When they had finished, the blackboard bore the following, the first line being the original code letters, the second the letter figures of these, and the third the figures of the word "Hohenzollern" with the first "h" repeated for the fifteenth letter:
I i i t f b b t t x o r q w s b b
| I | ii | t | f | bb | tt | x | o | r | q | w | s | bb |
| 9 | 35 | 20 | 6 | 28 | 46 | 24 | 15 | 18 | 17 | 23 | 19 | 28 |
| 8 | 15 | 8 | 5 | 14 | 26 | 15 | 12 | 12 | 5 | 18 | 14 | 8 |
"Why thirty-five for that double 'i' and twenty-eight for the double 'b's'?" asked Barlow.
"Add twenty-six—the total number of letters in the alphabet—to the letter figure for the letter itself," said Thurber. "That's the one beauty of this code, one of the things which helps to throw you off the scent. Now subtracting the two lines we have:
"1 20 12 1 14 20 9 3 6 12 5 5 20
"We've got it!" he cried an instant later, as he stepped back to look at the figures and read off:
"A t l a n t i c f l e e t
"It was a double code, after all," Thurber stated when he had deciphered the entire message by the same procedure and had reported his discovery to the Secretary of the Navy over the phone. "Practically infallible, too, save for the fact that I, as well as Doctor Albert, happened to be familiar with Jules Verne. That, plus the doctor's inability to rely on his memory and therefore leaving his key words in his brief case, rendered the whole thing pretty easy."