AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So if he added the ‘but then,’ there was a reason?”
“Most definitely.” She turned another page and tensed. “Wait a minute. You said you found out that my father used secret codes and substitution ciphers to keep his mob account books secret?”
“That’s right.”
“Then maybe this phrase is a substitution code. Do you know how they work?”
“Pretty much. You substitute one alphabet letter for another. The parties trying to communicate have the key, so you know what letter to substitute for another. Dates all the way back to at least Julius Caesar.”
Gibson started clicking keys and increased the font size so the phrase loomed large across the screen.
Now you see it, but then you don’t.
“So you think each letter represents another letter?” said Francine.
“Possibly. I actually have software that drills down on that, because the debtors I chase use all sorts of stuff, including secret codes.” Gibson opened a program and then plugged the phrase into it. “It works fast, but it’s not always conclusive.”
Five minutes later the program disgorged several possibilities that, to both their minds, seemed nonsensical.
“Harry’s housekeeper told me that he was almost never there,” said Francine. “And Nathan Trask confirmed that.”
“Okay, so where was he the rest of the time?” asked Gibson.
“At another hidey-hole of his, probably. Wait, what if the treasure is at one of those hidey-holes and this code is giving us the location?” suggested Francine.
Gibson glanced at the words with renewed interest. “If itisan address, it would probably be both numbersandletters.”
“Which complicates the unraveling even more, I know,” Francine mused. “Okay, let’s try the simplest first. Let’s take the first letter of each word and give it its alphabetical numerical equivalent. So breaking the phrase down, each first letter is N-Y-S-I-B-T-Y-D. Now give each letter the alphabetical equivalent.”
Gibson executed on this and looked at the line of numbers corresponding to their place in the alphabet: “Fourteen, twenty-five, nineteen, nine, two, twenty, twenty-five, and four. Anything strike you?” she asked.
“Yes, confusion,” said Francine.
“Could it be a hybrid?”
“Meaning?”
Gibson said, “Some substitution of numbers for letters, but then maybe some of the letters actually represent words.”
“Okay, which ones?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Let’s take Harry literally. The lettersbandtfrom the words ‘but then’ are represented by the two and the twenty. Is that significant? Since it’s clear he added ‘but’ before ‘then’ to make it ‘but then.’”
Gibson looked at her notes. “Wait a minute, we forgot about the ‘take away the eight’ part.”
“Okay, but how do we do that?”
“Well, if we follow the same substitution cipher, eight represents the letterh.”
“So we take away thehin the word ‘then’?”
“So it becomes ‘ten,’” said Gibson.
“Which means it now reads, ‘Now you see it, but ten you don’t.’” She looked at Gibson. “What the hell does that mean?”
The blood slowly drained from Gibson’s face. “Oh my God.”
