We sat in front of a computer monitor, going over the Booth diary page for at least the 50th time. There was something, but it looked like nothing to the group.

"We've been looking at this page for hours. There's nothing there."

"Ben, I really don't think we're going to find anything on this page."

"In a hundred years, no one's going to remember anyone involved in the Lincoln assassination besides Booth."

"That's not true. Do you know the expression, 'His name is mud'?"

"Yes. Of course."

"You do? You know the origin of the expression?"

"Does anyone but you?"

I do!

"Dr. Samuel Mudd was convicted of being a co-conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. The evidence was circumstantial. He was later pardoned, but it didn't matter. Mudd's name still lives in infamy. And l will not let Thomas Gates' name be mud."

Inspiration moment come and gone. Back to the present!

"Ben."

"What?"

"Look at this."

We focused our eyes on a darkened area of the page. If memory served well, the darkened area was one of the coupled letters of the Playfair cipher.

"See that?"

"Oh. That's quite something, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It says 'smudge.'"

We glared at Riley. He could be so… ugh!

"It's nothing."

"Residual ink from the facing page. Flip it."

Abigail turned over the page so that the coupled letters would show up.

"The letters are backwards. It's a cipher. Yes."

"It is."

"A cipher. See how the letters are coupled? Playfair ciphers encode letters in pairs. This could prove his story."

"Unless you decode the cipher, this does not prove a theory."

"That's OK. We need a five-letter keyword."

"What's the keyword?"

"I don't know yet."

I do! But so does Patrick, unknowingly.

"All right."

"Uh, can I get a printout of this?"

"There's a billion words in the English language. Got to be a logical... Let's start from the beginning. A. Aardvark."

Not 5 letters, Riley!

"Don't want to rain on your parade here, but I don't think this is gonna stop Dr. Nichols from announcing the discovery of the page tomorrow."

"No, now, wait. Can't you ask him to wait until I prove Thomas is innocent?"

"What if he isn't innocent?"

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Abigail, have you learned nothing from being around Ben and Riley and me?

She handed Ben the copy of the page and left. I stood by Ben and waited for him to make a move so that I could follow him. We headed back to Patrick's home and Riley tried every five-letter word he could. So far, none of them worked. Riley just reached the B's when my pager went off.

"Excuse me."

Betsy: check the news. Now.

I went to Patrick and saw him on the computer. Dr. Nichols was already announcing the discovery of the Booth diary page.

Betsy: any plans for restoring the Gates family honor?

Me: Playfair cipher found on page. Working to find right five-letter word.

Betsy: where at?

Me: B

Betsy: you are really far behind. Go to front door.

I went to the front door to find a duffel bag with my title embroidered on the front.

Me: ok. Where are you?

Betsy: outside the house, but I need to leave. Use pager in emergency. Cellphone inside.

I checked on the cellphone for any text messages.

Betsy: use this for regular contacting. Let me know when you need to attend a party.

I smirked. She would have a dress and accessories, fancy and covert, for me if I needed to attend a formal event. I put the duffel bag on the couch and went to check up on Ben and Patrick.

"They have no understanding. You know the truth. That's all that matters. You heard the story from Grandpa."

"The story? This guy's got evidence. He's got everything. We have a story. We have nothing. For one brief moment, the Gates family could hold its head up. Now we're a bunch of crazies."

"But we're not liars. Wilkinson is saying that Thomas Gates was a mastermind to one of the darkest hours in U.S. history and he burned the diary page to cover that up. You and I both know he burned the page to keep Booth's men from finding the treasure. That's what we're going to prove. Only one way to prove it."

"Find the treasure."

"You've got to find it. You're going to help me find it. So come on. Let's hear the story again from Grandpa Charles."

"Grandpa heard his father say, 'Treasure map.' Then there was a commotion."

"Got all that. Anything after that? Anything he said, something he did? Anything at all?"

"Wait a minute."

YES! YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!

"What?"

"He took his son's hand (took Ben's hand). He looked him in the eye, and he said, with his dying breath, 'The debt that all men pay.'"

"'The debt that all men pay'?"

"The debt that Thomas paid."

"That's five letters."

"Oh!"

WWWWHHHHHOOOOOOOO HHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I really wanted to a victory dance! But I saved it for a rainy day. We rushed to where Riley was.

"Try 'Death.'"

"What?"

"It's the keycode. The debt that all men pay is death."

"All right."

Riley typed in "death" and the cipher began to work. The only problem was that the whole cipher didn't show up. There was a lot more work to be done than I had hoped, but this also meant that there were a set of tests for Ben to pass. I felt very nostalgic for a brief moment.

"L-A-B-O-U-L... It's Lab-ool... Lab-ahl... La... It's gibberish."

"Laboulaye!"

"Laboulaye!"

"Laboulaye! What is that?"

"It's a who. Édouard Laboulaye. Where's the phone?"

"I don't know. Can't find anything in this mess."

"Temporary 'til I find a new place."

"Find the old one. I like her."

Ben did eventually find the phone and called Abigail. Conveniently, she was at a formal event and met up with Mr. Wilkinson on the discovery of what we found on the Booth diary page.

"We cracked the cipher. It's 'Laboulaye.' The cipher spells 'Laboulaye.'"

Abigail was probably thinking it means nothing since Laboulaye was a famous writer in France, but he did appreciate the US. He was an abolitionist himself.

"Or maybe there was a treasure map like Thomas Gates said there was, and Laboulaye had it. We only got a partial on the next word. L-A-D, lad... ladder... L-A-D."

"Aladdin! Aladdin?"

And then…

"Thank you, Abigail! Laboulaye Lady. Do you know what Laboulaye was planning right around the time Lincoln was assassinated?"

I do! But no one ever calls on me!

"There's a map or a clue to a map on the Statue... She hung up."

"She took your call. That was good."

I giggled. Sometimes the funniest of things happened in the oddest of times. Here was the thing: Édouard Laboulaye was the one who had written about a statue for the US to have to represent liberty.

"You're saying there's a treasure map in the Statue of Liberty?"

"Laboulaye was a Mason. They built clues into everything."

"Did you learn that from my book?"

I shook my head. Patrick had known about Mason history and culture longer than Riley had been alive. Of course he didn't learn from Riley's book! Now, here was the other thing.

"So the only question is, which Statue of Liberty?"

"Exactly." Riley paused and looked at Patrick. "Is there more than one?"

Uh, YEAH!

"There are three, actually, Riley. One is in New York, one in the Luxembourg Garden."

"But he only referred to one as his 'lady.'"

And it wasn't the one in the US. We had to pack our bags and have our passports set.

"We are going to France!" I announced.