With this in mind, he jotted down the alphabet backward, so that he had two rows of letters. Then he picked up the cipher again.
The first word was “XZYRM.”
By replacing these letters with the corresponding letters in the other column he discovered that he had the word “CABIN.”
Frank leaped to his feet with a shout of delight.
“I’ve got it!”
The others came running over to the desk.
“Have you solved it?” demanded Joe excitedly. “How did you do it? What does it say?”
“It’s as simple as a-b-c. It was so easy that it looked hard. The man just turned the alphabet backward. Look! The first word is ‘cabin.’ ”
“The rest of it! The rest of it!” exclaimed Biff.
“I haven’t tackled the other words yet. Wait a minute. I’ll have them in a jiffy.”