Chapter 15
Nancy had now pulled a chair up next to Frank so they could share the screen and take it in turns to take command of the keyboard.
"This is like looking for a needle in a haystack!" Frank complained as Nancy pushed the keyboard across to him again so he could take over for a while.
"I'm starting to see double," she agreed rubbing her eyes. "I think we're barking up the wrong tree by looking for clues on the University website, maybe we should change our strategy?" She stood and went briefly to look out of the window for a bit of respite. It was snowing again.
She returned to the desk and watched as Frank went into another page on the site and started visually scanning. Eventually he exhaled noisily and slumped back. "Professor Hope did a good job hiding that code. I fail to see how any of his students would have had more luck than we are."
"Maybe they had more information to work from?" Nancy suggested. "Time for a break," she announced. "I spotted a jar of hot chocolate in the kitchen, fancy a cup?"
"Go for it." Frank muttered.
Nancy left and headed downstairs to see Mrs Holliday. She went from room to room but couldn't find her, eventually detecting the noise of a vacuum cleaner high above in the large house. So, rather than disturb her, Nancy went to the kitchen herself.
Opening and closing cupboards, she eventually found the cups just as Mrs Holliday entered the room.
"Oh," Mrs Holliday said, surprised. "You don't have to do that Nancy, I'll make it."
"It's okay Mrs Holliday. Would you like something?" Nancy asked, fetching another cup.
"That's very kind of you, my dear. Tea is my chosen beverage."
"Sit down for bit," Nancy invited. "You've been on your feet all day, it's time for a break." She smiled and they began chatting while waiting for the kettle to boil. Eventually, Nancy was leaning up against the counter, cupping her drink to her cheek and enjoying the warm vapour hitting her face.
They were interrupted mid-sentence by the sound of Frank running down the stairs. He leaned over the banisters and beckoned to Nancy urgently. "Come quick," he said. "I think I found something."
Nancy grabbed Frank's drink and followed up after him. When she returned to the computer room, she found Frank sitting again in front of the PC.
Frank accepted the cup from Nancy and waited for her to sit down. "Meet Pandora," he said by way of an introduction and toasted his mug at the screen.
In front of her was the program that Frank had been talking about. The front page of which featured a stylised Grecian representation of what someone would expect Pandora to look like – a pretty girl in a white toga with plaited, long brown hair and wearing bangles around her biceps. She was holding a puzzle box with the word 'Hope' on the front. Underneath, it invited the player to make his or her way through ten rounds in order to earn a 'surprise'.
Nancy's interest was piqued. "So it's another woman already?" she quipped.
Frank nodded sagely. "I was going through everything I knew about the Professor, hoping for inspiration. Then it occurred to me that the eulogy had spoken about a 'game' that the professor had devised in order for the students to find the code. Then it hit me right between the eyes that Pandora might have been the game he was trying to direct the competitors to."
"So the 'surprise' element at the end of the ten rounds could be the code?" Nancy asked.
"That's what I'm hoping," said Frank. "I'm not doing too badly with it, but I've only managed to get through four rounds so far. It's more difficult than it looks."
"How does it work?"
"Pretty simple, I'll show you." Frank started the game up to give Nancy a demonstration.
The first screen opened to show 10 facedown tiles or counters with Pandora's face on the back of each. There was a minute on the virtual timer. Frank clicked on a tile and it flipped over so show a cherry. The next one had an apple – in the meantime, the first tile had turned back over again. He repeated until he found another apple and then went back to where he knew the first apple was. There was the sound of a bell and the two counters flew into the box. He went on to repetitively turn over all the tiles until he had cleared the screen. He made a few mistakes but easily completed it within the allotted time threshold.
"So you see," he explained, "on each subsequent round, there are ten more tiles and a little more time is added to the clock. After a while it starts to get really confusing!"
Frank was about half way through round two when Nancy started indicating when he was going to the wrong tiles. "No, it's not there, it's there…yes, that's the one…no…yes, there…its twin is that tile…click on that one and you'll have a set…" she was saying and pointing at the screen every time he made a mistake.
Eventually, he snapped good-naturedly. "Why don't you have a go if you think you're so good at it?"
"All right then, I will!" Nancy said and took the mouse from him. In no time at all, and much to Frank's chagrin, Nancy was through round five and onto six, barely having taken a wrong turn.
"How do you do that?" he asked peeved as she began turning over new counters.
"Because I've got a photographic memory. I can remember what and where each tile is," she tapped her head. "Total recall!"
He started to laugh, and then stopped when he realised she wasn't joking. "No way – are you serious?"
Nancy smirked. "Why do you think you got beat so often at Gin Rummy? Whenever I fanned the cards out in front of you, I read them and set to memory what order they were in, and then I did a trick shuffle. I knew what moves you'd be making before you did."
"You cheating devil!" he exclaimed.
Nancy stuck her tongue out. "I'm a PI, but I never claimed to be an honest one."
"That's a neat trick – I wish I could do that!" he said.
"I wish I had your powers of logic and deduction." She said. "Okay, final round," she muttered. "I much prefer word games."
Frank laughed. "You're running out of time."
She shook her head. "No problem!" she said, and turned over the last eight, burying them all into the box almost as quickly as Frank could blink. Round ten was conquered; she'd won and was going to get her surprise.
The screen started to flash and virtual fireworks flew out in all directions, exploding loudly across the screen. Pandora came dancing into view. She went up to the box, opened the lid and then winked. Out shot four tiles, this time they were multi-coloured and proceeded to fly from one end of the screen to the other, performing a cat and mouse chase. Eventually, the fireworks began to slow down and the counters stopped their frantic travelling and settled into a row. Pandora pointed to them, smiled and then walked off silkily.
This time, instead of Pandora's face being on the back of them, they each had a mixture of different images and letters.
"Well, that was exciting – it's lucky neither of us is an epileptic after that light show!" Nancy laughed. "Doesn't look much like a code to me though."
Frank leaned in closer. "But don't you think it's interesting artwork?" he asked. "If I was a betting man, I would say Professor Hope was providing clues rather than the actual code."
They performed a screen print and ran off a color copy, which they both then studied.
Frank rested his finger on the third tile. "The picture in the middle of the tile is of an arm holding a trident. Now I'm no expert on Greek mythology, but isn't that something to do with the god Poseidon?"
"Yes it is," Nancy agreed. "And look at the letters underneath. Doesn't 'FL' mean Florida?"
They both regarded one other for a few seconds and then Frank turned back to the computer and keyed in the address for a search engine. He entered 'Poseidon, Florida USA' into the search bar. It came back with a few thousands hits, but the one that leaped out at them was the Universal Studio, Orlando site. Frank selected it and they were faced with the image of a sculpture, probably moulded from fibreglass which bore a more than striking likeness to the image on the tile of an arm protruding from the ground, thrusting a trident to the sky.
"I recognise that, it's an attraction called "Poseidon's Fury." Nancy said, excitedly.
"Looks like we might be going on a trip," Frank ventured.
"What about the other tiles?" Nancy asked, turning her attention back to the printout. She pointed at the first one. "This one had has a picture of what looks like an Olympic torch – or never ending fire. That's the symbol for the Greek goddess Hestia. Underneath are the letters WDC."
"Washington DC?"
"Run a search on it."
Frank did as he was bid. At first, nothing seemed to jump out at them, so Frank ran the name 'Hestia Greek Goddess' through 'images' and a picture of a 6th Century Tapestry was offered to them. He selected it and was taken to the website of a 19th century mansion called Dunbarton Oaks located in the Georgetown neighbourhood of Washington DC.
"Bingo!" Nancy shouted.
Frank suddenly realised he hadn't drunk any of his chocolate drink so he allowed himself two minutes to sit back, relax and think. "So there are four tiles," he said eventually, "the first of which is Hestia and the third Poseidon. So that's an 'H' and a 'P'. What are the chances that the other gods' or goddesses' names will begin with an 'O' and 'E'. Making up the word HOPE."
Nancy took another look at the document. "Ah, in that case, I can maybe suggest who the second god is. I thought the picture was of lobster-claws, but they could be from a crab. Thinking back to my student days, the god Oceanus had crab-claws growing out of his head. No letters underneath this time, just little blue wavy lines with a triangle above."
"That's not a triangle; it's a trapezium – an isosceles trapezium to be exact. It's symmetrical," Frank said.
"Show off!"
"You can talk! Memory girl."
Nancy narrowed her eyes at him. "Is it just me, or does that look like a crude drawing of a boat on water?"
"It does a bit. Let's try 'Oceanus Boat' in the search box," Frank suggested and went back to the computer. "Okay, there's a company called Oceanus Boat Cruise Tours based in Mexico."
Nancy shook her head. "I'm not sure Professor Hope would have wanted to send people that far out. A cruise would have been too expensive for your average student." She scratched her chin. "Try 'Oceanus Ship' instead."
He did and they were surprised when a site came up for a cruise ship called 'The Spirit of Oceanus'.
Frank entered the site.
Nancy voiced her doubts again. "But wouldn't a cruise just cost the average student the earth? Have you ever seen how much they cost?"
"Yeah, I know how much they cost. Mom's on one at the moment. Dad had to practically re-finance the house to get her a ticket."
"Your mom is on a cruise?" Nancy asked.
"A once in a lifetime trip with Aunt Gertrude. The last time I heard, they were off the ship and hiking in Italy. We hadn't heard anything from her for a few days." He suddenly sat back with a troubled expression. "Oh no – I wonder if Dad's even been able to tell her about Joe?!"
Noting the downturn in Frank's mood, Nancy leaned across and gave him a hug and then all at once, realisation dawned. She pulled back to look at him. "I just worked out how Con knew about us. I told Vanessa that it was Laura who told me about you. She must have mentioned it…"
"…and someone put two and two together," Frank finished.
"I'm really sorry, Frank," she said, reddening.
Frank ran his hand through her hair. "Hey, don't worry, there's nothing we can do about it. Don't sweat the little stuff, let's worry about this instead." and went back to the computer. "The Spirit of Oceanus It isn't a cruise liner, well, it is, but it's permanently moored at Key West in Florida and is now used as a restaurant, hotel and club at nights."
"Nice," said Nancy and began surfing for further photographs. "It's got a swimming pool that's now glassed over so it can be used as a dance floor. But the pool itself is lined with a mosaic of Oceanus, complete with claws."
Frank raised an eyebrow at his girlfriend. "Fancy a dance?"
"Are you asking?"
"I'm asking."
"Only if it's on top of a swimming pool in Florida."
"Be careful what you wish for…" he grinned. "Right – to the last clue."
The final counter only had a strange icon on it, rather than a picture. It consisted of a line drawing of a downward curve (or upside-down smile), positioned just above a double-headed arrow. They both pored over it batting thoughts and ideas backwards and forwards, but were unable to reach any sort of conclusion.
Frank eventually threw his hands up. "I'm stumped. I couldn't even fathom how we could do a search on the net. It's not like you can put an image into a search engine."
Nancy had a suggestion. "We can drill it down a little. We know the name will begin with an 'E' at least."
"How many Greek gods' names begin with an 'E'?"
"Only a few: Eros, Epimetheus, Eris, one of the lesser gods known as The Erinnyes and, of course, there's a female monster called Echidna who was half nymph, half speckled snake who ate anyone who visited her cave."
"A woman scorned…" Frank laughed and turned back to the PC. He ran all the names through the computer to see if they could spot the symbol, but nothing even vaguely matched.
"Why don't we leave that one until a later date?" Nancy suggested. "Maybe a library would be a better place to research."
"Agreed, but in the meantime, we've some preparations to make."