M.E.’s eyes grew wide with excitement. “This is so fun! A treasure hunt—for diamonds!”

“Look,” Quinn said, heading for the other side of the Campanile tower. “You can see it from here.” He pointed toward the foothills behind the campus, where a white hotel was nestled. “See that big tower?”

This was the third tower on their treasure hunt, Cody realized. This one belonged to the historic Claremont Hotel. Her mother had taken Cody there to celebrate her thirteenth birthday, and they’d had an afternoon tea party. The hotel had been built back in the early 1900s, and Cody had heard rumors that the hotel had been won in a checkers game by a miner—and was supposedly haunted.

But those weren’t the only rumors associated with the hotel. Cody had also heard that the Claremont Hotel had a special fire escape—a spiral slide—so guests could get out quickly in case of an emergency. Years ago, kids from all over Berkeley would sneak into the hotel and ride the slide. But Cody’s mom had told her that the hotel had destroyed that fire escape and replaced it with outdoor ladders.

“I’ll bet there’s something up there,” Quinn said.

“Diamonds?” M.E. suggested.

Luke frowned. “I don’t know, dude. Maybe someone’s just playing with us.”

M.E. ignored him, clearly excited. “I heard it used to be a castle. I’d love to check it out.”

Quinn typed something into his iPhone, then read. “Says here some old gold prospector struck it rich in the Mother Lode and built the place for his wife. She wanted it to look like an English castle. But when she died, he sold it and then it burned to the ground.”

“How sad!” M.E. said.

Quinn continued reading. “That’s when the guy won the property from the new owners and rebuilt it.”

So that rumor is true! Cody thought. Hard to believe someone would gamble away his property.

“It also says sailors used to signal their loved ones who were staying at the hotel, using semaphore code. Look! It shows an example of a message that a guest received from her sea captain husband.”

Quinn held up the message for everyone to see.

Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.

Cody recognized the flag code and translated each letter aloud.

“Cool,” Luke said.

“Yeah, but does the article mention the spiral fire escape?” M.E. asked.

Quinn nodded. “But it was torn down in the seventies.”

Luke frowned again. Cody knew he would have loved to go down that multistory slide.

“Listen to this,” Quinn added. “Some kids started using the laundry chute as a slide instead.”

Luke perked up. “Dude, that’s awesome! Is it still there?”

“No. Says it’s all boarded up. And get this. The hotel is supposed to be haunted!”

M.E.’s eyebrow shot up. Cody wished Quinn hadn’t said anything about the place being haunted. She hadn’t said anything because she knew M.E. would want to back out.

Quinn continued. “Says here the ghost of a young girl who died in the hotel haunts the fourth floor, and especially Room Four twenty-two. People who’ve stayed there say the TV turns on by itself and the chandelier lights flicker.”

“That’s just another legend,” Luke said. “They probably made it up for the tourists.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Anyway, the Claremont is right there if we take this shortcut. Let’s go check it out.”

“But we don’t know where to go when we get there,” M.E. said.

“We’ll try the tower first,” Quinn suggested. He took another look at the photo Cody had taken. “Hey, wait a minute. Did you guys see that?” He showed them the screen. “It looks like faint letters.”

Before Cody could study the picture, a female student entered the glassed room in the center of the tower. Cody watched as she sat down on a bench, stretched and twisted her wrists, and then began to play the carillon. With her hands curled inward, she pressed on the large rectangular “keys” with the sides of her wrists.

Cody didn’t recognize the tune, but the sound was deafening. All four of the Code Busters plugged their ears.

Cody finger-spelled to the others,

Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.

They nodded and rushed down the stairwell to the waiting elevator. By the time they reached the bottom of the tower, they were able to remove their fingers from their ears, but the bells were still loud. Once outside, Cody listened to the haunting sound of the ringing bells. It gave her goose bumps.

It must take years to learn to play the carillon, she thought, remembering the years she’d spent learning to play the family piano. But since Tana had been diagnosed with severe hearing loss, Cody had given up playing. It wasn’t much fun since she couldn’t share the songs with her deaf sister. In fact, no one in the family had played the instrument since then, not even her mother, who was a good pianist and could play just about any song by ear. Now the keyboard was closed up and the piano held a permanent display of knickknacks and photos.

Quinn pulled Cody from her sad memory. “Cody, let me see your phone again. I want to check that picture you took.”

Cody handed her phone to Quinn. He studied the snapshot, then said, “These are letters!” With a flick of his fingers, he enlarged the screen so he could see the letters better, and read them aloud.

“E-T-U-H-C-Y-R-D-N-U-A-L.”

“Read them again,” M.E. said, pulling out her notebook.

Quinn repeated the string of letters.

“Et-uh-cyrd-nual?” M.E. asked, sounding out the letters like syllables.

“Sounds weird. Maybe it’s someone’s name,” Luke offered. “Etuh Cyrdnual.”

“That doesn’t sound like a name,” Quinn said. He squinted at it. “It’s got to be some kind of code.”

“Let me try,” Luke said. He got out his own notebook and turned to the page with the reverse alphabet code. After trying to match the first few letters of the message with letters of the alphabet, he gave up. “That’s not it.”

“Maybe it’s an anagram,” Cody suggested.

Luke tried rearranging the letters to see if they’d spell any recognizable words. He came up with THE CRY LAND but had two U’s left over. He tried again and wrote LACY THUNDER with one leftover U. Finally, he wrote UNDER CUT HALY using all the letters, but that still didn’t make sense.

M.E. tried it but only managed to come up with more nonsensical phrases like CHURN LATE DUY, DUEL YARN THUC, and CLUE RAD HUT NY.

Then Cody remembered using her mirror to see under the Campanile ledge, which gave her an idea. She took the notebook from M.E. and wrote the letters down in reverse.

L-A-U-N-D-R-Y-C-H-U-T-E

Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.

“That’s it!” Quinn said. “That’s where we have to go when we get to the hotel!”

“Yeah,” Luke said, “unless it’s been destroyed, too, and we find another dead end.”

Cody had stopped listening to the boys. She’d spotted a man in a black baseball cap standing only a few feet away reading a newspaper that covered his face. When he turned the page, Cody noticed he had a big black mustache and dark sunglasses. Then she noticed that his newspaper was upside down.

Whoever it was had been within hearing distance of the kids the whole time they’d been discussing the hunt for the diamonds.

Diamond Dave?