"Aunt Ursula was crazy over ciphers!" exclaimed Iris, "she was always making them up. But she always called them ciphers, never cryptograms, or perhaps I might have thought that crypt. was an abbreviation. But can't you guess it, Mr. Stone?"
"One doesn't guess ciphers, they must be solved. And this one is of that peculiar kind that needs an arbitrary keyword for its solution, without the knowledge of which there is little hope of ever getting the answer."
"And you give it up?"
"Oh, no, indeed? I shall solve it, but we must find the word we need to make it clear."
CHAPTER XVII
THE CIPHER
"And how would the dime help, if we had it?" Iris pursued the subject.
"I'm not at all sure that it would," Stone replied, "but there must be some hint on it as to the keyword. I tried an ordinary dime, thinking the word we need might be 'Liberty' or 'United' or 'America,' But none of those would work. I tried to think out a way where the date on the dime would help——"
"But you don't know the date!"