Chapter Fifteen

Alice stood in the taproom doorway. “I have an idea.”

“Now, my dear, why don’t you just go back up those stairs an’ hop into bed.”

“No, no, I have an idea about the message. Give me some paper and a pen.” While Barkis gathered the supplies, Alice looked at the earlier attempts at solving by substitution.

She then said, “Now, you see, since the custom is to arrange letters in a group of five, I eliminate the last letter of each group. Now if I take the first five letters from the sequence of six that ends in ‘a’ I get ‘squod.’ That means something to us, does it not?”

We all agreed it did.

“Now let’s do the same thing with the sequence that ends in ‘b.’ and ‘c,’ and ‘d.’ We get ‘hehidthediamond’ or, adding the ‘a’ letters, ‘squodhehidthediamond.’ Do you see it? ‘squod he hid the diamond.’ That tells me that the sixth letter is the answer. There is a different substitution for each group of five. In the first word, ‘J’ equals ‘a’, and in the second ‘K’ equals ‘a’, and so on. Go ahead and solve the puzzle.”

Barkis had the substitution disc and went to work immediately. “I have it. The message is ‘i visited brother squod he hid the diamonds entrusted to me by the order.’ That leaves us with two new questions.”

I said, “Yes! Who, or what is the ‘order’?”

Blathers said, “Yes! And where are the diamonds?”

One puzzle solved; two new ones created.

The taproom door opened again.