As the Pussycats sat around the hotel waiting, the Mastermind had pulled his car around the back of the old, abandoned factory. He pulled Alex out of the back seat of the car, and took him inside. He led him up a flight of steps into what used to be an office, and practically threw him in. Then he slammed the door shut on him, locking it as well. He had a few things to take care of. Alex looked around the room. Though the factory was abandoned, there were still furniture and machinery around. Alex spotted a phone on the desk, and went for it. He rubbed his hands against the corner of the desk, until the ropes snapped off.
"I hope this phone works," he said, picking up the receiver. He put it to his ear and heard a dial tone. He breathed of relief and dialed as fast as he could.
Back at the hotel, the phone in Alan's room rang. The others jumped once they heard it.
"That might be the Mastermind," Josie said as Alan picked up the phone.
"Hello?" Alan asked.
"Alan!" Alex shouted. "Boy, am I glad this phone works!"
"Alex!" Alan shouted. He put his hand over the receiver and turned to the girls. "It's Alex, girls. Alex! Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay," Alex said. "But listen, Alan, I don't have too much time to talk here. The Mastermind might come back at any minute, and the phone might konk out as well. I don't know what he has up his sleeve, but something's telling me it's not good."
"Okay, where are you?"
"Well, I don't know exactly, but it's kind of like . . . ."
Alex's voice was suddenly cut off. The line had been disconnected.
"Alex?" Alan asked. "Alex!"
"What's going on?" Josie asked.
"I don't know," Alan said. "Sounds like we've been cut off somehow."
"Let me have the phone," Alexandra said, grabbing it from Alan. "Alex! Alex! Alexander Cabot! This is your sister speaking! You answer me this minute!"
Alexandra didn't get an answer. And she wouldn't. The Mastermind had come into the room as Alex was trying to get word to the others about his whereabouts. When he discovered his prisoner was on the phone, he unplugged it. Alex wasn't aware of his presence until the Mastermind had grabbed him from behind.
"Trying to let your friends know where I'm hiding, eh?" he asked, as he dragged Alex to the other end of the room. He threw him into a chair, and began to tie him to it.
"This should hold you for awhile," he said.
"Wh-wh-what are you gonna do with me?" Alex asked, nervously.
"That's for me to know and you to find out," the Mastermind replied, taking a roll of duct tape out of the desk drawer.
"You and your friends think you're so clever," he said. "Well, we'll just see how clever they are."
"What do you mean?" Alex asked.
"Just a little game, really," the Mastermind said. "We'll just see if they can find out where I'm hiding."
The Mastermind laughed as he tore a piece of duct tape off the roll and placed it over Alex's mouth. Alex let out a shriek, but it was muffled by the tape.
"And, as a matter of fact," the Mastermind said. "I'm hoping they will."
Josie and the gang spent the entire night and most of the next morning waiting for something to happen. Nobody got a wink of sleep. They were too nervous.
"Something better happen soon," Alan said.
"A lot of help your friend Robert is," Alexandra said to Valerie. "He's gone to develop his photos while we're stuck here waiting all night."
"Cool it, Alexandra," Robert said, coming into the room. "I was taking photos of the crime scene yesterday. They may come in handy. And besides which, as I was developing them, Mr. Kennedy asked me to bring something up to you guys. It arrived at the front desk about ten minutes ago."
Robert handed an envelope to Alan. Alan looked at it. There was no return address or stamp, for that matter, so it obviously wasn't mailed. In fact, the only thing written on the envelope was "Josie & The Pussycats." Alan opened it, and pulled out a letter, and an index card. The index card had a series of numbers on it:
75292697 423 7464
"Pussycats," Alan read. "The enclosed index card will lead you to where your friend is. You do not have very much time. Each number on the card represents a letter. You must figure out which letter each number represents."
"And that's going to be easier said than done," Valerie said, looking at the index card.
"Is there anything else in the letter that will give us a clue, Alan?" Josie asked.
"Unfortunately, no," Alan said. "The rest of the letter says that some numbers do not represent the same letters. And it's signed M. M., and there's only one person that could be."
"Mighty Mouse?" Melody asked.
"No, Melody," Josie said.
"Mickey Mouse," Melody said.
"No, Melody," Valerie said, sounding a little exasperated.
"Then how about Minnie?" Melody suggested.
"No, you ding-a-ling!" Alexandra shouted, losing all her patients entirely. "M. M. stands for Mastermind!"
"Oh," Melody said.
"Any ideas on how to crack the code, Val?" Josie asked, looking over Valerie's shoulder at the index card.
"Not a one," Valerie said, handing the card to Robert. "Maybe you could figure out something, Robert. You've always been good at these things. Remember junior high school? In math class, we would get these worksheets where we would solve the math problem, and the answer equalled a letter, and wherever the answer to the problem was on the worksheet, you filled in that letter, until you decoded a message. Robert was always finishing those first."
"Yeah, but this is a little different," Robert said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "For one thing, there aren't any math problems on this thing to solve."
"Maybe the numbers represent letters of the alphabet," Josie suggested. "You know, A equals one, B equals two, C equals three, and so on and so on?"
"Well, it's worth a shot," Alan said.
"Follow me," Robert said. "I have some stuff in my van we can use."
The group followed Robert out to the back of the hotel to where his van was. Most of what was inside of it was photography equipment, but he did have a some notepads, pencils, pens, and some other stuff. Valerie wrote out each letter of the alphabet and numbered them one through twenty-six. Valerie then took the index card, and looked at it. She wrote down the numbers on another piece of paper, and matched them with the corresponding letters.
"Okay, gang," she said. "Here's what we ended up with. G-E-B-I-B-F-I-G, D-B-C, G-D-F-D."
"Gebibfig Debick Gediffed," Melody said. Then she giggled. "Sounds like a tongue twister!"
"What in the world does that mean?!" Alexandra shouted.
"It means we got the code wrong," Robert groaned, ripping the piece of paper off the pad, crumpling it up, and throwing it over his shoulder. Sebastian let his instincts take over, and he began playing with the crumpled up piece of paper, just for his own amusement.
"We'd better try something else," Alan said.
"Gee, I wish my mother hadn't given away my decoder ring," Melody said. "Then maybe we could crack the code."
"Maybe it's a series of phone numbers," Josie said. She took another pad, a pencil and began working with the numbers. Using the San Francisco area code, this is what she came up with:
752-9269, 742-3746, 4
"No good!" she shouted, despairingly. "There's one left over!"
"Yeah, but you might be onto something, Josie," Alan said, and he rearranged the numbers:
752-926-9742, 374-64
"I don't think that's going to help," Valerie said. "There are still too many leftover numbers."
"Wait a minute," Robert replied. "Alan, I think you've got it. Seven-five-two could be the area code. Nine-two-six-nine-seven-four-two could be the actual number, and three-seven-four-six-four could be an extension."
"Robert, that's it!" Josie shouted. She jumped up, hugged Robert, and gave him a big kiss on his cheek.
"Boy, I oughta do this more often!" Robert shouted with a laugh.
"Maybe this is the phone number to where the Mastermind is holding Alex," Alan said. "We'll call it and find out."
Robert took out his portable phone, and dialed the number. He waited for an extremely long period, until he finally got the automatic message.
"We're sorry," the voice said. "But the number you are trying to reach is not in service. Please hang up and try again later."
"No way," Robert said. "The number doesn't exist."
"That figures," Alexandra grumbled. "We'd better think of another way to crack this code."
"Man, TV detectives sure make it look easy," Robert commented.
"Hey, I just got an idea!" Melody shouted with a giggle.
"You have an idea?!" Alexandra shouted, incredulously. "This I gotta hear!"
"We'll call one eight hundred Sleuth!" Melody shouted. "I saw a commercial for it once. If you need help solving a problem, you call one eight hundred Sleuth, and they'll solve it for you! It only costs three dollars a minute!"
"Oh brother," Alexandra groaned. "Melody, that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard!"
"Yeah, Mel, those one eight hundred number things are just scams," Robert said. "I tried this with a psychic hotline once, and I ended up spending three hundred dollars for that phone call, only because I was on hold forever!"
"Well, it's worth a shot," Melody said, taking Robert's phone from him. She dialed one eight hundred, but then stopped. "Uh oh."
"What's wrong, Melody?" Valerie asked.
"I guess we can't call one eight hundred Sleuth," Melody said. "At least not on this phone."
"Don't tell me my phone's dead," Robert said, grabbing the phone. "I just charged it last night!"
"No, it isn't that, Robert," Melody said. "I can't call because you don't have any letter buttons on your phone. Only numbers. We have to find a phone with both letter and number buttons."
"Oh, Melody!" Alexandra shouted, extremely exasperated. "Each letter on the telephone represents a different letter! Two represents A, B, and C, three represents D, E, and F, four represents G, H, and I, five represents J, K, and L, six represents M, N, and O, seven represents P, Q, R, and S, eight represents T, U, and V, and nine represents W, X, Y, and Z! If you wanted to call one eight hundred Sleuth, you'd be calling one eight hundred seven-five-three-eight-eight-four!"
Valerie, Josie, Alan, and Robert glanced at each other.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Robert asked.
"We sure are," Alan said. "Alexandra, you're a genius!"
"But naturally," Alexandra replied, even though she had no idea what she just did.
"Let's get to work!" Valerie shouted. The four of them grabbed pencils and notepads and began scribbling ferociously. Alexandra, Melody, and Sebastian watched them.
"What are you guys doing now?" Alexandra asked.
"Trying out an idea," Alan said. "And I think this is the one that's going to do it."
"All we have to do is write down the letters each number represents from the phone," Valerie said. "And try the different combinations until we find one that spells out an actual word."