"Try em in groups," suggested Boyd. "Let's see--'Rash witching
goes'--not with me it doesn't. 'Muffled rumour mine'--must
have an underground wire. 'Dark silent unfortunate richmond'--no
reason why he should knock that town so hard. 'Existing great
hotly'--no it doesn't pan out. I'll call Scott."

The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor
must know something about everything; so Scott knew a little about
cipher-writing.

"It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher," said he.
"I'll try that. 'R' seems to be the oftenest used initial letter,
with the exception of 'm.' Assuming 'r' to mean 'e', the most
frequently used vowel, we transpose the letters--so."

Scott worked rapidly with his pencil for two minutes; and then showed
the first word according to his reading--the word "Scejtzez."

"Great!" cried Boyd. "It's a charade. My first is a Russian
general. Go on, Scott."

"No, that won't work," said the city editor. "It's undoubtedly a
code. It's impossible to read it without the key. Has the office
ever used a cipher code?"

"Just what I was asking," said the m.e. "Hustle everybody up that
ought to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently
got hold of something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or
he wouldn't have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this."