The Tree of Knowledge by Daniel Miller (room on the broom read aloud .txt) 📕

could decode a message by moving down one row of the table for each letter in the message. This enabled the message writer to encrypt the message easily by hand while at the same time enabling an amateur to decode the message.

Albert quickly grabbed his well-worn copy of Introduction to Cryptography from his alphabetized bookshelf and flipped through the pages until he came upon the legendary tabula recta. He ripped the page featuring one of the most well-known images in cryptography, posted it on the chalkboard, and began to translate the cipher.

The first letter was P.

The next letter, O.

A good sign. “PO” could be the start of a word.

Albert continued. P-O-I.

His throat tightened. There were very few words in the English language that started with P-O-I.

Ying recoiled as Puddles finished the word in front of them.

P-O-I-S-O-N.

Chapter 6

The Princeton police station anchored the main street through town like the sofa in a living room. Everything about it oozed small-town charm and stability. The brick facade and careful yet understated landscaping said to the passersby, “Things are quiet here, and we like it that way.”

Unfortunately for Detective Weatherspoon, the everyday quiet and soothing boredom of his normal police work had been fractured by the recent murder. Instead of investigating which one of the neighborhood kids sprayed “don’t” on the stop sign on Spruce and Chestnut, the former All-State offensive tackle was spending night and day investigating a murder. His dark-brown skin seemed to be gaining cracks by the hour, and his large, square head seemed to be losing hair by the minute. He imagined that he’d get up tomorrow morning and be a bald, wrinkled prune of a man, one of those useless old fellows his wife, a nurse, liked to make jokes about.

And I got squat for evidence, thought the detective as he massaged his aching knees.

“Barb!” Weatherspoon shouted to the station’s assistant. “Get me someone over at that defense company who knows something about codes.”

“You mean Fix Industries?”

“Yeah, Fix.”

While the detective waited for his treasured assistant to hunt down yet another egghead, he thought about all the dead ends that he had run into so far.

No witnesses.

No video surveillance, other than the ten seconds it took the perp to put down the security guard.

No description.

No license plate.

All he had was one ripped sheet of paper with some letters and boxes he didn’t understand. The detective chuckled, thinking about the meek professor he had talked to today.

What kind of a name is “Puddles” anyway?

Weatherspoon liked Professor Puddles, even though he thought he looked like a kid in his dad’s suit. Unfortunately, Puddles hadn’t given the detective much cause for optimism about his ability to translate the paper. Even if Puddles did translate it, it probably wouldn’t give him anything useful.

Detective Weatherspoon flipped through his disturbingly barren police report. He squinted at the name on the safe-deposit-box registry.

“A. Turner.”

Who is that?

“Line one, Dr. Belial from Fix Industries,” shouted his assistant.

“Hello, Doctor, I’m wondering if you can give me a little info on a case I’m working on,” boomed the detective as he put the phone to his ear.

“It would be my pleasure to help in whatever way I can,” replied Belial in a nasal voice.

“Great. Well, you see, I’m following up on a burglary over here. The thief left behind a piece of paper, but it’s got some kind of cipher on it. I’ve got a guy over here at Princeton working on it, but we don’t know what the symbols mean yet. Anyway, he didn’t seem optimistic that he could solve it, so I thought I’d get another pair of eyes on it.”

The cryptographer paused. When Belial finally responded, Detective Weatherspoon thought he could sense some nervousness or anxiety. It sounded as if Belial’s throat were constricted in some way.

“Yes, ah, I can look at the code for you. I doubt I’ll be of any help, though. You know, these codes can be quite complicated.”

Weatherspoon sighed. “Hmm, I spoke with one of your colleagues who seemed to think that you could break almost any code.”

Belial’s voice quavered. “Well, of course, I . . . well, I’ll look into it.”

Weatherspoon squinted his eyes as if to stare down Dr. Belial through the phone. The cryptographer’s evasiveness framed every word.

“Alright, Doctor. I’ll send a copy of the sheet over to you. This is confidential, of course.”

“Of course, Detective . . . One quick question . . . Who did you give the tree to at Princeton? Talking to him may give me some insight.”

“A guy named Puddles in the Math Department.”

Another long pause. “Hmm. Don’t know him. Good luck, Detective.”

Weatherspoon hung up the phone and turned to his computer.

Something isn’t right about that guy.

***

As Detective Weatherspoon absorbed the disconcerting call, Dr. Belial picked up the phone and dialed. He tried to steady his high-pitched voice. “General, I just received a disturbing call from the police. They gave the tree to Dr. Puddles at Princeton. I didn’t give the detective any information, but Puddles will crack the cipher. Someone needs to clean this up before it spreads.”

Chapter 7

Eva gazed out the window of Delta flight 457 from Los Angeles to Newark. She had spent the last thirty minutes attempting to extract herself from an inane conversation with the whiskey-breathed, married businessman next to her. Why was it that men—who were typically so rational—lost all ability to reason around a beautiful woman? The businessman had been leering at her chest and attempting to seduce her with winning lines like “I like your black shirt” and “Where are you from?”

Did that ever work?

If I were a balding, overweight, married businessman—in an ill-fitting suit—and I saw a good-looking twenty-eight-year-old woman next to me, I would rationally assess the situation and say to myself, “There is no pickup line in the universe that is going to enable me to have sex with this woman.”

Eva tried to shake off the exchange with the businessman and focus on the chain of events that had