ work. He was correct.

“But, dear, this doesn’t make any sense. Are you sure this is the way this little thing works?”

I said, “Don’t worry, Clara, I am quite certain Barkis is correct. We simply need to try other letters. Let’s try ‘B’ for Barkis. ‘B’ is equal to ‘a’.” Again I checked and verified the results. Again we were disappointed.

Blathers scratched the back of his neck. “If we do ‘B’ for Blathers, I think we’ll get the same answer.” He said all this without a grammatical error. “And if we use ‘A’ for Alice we don’t get nothing different.”

“Using ‘A’ for Alice won’t give us anything different, Mr. Blathers.”

“That’s correct. If we end up with nothing, we won’t have anything.”

Alice said not a thing.

Blathers went on, “So, we have answers for ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. We should try ‘D’ for Duff.”

“D” for Duff produced nothing:

Alice said, “Only twenty-two more letters to go.”

Blathers was getting impatient. “We can go along like this all afternoon and not get the answer.”

I agreed, at least this one time, with my partner. “I think just finding the right letter to start on is too simple. The code has to be more complicated than that. We’re missing something.”

Alice asked, “Do you think the fact the message is arranged in units of six letters in lieu of five is a clue?”

“I am not sure. Let’s look at my list again.”