The Case of the Missing Deed (22 page)

“Maybe they’ve slipped up somewhere,” Eve said. “Maybe a lawyer could go over their submission, find something they missed. Then the government would have to turn them down.”

Aunt Meg perked up. “Do we know any lawyers?”

As the conversation continued, Sébastien slipped out of the kitchen and went upstairs. He needed to do something, and the only thing he could think of was to go back to that slip of paper. Someone had sent it to Ted for a reason. It held some kind of message, maybe even a warning. Sébastien was sure of it. If only he could figure out what it was, maybe he could stop Tantalus from getting the permit.

Ridiculous!
he told himself, turning on Grandpa’s computer. As if he, an eleven-year-old kid, was going to find something that would stop the mine!

But he had to try.

While he waited for the computer to boot up, he drummed his fingers on the desk, thinking. So far he’d gotten nowhere trying to figure out a cipher that substituted or recombined letters. And the code clearly didn’t use symbols or numbers.

Maybe, he thought, staring at the paragraph, the bolding itself was the key.

Worth a try. He typed
SECRET CODES BOLD TYPEFACES
into the search engine, and up popped a link for something called Bacon’s Cipher.

Probably a waste of time
, Sébastien thought, but he opened it anyway.

Bacon’s Cipher, he read, used two different typefaces, such as two different fonts, or plain and bold letters, or plain and italic
letters, to give each letter of the alphabet a five-character code.

Plain and bold, Sébastien thought. Sounded promising.

The pattern for each letter was spelled out in a key, where the number 1 stood for plain type and the number 2 stood for bold type.

So, for example, the code for the letter
E
was 11211, or plain-plain-bold-plain-plain, and the code for the letter
L
was 12121, or plain-bold-plain-bold-plain.

However many letters in the word you wanted to hide, Sébastien read, the fake message had to have five times as many letters. It didn’t matter what the letters were, as long as there were five times as many as in the real word. Then, dividing the fake letters into groups of five, you used plain and bold typefaces to encode the real letters.

So, if the real word was
DOG
, with three letters, you needed a fake message with fifteen letters. Like:

Chocolate is good

Then you grouped the letters into chunks of five and used the plain and bold patterns in the key to encode the real letters:

To decode the message, you divided the letters in the fake message into chunks of five and then used the key to figure out which letters they represented. So, to decode
CHOCO
, you looked in the key for the pattern plain-plain-plain-bold-bold, or 11122, and found that that was the pattern for the letter
D
. To decode
LATEI
, you looked for the pattern plain-bold-bold-plain-bold, or 12212, and found that that was the pattern for the letter
O
. To decode S
GOOD
, you looked for the pattern plain-plain-bold-bold-plain, or 11221, and discovered that it was the letter
G
.

D-O-G
.

Seb’s pulse began to race. He wasn’t sure if this was the system used in the weird paragraph, but it sounded like it.

Quickly he copied the paragraph from the booklet:

The Ot
t
er
I
sl
a
n
d
tantalu
m m
ine
i
s
g
r
e
en!
It w
ill
b
e
g
r
ea
t
f
or th
e e
nvir
o
nmen
t!
Ful
l s
pe
e
d a
he
a
d
on t
h
is exc
it
i
n
g
mi
ne p
r
o
je
ct
t
hat
pr
om
i
se
s
fantast
i
c
p
rofits w
h
ile
p
rot
e
cting
f
ish,
bi
rd
s
, and
w
il
d
life!

Then he rewrote the paragraph, dividing the letters into chunks of five:

It divided evenly into fives!

Okay, he said to himself, the first five-letter chunk is The Ot, and it has a pattern of plain-plain-plain-plain-plain, or 11111. He scanned the key and easily found that the letter with that pattern was
A
. He wrote
A
on a separate sheet of paper.

The next chunk was
t
er
I
s, and it had a pattern of bold-plain-plain-bold-plain, or 21121. That was the code for
T
.

A – T
.

Seb’s heart began to beat faster.

Next came l
a
n
d
t: plain-bold-plain-bold-plain. 12121.
L
.

A – T – L
.

He worked faster.

Next: antal: plain-plain-plain-plain-plain. 11111. Another
A
.

A – T – L – A
.

Sébastien continued going back and forth between the groups of five letters and the key. Letter by letter, the word emerged.

A – T – L – A – N – T – U – S
.

Atlantus? What on earth did that mean? Sébastien had heard of the mysterious continent of Atlantis – it was supposed to have disappeared under the ocean, wasn’t it? But Atlantus?

Well, at least he had the first word. Back to work.

e
g
r
ea:
plain-bold-plain-bold-bold. 12122.
M
.

t
f
or t: plain-bold-plain-plain-plain. 12111.
I
.

h
e e
nv: plain-bold-bold-plain-plain. 12211.
N
.

ir
o
nm: plain-plain-bold-plain-plain. 11211.
E
.

M – I –
N –
E
.

ATLANTUS MINE
.

Sébastien scratched his head. He knew what a mine was, but what was an Atlantus mine?

He continued decoding the groups of five letters. The next part of the message said
ENVIRONMENTAL. ATLANTUS MINE ENVIRONMENTAL …
Back to work.

ofits: plain-plain-plain-bold-bold. 11122.
D
.

w
h
ile: plain-bold-plain-plain-plain. 12111.
I
.

p
rot
e:
bold-plain-plain-plain-bold. 21112.
S
.

cting: plain-plain-plain-plain-plain. 11111.
A
.

f
ish
b:
bold-plain-plain-plain-bold. 21112.
S
.

D – I – S – A – S–

Sébastien’s pulse began to race. Was this word going to say what he thought it was?

i
rd
s
a: bold-plain-plain-bold-plain. 21121.
T
.

nd
w
il: plain-plain-bold-plain-plain. 11211.
E
.

d
life!: bold-plain-plain-plain-plain. 21111.
R
.

D – I – S – A – S – T – E – R
.

ATLANTUS MINE ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
.

Sébastien gave a whoop of triumph. He’d done it! He’d cracked the code! Good old Bacon’s Cipher! It had been tough, mind-numbingly tough, but whoever had written the message hadn’t been able to get the secret past him. He grinned, thinking about how Grandpa would have relished the game, putting his head together with Sébastien’s to solve the mystery.

Then confusion filled him as he gazed at the words again. What did they mean? What was the Atlantus mine, and why was it an environmental disaster? Why had someone written those words in secret code and sent them to Ted?

Quickly he typed “Atlantus mine environmental disaster” into the computer’s search engine. Up popped a link titled
ATLANTUS MINE: ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
. Puzzled, he
clicked on it. A scientific-looking report filled the screen. It was written by Dr. Sophie Kalamas and Dr. Mohinder Dhillon.

Who were they?

Sébastien started scrolling through the report. Right on the first page, it said, “We hereby present the environmental assessment of the proposed Otter Island tantalum mine.”

Otter Island?

He kept reading. The report described the island. It talked about Lookout Hill, Seal Bay, and Osprey Cove. It talked about the ferry dock and the public beach. It was
his
Otter Island, there was no doubt about it.

Phrases started leaping out: “Contamination of ground water.” “Impacts to fish stocks.” “Destruction of habitat.”

He scrolled further and came to a graph titled “Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Construction.” From almost zero on the left side of the graph, the bars rose steadily as they moved to the right.

Finally, he came to a page titled “Conclusions.” In bold type it said,
“Our research leads to the conclusion that Atlantus Mining’s proposed tantalum mine will have serious environmental impacts on Otter Island and should not proceed.”

Sébastien sat back.
Atlantus Mining’s
tantalum mine?

He grabbed the
OTTER ISLAND TANTALUM MINE: ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
he’d stolen from Wilensky Air and flipped through the pages. This report said the opposite from the one on his computer screen. It said that the mine would not have serious environmental impacts and that Tantalus Mining had plans to deal with any small problems that might arise.

What was going on here?
He couldn’t figure it out, though
he had a strong feeling there was something shady about it.

What should he do?

Tell somebody. But who? Grandma? Mom? Ch–

Charlie!

Sébastien gasped. Whatever this Atlantus Mining business was about, Charlie must be mixed up in it, just like he was mixed up with Tantalus Mining. Sébastien’s stomach turned over at the thought that his mother’s boyfriend, who acted like he loved her so much, was going to betray her in such a horrible way.

Who could Sébastien talk to?

Ted! Ted Crombie! The message had been intended for him. Sébastien had to show him what it said.

Would Ted believe him? Ted had been getting information from Tantalus. He had been writing articles in favor of the mine. He might not take the message seriously.

Sébastien knew he had to try anyway. Stuffing the sheet with the decoded message in his pocket, he ran outside and hopped on his bike.

ébastien dropped his bike on the grass outside the
Otter Observer
office and dashed inside. A receptionist sat at a desk, typing at a computer.