The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope Page B

don't want to go around blowing my own horn, as Colonel Van Spurter would probably say, but I think we've got it at last!'
    "By heaven, Eleanor, I believe you're right!" Dick put up his own hand and laid it over mine for an instant. "Now let go of my shoulder before you tear it to pieces, and come here and let's see what we can make of all this. It must be something very simple, as I seem to keep repeating over and over again. I presume the real message is hidden somewhere in the other words: the ones we were meant to regard merely as space-fillers."
    "And you have to count every third word or so in order to read it?"
    "Not the words, I'm afraid — there aren't enough of them that would make sense if you tried to fit them into the kind of message this must be. 'Meet' and 'evening' might do, and perhaps 'invitation' or 'violence' at a pinch; but what about 'elegant rich music' and 'utmost respectability' and all the rest of them? No, I think that the real message must be made up somehow out of the letters that form the words themselves. Wait a moment while I get a sheet of paper and some ink . . . Now, taking first things first, I will begin by writing down the first letter of every word if you will read them off for me."
    "B," I read obediently. "M — E — E — M — U — E — R — M — A — I — L — L — B — A. That doesn't sound very promising, does it?"
    "It does not. Suppose we proceed to the second letter of every word."
    "E — E — V — V — A — S — L — "
    "Never mind the second letters. Let's try the third."
    We tried the thirds and the fourths, and the fifths, and even the sixths, before we were convinced that success did not lie in that direction.
    "Very well, then," said Dick, in a determinedly cheerful voice. "We'll have to try combinations — the first letter of first word, the second letter of the second, and so on. That system seems a little stiff for one of old Jasper's intelligence, but I suppose it might do. After all, Peaceable can probably judge old Jasper's intelligence better than we can."
    We worked out every possible combination of letters until our fingers were cramped and our brains dizzy with writing them down. The clock in the hall was solemnly chiming four when we finally lifted our heads to look at each other in despair.
    "We're all wrong," I said hopelessly. "It must be something about the words themselves."
    "It can't be the words, Eleanor. The longer I think about it, the more I feel convinced that we're on the right track — we've just made a mistake somewhere, perhaps a very simple one, if we only had the wits to see it. Try once again before we go on to anything else."
    There followed a long silence, while we clawed through the scattered papers and sat poring over our blotted lists with our chins on our hands.
    "Eleanor!"
    "What is it, Dick?"
    "Look at this a moment. It's the list we made out of the first letter in every word: B — M — E — E — M — U — E — R — M — A — I — L — L — B — A. Where did that M come from?"
    "It was the first letter of 'meet.' "
    "And that U?"
    "The first letter of 'us.' "
    "And the A there, the one after the M?"
    " 'At.' "
    "Then that's where we made our mistake. You're supposed to leave out the words with the capital letters — the ones that make up the false message. They're not part of the cipher at all. Do you see what that man has done? The capital letters would instantly draw an enemy's attention to the false message. At the same time, they would serve to jumble and confuse the real message if he were clever or suspicious enough to break through to it as we did. And at the same time, they would also act as signposts to warn old Jasper not to pay any attention to them! There's the true Peaceable touch for you! Scratch them out and look what you have: B — E — E — M — E — R — M — I — L — L. And that, my dear Eleanor, seems to me very astonishingly like the two words, 'Beemer Mill.' "
    "Beemer