“Hello, Charles. Why the stormy brow?”
Lord Peter Wimsey had paid a call upon Chief-Inspector Charles Parker of Scotland Yard, who was his brother-in-law.
“Hello, Peter. It's just the latest torment from that Hanratty fellow, from America. Ever since we were on the Allied staff together during the Great War, he has been sending me the story of his latest triumph over crime and challenging me to tell how he did it. The man seems most insufferably pleased with himself.”
“And what is the latest, pray tell?”
“It seems that California is a hotbed of crime nowadays. No sooner had he done away with the
K3 Gang
of bootleggers than the K2 Gang of drug-smugglers took their place. Look at these newspapers he's sent me.”
Parker gestured at a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle for August 15, 1929; its headline read “Graf Zeppelin Attempts Flight Around World”. Alongside it on the desk lay the following day's Chronicle opened up to the classified advertising section.
“For some time he and his men had been trying to discover how the head of this gang was informing the underlings, without ever meeting in person, where to collect their hidden drug packets."
"Then one day a source at the newspaper told him that every Thursday morning, about an hour after the paper was out on the streets, an unknown caller would telephone to place a classified advertisement to appear the following day. And it was always a very queer sort of advertisement. Look.” Parker pointed to an ad circled in red pencil. It read:
odious
FAWTVKWXTWATHHDDFFNA
HWQIZJZVKZLENNJWQPJL
UMMNNZNSUNSSNANSZRMS
GCCISCSUESSGIRBJCAGS
XGRBVRQHCLVMWCOPWCLV
HIHXIICKIOMXPZXEMXON
“Very curious indeed,” said Lord Peter, his nose twitching with interest. “It certainly looks like a cipher. Do you know what kind?”
“We are informed that a
type K2 substitution cipher
is definitely involved, at least in part. It's a hallmark of that gang. In this method, the ordinary alphabet is substituted-for by a scrambled cipher alphabet that is prepared using a keyword.”
“For example, if 'odious' were the keyword, the cipher alphabet would begin with that word, leaving out the duplicate letter 'o':
ODIUS.
Then the unused letters of the alphabet would follow in order, still without duplicates:
ODIUSABCEFGHJKLMNPQRTVWXYZ.”
“I've tried deciphering the message using the normal plain-text alphabet and that cipher alphabet:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ODIUSABCEFGHJKLMNPQRTVWXYZ
so that every 'O' in the cipher text comes from an 'a' in the plain text, every 'D' from 'b' and so on. But the result was all rubbish.”
“A sensible, if inauspicious start,” said Lord Peter. “But did you try any of the other rotations of the same cipher alphabet, in the same sequence but with different initial letters, such as
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCEFGHJKLMNPQRTVWXYZODIUS
or
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
BCEFGHJKLMNPQRTVWXYZODIUSA ?”
“Yes,” groaned Parker. “I tried them all. But none of them are any good. I know that the K2 method has to be part of it, but there must be something else they've done to complicate the cipher, and I simply don't see what it is or how the gang members would find any keywords to work it. I'm at my wits' end. Blast that confounded Hanratty!”
“Now, now, Charles,” said Lord Peter. “Tears, idle tears ..... Wait a moment! This reminds me of the way we solved the affair of Major Tod Milligan and his dope-ring. Let me see those newspapers.”
Lord Peter took a fresh sheet of paper, uncapped his fountain pen and started writing, looking back and forth between the newspapers.
After a few minutes' work he frowned. “Oh, dear. I was quite sure I understood how this scheme worked, but the line I've produced so far doesn't look at all like the kind of message we're looking for.
Still, let's keep on and see where we get.”
Several minutes later Lord Peter's worksheet bore six complete rows of letters looking very much like the ones in the newspaper.
“Peter, it looks like so much rubbish again. This is discouraging,” sighed Parker.
The two men stared silently at the worksheet. Then, Lord Peter's face lit up in a sudden smile.
“Charles! Oh, ye of little faith! It is the message we've been looking for. You just have to look at it in the right way, do you see?” Lord Peter waggled his hand at the letters.
“Oh, yes, now I see it. 'Degrees' ... 'minutes' ... and I think they sound just right for California.”
“This is splendid, Charles. We shall go to my club and celebrate with a bottle of fizz. And then you must tell me what other interesting cases you've been working on.”
If you're curious to know what Lord Peter Wimsey recalled about Major Milligan's drug ring, you can read about it in Dorothy L. Sayers' mystery novel Murder Must Advertise, published in 1933.
But you don't need to read that to solve the puzzle. All the key information you need is in the story; you just need to work out how to use it.
The cache container is a magnetic key case. The location is likely to be pretty busy during the day most days, but you could probably still pull off a stealthy grab if you palm the container while feigning interest in the item it's attached to.