Part 14 (2/2)

”You never know till you try,” rejoined Roy. Then he turned to Willie and demanded, ”What was the disc like that you saw?”

”If I knew, I'd make one,” said Willie.

”Well,” said Roy in a tone of disgust, ”you know whether it was a foot across or not, and whether it was round or square.”

”It was round, of course,” said Willie, ”and the same size as the dollar. I told you that before.”

”We can make a disc the size of a dollar, anyway, even if it doesn't get us anywhere,” said Roy, putting the coin on a sheet of paper and outlining it with a pencil. Then with scissors he cut the disc out.

”You saw that disc, or one like it, Henry,” continued Roy. ”What did it look like to you?”

”Just like a spider-web, as Willie says,” replied Henry.

”All right, we'll make a spider-web,” said Roy.

He seized his pencil, made a dot in the centre of the disc, and from the dot drew straight lines that radiated in different directions.

Then he drew a number of concentric circles about his dot.

”I don't see how that helps any,” he said, examining his drawing. ”Yet that's the kind of thing they used to mark that dollar.”

From hand to hand the paper pa.s.sed, and each boy compared it with the dollar. But none was any the wiser when he had finished. Their leader, meantime, sat with his head in his hands, studiously turning the matter over and over in his mind. For a long time he could make nothing of it.

After a while he looked up. ”Let me see that paper,” he said.

Roy handed him the little disc. Captain Hardy laid the disc beside the dollar on the table, and painstakingly examined again the marks on the coin. After a time he took a sheet of paper and across it in a row wrote down the letters of the alphabet. Then he picked up the message and made check marks below the letters in his alphabet as he found those letters in the message. When he had gone through the message, his paper looked like this:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ / // / / /// /// / / / / / /// / / // /

He picked it up and studied it. ”Four T's,” he said, ”three S's, three A's, and three O's. That ought to give us a clue.”

Again he turned to the dollar and began to study it, turning it slowly round, counting the scratches this way and that, making geometric figures of them. Four heads peered over his shoulder as he worked silently with his pencil.

”I can make nothing of it,” he said after a time.

Again he sat in deep thought, his fellows meanwhile once more examining dollar and disc and the figures their leader had made on the paper.

”Four T's,” repeated Captain Hardy after an interval. ”Surely that ought to give us a clue.”

Once more he studied the penciled disc. Then he turned to the dollar and again examined its markings. He suddenly exclaimed, ”Here are four scratches in a straight row.” His eyes began to s.h.i.+ne. Slowly he turned the coin. ”And here are three in another row, like this,” and he indicated the positions of the scratches on the paper disc. ”You notice that each row runs from the centre of the coin toward the edge.

Let's see if there are any more rows.”

Very slowly he turned the dollar. ”And there are three in a row,” he said, indicating the scratches with his pencil, ”and here are three more. You notice that the rows all radiate from the centre, like spokes in a wheel. I believe we are getting somewhere, boys.”

”'Like spokes in a wheel,'” repeated Roy to himself. ”Rows of letters like spokes in a wheel. Four scratches in one row or spoke--these must be the four T's. Three scratches in these other rows must be O's and A's and S's. I've got it! I've got it!” he suddenly shouted. ”There must be as many spokes as there are letters in the alphabet.”

”I believe you are right, Roy,” said Captain Hardy, looking up with a gleam in his eyes. ”That's exactly what I am beginning to think.

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