The Forgotten Message
Jack Williams had been looking for a book on the history of mathematics when he discovered something considerably more interesting.
The book was old, bound in dark green leather, with gold lettering that had nearly worn away.
It was written in Polish in the 1920s
Jack turned it over and examined the library’s acquisition label.
Kraków, Poland — Private Library Collection, 1987.
He opened the book carefully. The pages were yellowed, but otherwise in remarkably good condition.
Something slipped from between the pages and fluttered to the floor.
Jack bent down and picked it up.
It was a folded sheet of paper, brittle with age.
“Well, what have we here?”
He picked up the paper and unfolded it carefully.
The paper contained a large bunch of lines of letters and numbers, arranged in groups of five.
Beneath them were three small zodiac symbols.
The ram.
The lion.
The archer.
Jack studied the symbols.
“Interesting.”
“WHAT IS INTERESTING, JACK?”
“Link, somebody left a coded message in an old book.”
“THAT IS NOT PARTICULARLY UNUSUAL. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CONCEALING MESSAGES IN BOOKS FOR CENTURIES.”
“Yes, but this one looks deliberate.”
“IN WHAT WAY?”
“The letter groups. They’re all five characters long, except the last one. And there are numbers mixed in.”
“WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO ANALYZE IT?”
Jack smiled.
“No, thanks. I want to play with it first.”
“VERY WELL.”
Jack carried the book and the note to his computer room.
He photographed the paper, enlarged the image, and began examining the characters.
The first thing he noticed was that the message contained far too many repeated letters to be random.
The second was that the numbers ranged from one to thirty-two.
“Page references?” he wondered aloud.
He glanced at the old book.
“Or word positions.”
He opened a programming window and began writing a small decoding routine.
An hour passed.
Then another.
Jasmine appeared in the doorway.
“Jack, Mom says lunch is ready.”
“Okay.”
She looked at his screen.
“What are you doing?”
“Breaking a code.”
“What kind of code?”
“An old one.”
“How old?”
“Maybe ninety years.”
Jasmine walked into the room.
“Really?”
“Possibly.”
“What’s it say?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
She studied the enlarged photograph.
“What’s with the little pictures?”
“Zodiac symbols. Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s somebody’s horoscope.”
Jack looked at her.
“Jazz, why would somebody encode a horoscope and hide it in a Polish mathematics history book?”
“Maybe they didn’t want anybody to know they were going to have a bad day.”
Jack laughed.
“Go eat lunch.”
“You’re coming?”
“In a minute.”
“That’s what you said yesterday.”
She disappeared down the hallway.
Jack returned to the message.
He had already tried several common substitution methods without success. The numbers bothered him. They were too regular, and the message had been concealed inside a particular book.
He looked again at the first line.
Then at the title page.
“Wait a minute.”
The book itself might be the key.
He began testing combinations of page, line, and word positions.
The first attempts produced nonsense.
Then he noticed something.
Several references pointed to the same page, but different words.
He changed the order of the numbers.
A word appeared.
POD.
Jack sat forward.
Polish for under.
He ran the next group.
SCHODAMI.
Under the stairs.
“Well, hello.”
He continued.
The decoding process was slow. Some words required checking against the original printed text because the old typeface confused his character-recognition program.
But gradually the fist part of the message emerged.
Jack had Link translated it into English.
At the old inn on Saint Florian Street, beneath the stairs, in the secret space.
The leather case bears the signs of the Ram, the Lion, and the Archer.
Keep them together.
Do not let them be taken.
Jack stared at the screen.
“Link?”
“YES, JACK?”
“How old is this paper?”
“AN EXACT DATE WOULD REQUIRE PHYSICAL EXAMINATION. BASED ON THE PHOTOGRAPH, I CAN ONLY SAY THAT IT APPEARS OLD.”
“Can you find an old inn on Saint Florian Street in Kraków?”
“THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL LODGING ESTABLISHMENTS ON THAT STREET OVER THE PAST TWO CENTURIES.”
“Any that closed before or during World War II?”
“ONE POSSIBLE MATCH IS A SMALL FAMILY-OWNED INN THAT CEASED OPERATIONS DURING THE WAR. THE BUILDING STILL EXISTS.”
Jack leaned back.
“You’re kidding.”
“I AM NOT.”
“How many rooms?”
“THE HISTORICAL RECORD INDICATES NINE GUEST ROOMS.”
“What’s there now?”
“THE PROPERTY APPEARS TO BE UNOCCUPIED. IT HAS CHANGED OWNERSHIP SEVERAL TIMES. THERE ARE NO RECORDS OF A SUCCESSFUL REOPENING.”
Jack studied the decoded message again.
“Link, can you find out who owned the inn in 1939?”
“ONE MOMENT.”
A photograph appeared on the screen.
It showed a narrow, three-story building with a steep roof and a modest entrance beneath a wooden sign.
The photograph was black and white.
“THE INN WAS OPERATED BY A FAMILY NAMED KOWALSKI.”
“Any connection to an artist?”
“THAT WOULD REQUIRE ADDITIONAL RESEARCH.”
Jack looked down at the three symbols on the old paper.
The Ram.
The Lion.
The Archer.
“Link, what do you suppose somebody would hide in a suitcase marked with zodiac signs?”
“THERE ARE NUMEROUS POSSIBILITIES.”
“Give me your best guess.”
“THE MESSAGE SUGGESTS THAT THE CONTENTS WERE CONSIDERED VALUABLE OR IN DANGER OF CONFISCATION.”
“During the war.”
“THAT IS A REASONABLE POSSIBILITY.”
Jack picked up the original note.
It was such a small thing. A folded piece of paper that had lain forgotten in a book for decades.
And yet someone had gone to considerable trouble to write it.
He wondered whether the person who had hidden it had ever returned.
Jasmine appeared again.
“Jack!”
“What?”
“Mom says if you don’t come eat, she’s giving your lunch to Duke.”
Jack glanced at the clock.
“All right, all right.”
He carefully placed the note back inside the book and closed it.
Jasmine noticed his expression.
“What?”
“Jazz, how would you like to go to Poland?”
She blinked.
“Poland?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I think somebody hid a suitcase there.”
She stared at him.
“Jack, we have suitcases.”
“Not like this one.”
“What’s in it?”
Jack smiled.
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
Jasmine considered the proposition.
“Can we go to Paris, too?”
“Why Paris?”
“I’ve always wanted to go shopping in Paris.”
Jack shook his head.
“You’re impossible.”
“Is that a yes?”
“We’ll see.”
She grinned.
“Then I’m coming.”
Jack looked once more at the old green book.
Somewhere in Kraków, beneath the stairs of a forgotten inn, there might be a leather suitcase waiting to be opened, but he had to finish decoding the message.
And for the first time in a very long while, Jack Williams had found a mystery whose answer wasn’t waiting somewhere on the internet.
He would have to go looking for it himself.
About the Creator
Mark Stigers
One year after my birth sputnik was launched, making me a space child. I did a hitch in the Navy as a electronics tech. I worked for Hughes Aircraft Company for quite a while. I currently live in the Saguaro forest in Tucson Arizona
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