"I—I don't believe it is going to be so very difficult to translate them."
"Great guns!" said the Captain. "Do you mean to say that you can ultimately translate that cipher?"
The Tracer smiled. "Let's examine it for repetitions first. Here we have this symbol
repeated five times. It's likely to be the letter E. I think—" His voice ceased; for a quarter of an hour he pored over the symbols, pencil in hand, checking off some, substituting a letter here and there.
"No," he said; "the usual doesn't work in this case. It's an absurdly simple cipher. I have a notion that numbers play a part in it—you see where these crossed squares are bracketed—those must be numbers requiring two figures—"
He fell silent again, and for another quarter of an hour he remained motionless, immersed in the problem before him, Harren frowning at the paper over his shoulder.