Barby jumped up in her excitement. "And I know what book Chahda was using!"
The rest of the group spoke as one. "The World Almanac!"
Scotty ran for the library, Rick on his heels.
"We told him about that code," Scotty said. "Now I remember when, too. It was right after we got back from India, when we were showing him around the lab."
"I remember, too," Rick agreed. "We were telling him how the gang used my plane, with me flying it, to smuggle their coded messages, and he asked us about it because he had never heard of codes before!"
They reached the shelf that held the Almanac and stopped short. Because of the year-to-year news summaries in the famous annual, Hartson Brant had kept each edition as a reference source. There were over a dozen of them on the shelf.
"They're all different," Rick said. "The pages change each year. Which one did he use?"
Scotty's forehead furrowed. "Which one did he memorize? It was an old one, but I can't remember the date."
"Got it," Rick said. "Remember the letter L? The twelfth letter of the alphabet. It must be the 1912 edition."
Scotty surveyed the shelf. "Which we don't have," he said.