The Curse of the Ancient Emerald by Franklin W. Dixon Page B

demanded.
    â€œWe’re curious,” said Frank.
    Kruger sighed. “Last night I was about two hundred miles away. Sleeping in a horrible motel, if you must know.”
    â€œCan you prove it?” I asked.
    â€œWhy should I?”
    â€œPlease, sir,” said Frank. “Just do this for us and we’ll leave you alone.”
    Kruger muttered something I couldn’t hear and fished around in his wallet. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me.
    â€œI’ll do it since you’re Fenton’s sons. This is a receipt from the motel, so I can claim expenses.”
    I studied the receipt, then handed it to Frank.
    â€œSir,” he said. “We’re really sorry. We . . . we messed up.”
    â€œCan I go now? I’m tired.”
    â€œOf course.” Frank handed back the receipt, and we both hurried back to the car.
    We sat in our seats and stared out the window at Kruger. There was movement inside as someone—a guy who looked to be a few years older than Frank—flicked back a curtain to see who was outside. Kruger waved up at the window, and the boy waved back. I figured it must be his son, the one he’d mentioned when we first interviewed him.
    â€œSo . . . ,” Frank began.
    â€œBoth have alibis,” I said.
    â€œYup.”
    â€œWhich means we’re no closer to knowing who it is than we were yesterday.”
    â€œYup,” said Frank.
    I pulled the ten-dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it back to Frank. “Better hold on to this then.”
    Frank took the money and started the car. “Where to?”
    â€œHome. I want a proper breakfast, and then I need to sit down and think this case through.”
    â€œMe too,” said Frank with a sigh.
    No chance of that, though. As we pulled into the driveway, both of us saw an envelope sticking out of the mailbox.
    â€œHere we go again,” I muttered, running to grab it while Frank drove the car into the garage.
    When he joined me, I tore the envelope open. It was two pages long this time. The first was a note to us, made once again from letters and words clipped from magazines and newspapers.
    Tick-tock, boys. Midnight tonight is the time. See you there?
    I turned to the next page. It was filled edge to edge, top to bottom, with the numbers one and zero handwritten over and over again in random patterns.
    I turned it over. Nothing on the back.
    Frank took it from me. “This looks like binary code,” he said. “It’s used in computing to encode instructions.”
    â€œCan you read it?”
    Frank laughed. “No.”
    â€œSo what are we supposed to do with it?”
    Frank tapped the paper to his chin. “Maybe we scan it into a JPEG, then use text recognition to turn the scan into actual numbers again?”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œThen we search on the Internet for what those numbers mean,” he said, hurrying through the door.
    â€œOkay. Sounds like you know what you’re doing.”
    Frank already had the letter in the scanner by the time I got to his room. We waited while the scanner buzzed and whined. Then the numbers flickered to life on Frank’s monitor.
    â€œNow what?” I asked.
    â€œNow I search for a handwriting recognition website.”
    I flopped onto his bed and leafed through a graphic novel. I knew from past experience it was best to let Frank do his thing with computers. He tended to get irritated if I hovered at his shoulder.
    â€œDone,” he announced about ten minutes later. “I ran the scan through a website, and it sent me a Word file.”
    â€œAnd what’s next, O Wise One?”
    â€œNow I copy and paste the binary numbers into a converter.”
    â€œAnd you’ve managed to find a binary converter?”
    Frank looked at me. “Binary isn’t some kind of rare, magical language. It’s computer code. Pretty well known.”
    â€œIf you say