The Mysterious Code

“My
grandmother had some of them in her attic,” Diana said. “Did you ever
try to work any of the puzzles? Here, let’s turn to the puzzle pages.” The
girls sat on the floor inside the cubbyhole, die bound magazines in their laps.
    “This one is way
back in 1884,” Diana said, opening the red cloth-bound book.
    “Heavens, that was
before the United States was born,” Trixie said.
    “Not quite.” Honey
laughed. “I thought you were better in history than math.”
    “See if you can
answer this one, if you’re so smart,” Trixie said, her face red. “It’s an easy
charade, or so it says.”
    "Not any of the
puzzles in St. Nicholas were easy,” Diana said. “I guess people were
smarter then.”
    “Try this, anyway,”
Trixie said.
    “Men hunt my first ,
then second my first in order to obtain my whole.”
    “It must be
something people hunt” Honey said. “Ducks... no; geese... no; rabbits... no;
wolves... no. What is it, Trixie?”
    “I don’t know
myself. I’ll have to look it up in the answers. They’re given the month
following. Let me see... it’s sealskin! You hunt seal, don’t you
see, then skin the seal, and you have sealskin. Say, look
at this other page, would you? Jumpin’ Jupiter! It’s the acrobats, the whole
alphabet! Where’s that tag?”
    Spread over a page
in the old St. Nicholas magazine there was a group of dancing, tumbling
little stick men, each posture representing a letter of the alphabet.
    “Let me see now,”
Trixie said. “Let’s compare the tag. This is K; here is an E, and
then Y. That first word is Key.”
    Quickly Trixie
spelled out the rest of the message on the tag. Transcribed, it read: Key to
Riches.
    Trixie was so
excited her hands were shaking. “It’s a fortune!” she shouted. “I know it is.
Come on!”
    She jumped up and
let the book tumble to the floor. “Let’s start hunting!”
    “We’ve covered every
inch of this place,” Diana said. “There isn’t anything here that the key will
fit. How do you know that what we are hunting for is in the attic?”
    “It has to
be,” Trixie said.
    “Stand up here on
this ladder,” Honey said. “Reach up into the rafters, back of the Punch and
Judy show. Isn’t there something there?”
    Trixie reached,
almost fell off the ladder, and brought out an old broken pull toy. Her face
fell. “There’s not another thing here,” she said and climbed down.
    Together the girls
moved out all the old screens and storm windows, hunted over every inch of
floor they had covered before, and looked through the boxes of old clothes
again till there was only one thing left: a chest that stood under the window
in the closet next to the chimney.
    “We hunted through
that before, Trixie,” Diana said.
    “Let’s hunt again,”
Honey cried, and she and Trixie drew out armload after armload of clothes long
packed in mothballs.
    When she reached the
bottom of the chest, Trixie was so exasperated and disappointed she felt like
crying. She slammed down the lid of the old chest and kicked it so hard it
banged against the chimney, loosening several bricks, which fell clattering to
the floor.
    “Jeepers, I’m sorry,
Honey,” Trixie said. “Your mother will think this is terrible.” She picked up a
brick, started to replace it in the chimney, then stopped. Her eyes grew round.
“Will you look at this?” she asked Honey and Diana. They put their heads close
to hers.
    Back of where the
bricks had been, there was an open space, and tucked cozily inside the space
was an old wooden doll’s trunk.
    Dazed, Trixie pulled
it out, put it on the floor, inserted the key in the lock, turned it, and all
three girls fell to their knees to look.

A
Musical Mystery • 6
     
    It’s fantastic!” Trixie said.
    “Yes,” Diana echoed.
“But what is it?”
    “Since this is your
house,” Trixie said to Honey, “you lift it out, and we’ll see what it is.”
    Gently Honey lifted
the treasure out and set it on the floor. It settled with a delicate tinkle.
    “A music box!” they
cried in unison.
    The intricately
carved and fashioned gold box showed no trace of tarnish. The gold was as
bright as new. On the lid, under a garland of vines and arched trees, a little
man and woman stood, dressed in court clothes of the time of Louis XVI.
    “See if you can wind
it,” Honey said.
    When Trixie turned
the key on the bottom of the box, the little figures danced daintily round and
round to the tune of a Viennese waltz.
    Completely