“Well, why don’t you go on?” David demanded, impatiently.
Billy regarded the questioner in genuine astonishment, tinged with contempt. His gaze darted to the other two, and, on realizing that they, as well, were still uncomprehending, he groaned.
“Non-rationalizing nincompoops!” was his candid murmur of reprobation. “Oh, well, I shall explain, if it be possible to your understanding,” he said gently, with an assumption of infinite patience. “As you musical sharps are aware, the musical notation comprises only seven letters, namely——”
“Oh, never mind that!” Saxe cried. “We know!”
“Pardon me,” was the retort. “You only know it as a matter of technical knowledge, not as a fact from which to reason. The point is that there’s no K in the musical scale.”
“Well?” The monosyllable snapped from Roy. His face was set intently, the chin a little forward, the eyes hard.
“The thing is simply this,” Billy answered, beaming. “The late Mr. Abernethey, on account of the lack of the letter K in the musical notation, was compelled to resort to an expedient. He could not indicate the word ‘Lake’ on his cipher, since he was without either L or K. He evaded the difficulty by employing the initial letter from a word of direction, Largo, which provided the necessary L, and he got around the lack of the letter K by using the French word for Lake—lac. This fragment at the head of the sheet spells for us, ‘Bedlac’.” He pointed to the phrase again, as he concluded.
“So, we have only to do a bit of translating from the French lac into the English lake, and then to amplify by supplying the obvious preposition and article, and the writing declares clearly: ‘The Bed of the Lake.’ It now remains for us to study this page until we learn just where under the water of the lake out there the gold is lying. Somewhere, somehow, this music tells!”