I have no excuse. Just read and hopefully enjoy, and I hope this maybe sort of makes up for it!
Chapter 14: Ciphers (Part 1)
(Blue's POV)
"I cannot believe we just set the Declaration of Independence down right here on your father's dining room table! I don't want to know what kind of explosions have been happening on here, Ben!" I exclaimed.
"Shhh!" he hushed me. I glared. He knew I hated being shushed. "Dad can't—"
"Looks like animal skin," Patrick interrupted him. I had half a mind to tell him that it was, in fact, animal skin. Animal skin treated with lime. "How old is it?" He asked when everyone turned back to the said document.
"At least 200 years."
"Really? You sure?"
"Pretty darn," I sang, a little too obviously. Everyone looked at me oddly.
"Now, if this thing's in invisible ink, how do we look at it?" Riley asked, breaking the awkward silence.
"Throw it in the oven," Patrick suggested.
Everyone immediately turned to him and dismissed the idea; well, not me. It would have been the smart thing to do, but oh, no! We just had to go and use lemon juice on it, didn't we? Yes, of course. How else would it be done? Oh, I don't know. THROW IT IN THE OVEN?!
"Ferrous sulfate inks can only be brought out with heat." On the tip of my tongue, Patrick. On the tip of my tongue.
"Listen to the scientist, y'all. It'd be smart," I insisted.
"Yes, but this—" Abigail started.
Yes, keep going, keep going...
"—Is very old," Ben said. And... gone! "This is very old, and we can't risk compromising the map!"
Patrick shrugged and stepped away down the hall. With the pizza box and wine glass in hand. "You need a reagent."
"I still say listen to the scientist," I muttered.
"Dad, it's really late. Why don't you get some rest?"
"Oh, he's fine," I said at the same that Patrick said "I'm fine."
The not-yet couple glared at me and Riley tried to but failed miserably, ending up snickering instead.
Ben faced the Declaration once more, me still grumbling about how it was wrong to do this on the dining room table. And not tell Patrick about it. However much I wanted to hold a grudge against Abigail, I didn't want her to get fired for this.
"Lemons," Ben stated.
Oh, yes. Lemons galore were sure to come if I had my way in the match-making game. Ben and Abigail, you had better watch out.
I only realized that this was, in fact, not what Ben was talking about when Riley picked up a bowl of yellow citrus slices and handed it to him. Inward sigh.
He took a single lemon before setting the bowl back down, a lot more forcefully that he probably should have. I could see he was trying to gather up the strength to drip the juices onto the Declaration, and he seemed to do so rather quickly. I was mildy surprised as he began to bring his hand down—the Ben I had known would have taken days just staring at it to finally do that. Well, I hadn't seen him who-know-how-long. People change. I'm sure I had, too, and I recognized that it was probably not for the better.
"You can't do that."
Suddenly, Abigail's gloved hand was encircling Ben's wrist, preventing him from carrying out his act of insanity.
"But it has to be done."
The Germans always have a counter. "Then someone who is trained to handle antique documents is going to do it."
By now they were face to face, and I was restraining myself from slamming their heads together and forcing them to accept the fact that they just worked!
He nodded slightly, and I could tell he was thinking her eyes were really pretty, even if I only had the view of the back of his head. "OK."
She smiled gratefully before taking a Q-Tip and the lemon slice from Ben's hand and rubbing them together.
Evil smirk.
She rubber her forehead with her wrist quickly when she leaned away. "Now, uh, if there is a secret message, it'll probably be marked by a symbol in the upper right-hand corner."
Ben looked absolutely fascinated as she continued to squeeze the juices onto the Q-Tip. "That's right," he whispered. I smiled quickly before falling back into my professional façade. Well, I tried. The little hint was a smirk was still there, and I could tell when I saw that Riley was staring at my face with an odd expression.
Abigail took a deep breath in and out before giving a hollow laugh. "I am so getting fired for this."
We all leaned in and watched as she held the Q-Tip over the document, hesitating before finally bringing it down and stroking the parchment several times int eh corner to reveal the supposed symbol.
We all waited. And waited. And waited some more. But nothing was happening. Abigail turned to look at Ben, who did as well. She was about to say something terrible, I was sure of it. Well, I couldn't blame her. I was feeling a little down, but I had a thought. Until somebody stole it right off the tip of my tongue.
"I told you." We all looked over at the elder man that I hadn't even noticed enter the room. "You need heat." Sometimes, I swear...
The not-yet couple glance at each other and seemed to reach the same conclusion. They leaned down towards the paper, their faces nearly touching side-by-side.
They let out simultaneous breaths of hot air, which I figured would not be that effective. But I was still on that wrong-streak, I suppose.
And there it appeared. The symbol of the Freemasons, right out of the invisible ink.
"See?" Patrick said, nodding and smiling.
I snapped back up and away from the table doing a little happy dance. Riley had turned around and was watching me, amused, while Ben and Abigail were just looking excited, lost in each others eyes... no, of course not. But soon, though.
"We need more juice."
"We need more heat."
Oh, Abigail, you could not be more correct there. You, my dear, could at least recognize that he likes you. At least try to before he does, then it makes it less awkward, mmkay? No? Fine, be that way.
888
Lemons were grabbed, hair-dryers were lugged in (why did Patrick still have my old one here?) and brushes were pulled from cabinets. Again, why did he still have my old paintbrushes?
Abigail pushed the hot air out on HIGH from the hair-dryer while Ben wrote down the seemingly random sets of numbers that emerged from the back of the Declaration.
What did Riley and I do? Well, Riley sat there and stared on in awe while I was comfortably perched on the back of the couch, looking on with an 'I told you so!' look set into my features. As I said: listen to the scientist.
"That's not a map," Riley noted.
"No dice, kid," I replied.
"You're younger than me: that doesn't work."
I shrugged.
"More clues," Patrick sighed. "What a surprise."
Geez, where did he get his ninja license? I hadn't noticed him until now! Again!
"Are those latitudes and longitudes?" Riley pressed.
"That's why we need the Silence Dogood letters," Ben said.
"That's the key?"
"Yeah. 'The key in Silence undetected'," Ben nodded to Abigail, then turned to Patrick, now done copying numbers. "Dad can we have the letters now?"
Oh, no. Not that look. Bad, bad, bad, something has gone wrong, and it's bad.
"Will somebody please explain to me what these magic numbers are?" Riley exasperated.
"Aw, is the poor kiddy-widdy confused?" I baby-talked. He glared at me through those (adorable) glasses until I resented. "It's an Ottendorf cipher," I said before anybody else could get to it. YES!
"Oh, OK. What's an Ottedorf cipher?" the Confused asked again.
I stifled laughter. "They're just codes. Each of these three numbers goes to a word in a key. Usually a book or a newspaper article that seems random to people on the outside, but obvious to people who are on the inside of the operation."
"In this case, the Silence Dogood letters," Ben continued for me.
"So it's like... the page number of the key text, the line on the page, and the letter in that line." Ben showed Riley what I was talking about on his little Staples notepad.
"So, Dad, where are the letters?"
Back to trouble. Again with that look.
"You know, it's just by sheer happenstance that his grandfather..."
"...Dad..."
"...even found them. They were in an antique desk from the press room..."
"...Dad..."
"...of The New England Courant. That's a newspaper."
"Dad, where are the letters?"
Ah, yes, there you go! Ask the question, Ben, don't go off on a tangent and sound like a broken record. Dad... dad... dad... oh, it makes me sick.
"I don't have them, son."
I knew it. I just knew it. Yup, this is bad.
Ben looked a little shocked, but was more on the 'I'm still computing... please wait' phase.
"What?"
"I don't have them."
Ben flopped into a chair and began peeling off his gloves with his teeth. I began searching for another slice of pizza. We were going somewhere, I knew it, and I was not about to be hungry on the way there.
He cleared his throat. "Where are they."
"I donated them to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia."
"Good for you, Patrick! That's so generous," I praised, which seemed to brighten him up a little bit. Abigail and Riley, the two unoccupied at the moment people sent me wicked looks. Hey, they could starve in the car. I wasn't going to. That was there problem, not mine.
"Time to go," Ben nodded and stood up.
He slung on his jacket and I went to stand next to Abigail, who looked like she might be sick.
"You OK, hun?"
I put a hand on her shoulder for comfort. "I still can't believe it. All this time, no one knew what was on the back."
I nodded in understanding, smirking. I wasn't the only one who figured out the fault in her words. Time for some people to find out the truth. Now at least it wasn't my wrong-doing.
"The back of what?" Patrick stepped towards the parchment and lifted it up before anyone could get to it. I didn't even try.
"Whoa!"
"NO!"
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
Well, I certainly would have done that too, if I were him. I mean with "IN CONGRESS. JULY 4, 1977" staring you right in the face, I would have had a heart attack as well. Especially since it was sitting on his dining room table.
"I know," Ben tried.
"Oh, my God. What have you done? This is... this is the..."
"I KNOW!" Ben shouted at him.
Whoa! Down, boy!
"This is the Declaration of Independence!"
"Yes," Abigail said, taking it with her gloved hands. "And it's very delicate."
Oh, because he doesn't know that. I continued to eat my pizza with a smirk on my lips, but I don't think anybody really noticed. I guess I was glad about that.
"You stole it?"
Riley pointed to Ben when Patrick looked over at him.
"Dad, I can explain, but I don't have the time. It was necessary. And you saw the cipher."
"And that will need to another clue, and that will lead to another clue!" OK, I've about heard enough of that. "There is no treasure. I wasted twenty years of my life. And now you've destroyed yours. And you pulled me into all this, too."
Ben, for a moment, had looked torn. But, as always, he bounced back and hid his emotions beihind that wall he so constantly kept up. He needed to get it down, and the only way to do that was through this girl. Well, at least in my opinion. Friends are important, too, and all that, but a guy has got to get the girl. That'll make 'em happy. Especially this one: she seems like a nice match for him. Hence all my non-goody-two-shoes thoughts.
"Well, we can't have that."
The next part to this will be up soon! I give up on promising, but it should be up in the next two days, at the most!
xxIrisxx