“What kind of notebook?”
“Why should you ask?” said Frank. “If you didn’t lose one, you shouldn’t be concerned. I think you’d better sit down, Mr. Hanleigh. We have a few things to talk over with you before we turn you over to the police.”
Hanleigh went pale.
“The police?” he gasped.
“Why, of course. You don’t suppose we’re going to let you get away with this, do you? You have no right here, you are trespassing on the island, you break into our cabin and go through all our belongings, just like a common burglar. What did you expect?”
“You won’t turn me over to the police,” declared Hanleigh.
“No?”
Hanleigh advanced toward them.
“Get out of my way!” he ordered.
The boys stood their ground.
“Just a minute,” said Frank. “We have rifles here. If you try to make a getaway, we won’t be afraid to shoot.”
Hanleigh hesitated.
“That’s just a bluff,” he said weakly.
“Try it, and see.”
“I’ll try it!” roared Hanleigh.
He made a sudden lunge. Frank reached out to seize him and grabbed the man’s arm. But Hanleigh shook himself free, plunged forward and collided with Joe. The boys were taken by surprise. Joe struggled desperately, but Hanleigh was a grown man and much stronger. He sent Joe reeling back against the wall.
Frank flung himself upon the man and tried to trip him up.
Hanleigh struck out viciously with his fist. It caught Frank full in the face. He was obliged to relinquish his hold. Before he knew it, Hanleigh had dashed toward the door. The man leaped across the threshold and out into the snow.
Frank recovered himself quickly. He ran toward the wall and took down the little rifle. Joe, in the meantime, raced out of the cabin in pursuit of the fugitive.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Frank shouted.
But the man evidently realized that Frank would not make use of the rifle. He turned and shook his fist in their direction. With a yell of defiance, he disappeared among the trees.
Frank raised the rifle and fired two shots into the air. His aim was partly to frighten Hanleigh and partly to warn Chet and Biff.
Joe turned.
Pursuit was futile. The heavy snow hampered his footsteps.
“No use chasing him!” shouted Frank. “Perhaps Chet and Biff will catch him. It doesn’t matter. We know that he is the fellow who had the notebook, and that’s the main thing.”
XVIII
The Cipher Solved
Hanleigh made good his escape.
Chet Morton and Biff Hooper, who were widely separated at the time, heard the rifle shots and returned posthaste to the cabin, but they did not meet the fugitive. By the time they reached the cabin, further pursuit was out of the question. Looking out the window, Frank pointed to a dark figure hastening across the ice toward the mainland.
“By the time we got one of the iceboats out, he would be on the shore, and we’d never find him there,” he said. “Let him go. We learned something, at any rate.”
“What happened?” clamored Chet. “All we know is that Hanleigh was here. What did he do?”
Frank then told them of seeing Hanleigh among the trees, and of returning to the cabin to warn Joe.
“We watched him searching the place high and low. He was looking for the notebook—there’s no doubt of that. As a matter of fact, we heard him say that it didn’t really matter, because we wouldn’t be able to solve the cipher, anyway. So then Joe and I came in and asked him what he was doing. He tried to fool us with some cock-and-bull story about hunting for his pocketbook. He denied that he stole our supplies, but he was lying, of course. I threatened to turn him over to the police if he didn’t tell us what he knew about the notebook, and I guess that frightened him for he made a dash for the door.”
“We weren’t ready for him,” said Joe mournfully.
“I’ll bet he thinks twice before he comes here again,” declared Chet.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him,” Frank remarked. “There is something mighty important about that notebook, and I’m sure he is not the man to give up as easily as all that.”
Chet shook his head.
“He’ll just wait until we leave the island for good.”
“I don’t think so. He knows that we’re apt to stumble on the secret of that cipher at any time. I’m going to tackle that message again. It can’t be so very difficult.”
Frank immediately sat down at the desk, the cipher message before him, and began figuring on a pad of notepaper, while the other boys set about restoring the damage their visitor had created.
First of all, he set down all the letters of the alphabet in order, and studied them intently, with reference to the cipher.
“If I were writing a cipher,” he mused. “How would I go about it? Perhaps this thing is really a lot simpler than it looks.”
The easiest thing to do, he thought, would be merely to reverse the alphabet. Instead of the letter a he would use the letter z. Instead of the letter b he would use y, and so on.
With this in mind, he jotted down the alphabet backward, so that he had two rows of letters. Then he picked up the cipher again.
The first word was “Xzyrm.”
By replacing these letters with the corresponding letters in the other column he discovered that he had the word “cabin.”
Frank leaped to his feet with a shout of delight.
“I’ve got it!”
The others came running over to the desk.
“Have you solved it?” demanded Joe excitedly. “How did you do it? What does it say?”
“It’s as simple as a-b-c. It was so easy that it looked hard. The man just turned the alphabet backward. Look! The first word is ‘cabin.’ ”
“The rest of it! The rest of it!” exclaimed Biff.
“I haven’t tackled the other words yet. Wait
