CHAPTER XHI

thb cipheb

back at the cabin, with the precious supplies again safely stored away in the kitchen, the Hardy boys and their chums settled down before the fire while Frank and Joe told Chet and Biff about the conversation with Amos Grice. They told the tale of Elroy Jefferson's missing postage stamp collection and about the strange disappearance of the servant, John Sparewell, who had never been heard of since.

"And now we find his notebook among our supplies!" exclaimed Chet. "That's the strangest thing I ever heard of."

"There's an explanation somewhere," said Frank, puzzled.

"How about my idea?" remarked Joe. "Perhaps Hanleigh and Sparewell are the same man."

But Frank shook his head.

"You forget," he said, "that Sparewell was a servant in Elroy Jefferson's home for many years. If Jefferson saw him again he would certainly recognize him, don't you think?"

"That's right. And he has seen Hanleigh, 100

The Cipher 101

The man was at his house the day we visited Mr. Jefferson."

"Then how did Hanleigh get the notebookt" asked Biff.

"We're not sure that Hanleigh was the man who stole our supplies," replied Joe. "We think so, but we're not sure."

"It couldn't be any one else," scoffed Chet.

"I don't know," observed Frank. "For all We're aware, there may be more than Hanleigh interested in this island. Perhaps we have a bigger fight on our hands than we imagine."

"It's certainly a mighty deep mystery," Joe said.

"Well, we may find out more about it if we examine the notebook."

Frank began going over the pages.

First of all, were several sheets of accounts, evidently notes of receipts and expenditures. On one page was listed: "Suit, $35. Necktie, $1. Shirts, $6. Postage, 40 cents." A long list of items indicating that the owner of the notebook was a careful and methodical man whrt kept track of every cent he spent. At the top of the page was written: "October, 1917."

"Why, that's eleven years ago!" Frank exclaimed.

"And Sparewell disappeared fifteen years ago."

"It shows that he was alive for at least four

102 The Mystery of Cabin Island

years after he left the Jefferson place, at any rate."

On the opposite page was a record of receipts, showing money Sparewell had received from various people. These sums were small, showing that Sparewell had not heen enjoying a luxurious existence hy any means.

On the page following the boys came across a puzzling item.

"Appointment with Jordan on Saturday. My condition is worse. Doubt if I will be able to last out the year. Would appeal to J. but am afraid."

"Wonder what he meant by that," said Chet.

"Perhaps it means he was going to die," Joe suggested.

The boys puzzled over the item for some time, then went on to the next page. It had a number of items concerning the stock market, of little interest. Other pages were filled with equally ambiguous and uninteresting notes. Then another page was filled with a crude drawing in the shape of an irregular oval, with a cross marked at one side.

"Looks like a warped egg," commented Chet.

"Looks to me like a map of some kind," Frank said. "Well, perhaps we'll learn some more about it." He turned the page.

Tke Cipher 103

There he found a number of other entries with dates.

"Nov. 3-hire of boat-$3."

"Nov. 4-hire of boat-$3."

"Nov. 6-boat-$5."

"Finished, Nov. 6."

The boys looked at one another, unable to understand.

"He was certainly doing a lot of boating that week," said Frank. Then on the next page he found two words.

"Cabin Island/'

"Ah, now we're getting somewhere. 'Cabin Island.' Sparewell had something to do with this place."

"Perhaps that's why he was making so many boat trips," Joe suggested. "He may have been coming here."

On a sudden inspiration, Frank flipped back the pages until he found the mysterious map.

"This much is clear, at any rate. Take a look at that map, fellows. What does it re« mind you of?"

"Cabin Island!" they shouted.

They had not noticed the resemblance before. Now, it was perfectly clear. Cabin Island was oval-shaped, and in general contour it resembled the crude drawing in the notebook.

"Well, we know now that this man Spareweli

104 The Mystery of Cabin Island

was alive for at least four years after his disappearance from the Jefferson place, and that he was interested in Cabin Island for some reason, and that he probably made several trips here by boat."

"Next page!" said Chet, eagerly.

But the next page puzzled them more than ever. There were several lines written, but, so far as the boys could see, they were simply gibberish.

This was what Sparewell had written:

XZYRM. RHOZMW. XSRNMVB. OVUG. UILMG. MEMV. UVVG. SRTS.

And that was all.

"A cipher message!" Joe exclaimed.

Chet sniffed.

"A lot of good that does us. We can't make any sense out of that!''

"I'd give my shirt to know what that message means," remarked Biff. "I'll bet it is something mighty important."

"He wouldn't have put it in cipher if it wasn't important," Frank agreed. "Well, this is certainly pretty deep. I wonder if Spare-well really was the man who came here and hid our supplies. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that he did come here. There's

The Cipher 105

absolutely nothing in this book to connect it with Hanleigh. His name isn't mentioned from beginning to end." Frank had flipped over the rest of the pages and found that they were blank.

"Why should Sparewell pop up here at this time?" pondered Joe. "Do you think he and Hanleigh may be working together?"

"Perhaps. And still, if Sparewell is still alive, I can't see why this notebook ends where it does. Eleven years have passed since he made these entries."

"He may have kept other notebooks," Joe suggested. "Perhaps he merely kept this one because of the cipher. There was some secret he didn't want others to know, and he kept that notebook in his possession at all tunes, for fear some one might find it and solve the cipher."

"That sounds reasonable. But I'm afraid we can't do much more unless we can learn the secret of that message."

"It's a tough one," Chet commented.

"Ciphers have been solved before this. Have you ever read Edgar Allan Poe's story called 'The Gold Bug?' In that yarn, he had a cipher to solve and he went on the idea that the letter 'e' was the letter most frequently used in the English language," said Frank. "Suppose we

106 The Mystery of Cabin Island

apply it to this case. Looking it over, the let. ter most often used in the cipher is the letter 'm.' If we take'm'to mean'e'------"

"You've got it I" shouted Chet. "I'll bet we'll solve this riddle yet."

Frank marked down the letter "e" above each place in the cipher where the letter "m" occurred. But he was no farther ahead than he was before. Presuming that "m" should really be "e" he found that it occurred once in the first word-for he took it for granted that each dot in the message represented a division between two words-once in the second word, once in the third, once in the fifth and twice in the sixth. This simply rendered the cipher more confusing than ever, for there was no clue as to what the other letters might be.

"If there was a three-letter word in the message," he said, "we might get somewhere. That's how the fellow in the story worked it. He found a lot of three-letter words, each of the same combination of letters, so he gathered that they would mean 'the' because the letter he thought meant 'e' was at the end of each. That gave him two more letters, 't' and 'h,' to work on, and from there he found the cipher easy."

"Mr. Sparewell was too smart for us," said Joe. "He didn't use 'the' in this message at all, from the looks of things."

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"I guess that scheme isn't so good. Well, we have the notebook, and whoever lost it is sure to miss it and come back for it. I think it wouldn 't be a bad idea if we kept an eye on that place where the stores were hidden."

"Catch him in the act!" said Biff.

"If the man is Sparewell, I guess Mr. Jefferson will be mighty glad to know where he is. The police have been searching for the man for fifteen years now. If it isn't Sparewell, he'll have a lot of explaining to do concerning thia little book and how it came into his hands."

"From now on, then, we keep a weather eye on those rocks," Chet declared. "We ought to stand guard."

"I don't think that will be necessary," said Frank. "It would only frighten him away. The best plan is to watch the place from here. We can easily see any one approaching the island and we can watch to see where he goes. If he heads for those rocks, we '11 know we have our man.''

"That means that some one has to stay on the island all the time."

'' I think it would be best. We can take turns at that, so it shouldn't spoil our outing. Somehow, I don't think we '11 have very long to wait. The moment that man finds his notebook is gone, he'll hurry back for it."

The other boys agreed that Frank's plan was

108 The Mystery of Cabin Island

about the best that could be devised toward lay. ing the mysterious thief by the heels. They were tingling with excitement because their outing on Cabin Island had planged them into the depths of a first-rate mystery.

That afternoon they remained on the island. The next day was Christmas and they were preparing to celebrate it accordingly.

But the intruder did not return that day.