THE RIDDLE SOLVED
In the house above the hawk's nest, four boys and a man sat far into the night, examining a marked dollar and trying to unravel the secret of the scratches. From hand to hand the dollar passed and was examined now this way, now that; but the little group could see no meaning in the apparently aimless marks on the silver coin. Had some of them not seen this dollar marked and its message deciphered and sent vibrating through the air, they would have refused to believe that the coin before them carried a message at all. It looked like any dollar that has accidentally become marked.
"To-morrow," said Captain Hardy, "we will turn the dollar over to the secret service, and doubtless their experts will solve the problem quick enough. But I certainly wish we could unravel this thing ourselves. Wouldn't it be an achievement for the wireless patrol!"
"It's going to be," declared Roy positively. "We're going to solve it. We've just got to. We'll show those secret service men that boys are some good after all."
But the word was easier than the deed. Puzzle their brains as they might, search the dollar as they would, they still found no key to the language it spoke.
"Tell me again what the message was," demanded Henry for the twentieth time, and Lew once more passed to Henry the slip of paper on which he had written the message, both in cipher and deciphered, the message he had picked from the air. It read as follows: TRPSLOWAOSEDONBADATSTITY.
T R P S L O
W A O S E D
O N R A D A
T S T I T Y
Long Henry studied the piece of paper, softly reading the message to himself. "Two transports sailed to-day. How did that automobile driver get that message from this dollar?" he asked himself, and again he picked up the coin and turned it in his hand. "If only we had that disc," he sighed, "or a duplicate."
At the word "duplicate," Roy pricked up his ears. "Maybe we can make one," he said.
"Likely!" scoffed Lew.