The Haunted Lighthouse (7 page)

According to the ranger, they were currently in Cell Block B—on the Rock—both mentioned in the message. But where were the “2 seats” referred to in the note? And what were they supposed to find “B tween” them?

Quinn and Luke sidled over to Cody and M.E.

“Looking for clues?” Quinn whispered.

Cody nodded. “We’re in Cell Block B, but I don’t see any seats. The cells just have cots, no chairs. Any ideas?”

Quinn wandered on ahead of the tour, peering into each cell as he passed by. Cody watched him until he reached the end of the long hallway. He signaled to her and the others to follow him.

Cody slowly wove her way through the crowd of students, hoping not to attract any attention, especially from Ms. Stad or her father, who was keeping a close eye on her.
Is he worried I might get lost in the cavernous cell block?
M.E. and Luke trailed behind her. When they reached Quinn, he pointed down a short hallway to the side that led to the dining area. Cody spotted two folding chairs that sat along the wall, no doubt meant for anyone who needed to rest during the tour.

Quinn glanced at the ranger, who was talking about the daily routine of the prisoners. Cody checked to make sure her dad and Ms. Stad weren’t watching them.

“Luke, stand guard,” Quinn said to Luke.

Quinn gestured for the others to follow, and the three of them tiptoed over to the two chairs.

Quinn bent down and examined them, including looking underneath.

“There’s nothing here,” he said, standing up.
“They’re just chairs.”

“Guys!” Luke whispered from his post.

“Cody! M.E.!” a sharp voice called from behind him.

Too late. Ms. Stad stood with her arms crossed, a frown on her usually pleasant face. Behind her stood Cody’s father.

“Stay with the group,” Ms. Stadelhofer said. “You can explore on your own later.”

Cody nodded, and shot an apologetic glance at her father. “Sorry, Ms. Stad. We were just … excited about seeing everything.”

“Well, you’ll get a chance. Now go back with the others, or you won’t be able to complete your questionnaire. You, too, boys.”

The Code Busters shuffled back to the group, not so much upset about being caught but rather more disappointed that they hadn’t found anything special “between the seats.” Cody tried not to make eye contact with her dad.

She wondered if they’d missed something in their hurry to examine the chairs and thought about sneaking back when she heard the ranger say the word
code
. Her ears pricked up.

“It was called the ‘Rule of Silence,’ ” the ranger was saying, “and for many years the prisoners weren’t allowed to talk to each other, except during meals and recreation periods. So they used a primitive form of communication by tapping on the metal bars of their cells or on the pipes under their sinks or sometimes even on the walls.”

“What was the code they used?” Luke asked.

“Good question,” Ranger Huynh said. She passed out small squares of paper that featured a six-by-six grid of letters to the students. Across the top and down the side were the numbers from one to five. The alphabet letters had been written in each square of the grid, beginning with
A
and ending with
Z
.

“This is called a tap code,” the ranger said. “It’s one
of several codes that prisoners used, such as writing with cell-made invisible ink, and even sudoku.”

TAP CODE

Quinn’s hand shot up before several other hands. “There’s no letter
K
,” he said.

“Good catch!” the ranger said. “You’re right. The prisoners kept the code very simple. They used the letter
C
to represent
K
. Each letter was communicated by tapping two numbers—the first
one from the vertical column of numbers, and the second from the horizontal row of numbers. The letter
X
was used to break up sentences. So for example, if you wanted to communicate the letter
Q
you tapped four times, paused for a split second, then tapped once again.”

Before the kids could ask questions, the sound of metal hitting metal split the air. It was so loud that M.E. jumped and grabbed Cody’s arm. There were four more taps, just as loud.

“What was that?” several students asked, glancing around nervously.

The ranger grinned. “Shh! Listen …”

Two more taps broke the silence. Then a longer pause.

A tap, then a tap.

Four taps, then four more.

One tap, then five.

Four taps, then two.

Code Buster’s Solution found on
this page
.

“Water!” Quinn shouted. “Someone just tapped out the word
water
.”

“Very good!” Ranger Huynh said. “Now, if you look up there”—she pointed to the second floor—“you’ll see Geoff, one of our guards here on Alcatraz, holding a big wrench. He just tapped out the code for
water
.”

“That was cool!” Cody said. She looked up at the elderly uniformed man above her. He wore a gray, double-breasted jacket and slacks, black shoes, a hat with a badge in front, and a bright red tie.

“Why didn’t they just use Morse code?” Luke asked.

“Morse code is a lot harder to send by tapping,” the ranger said, “because you have to create two different tap sounds—a
dih
and a
dah
sound. And it takes time to memorize the code. The tap code is easier to learn and simpler to decode.

“By the way, you kids didn’t invent the texting code you use with your cell phones. The prisoners
used acronym shortcuts all the time. For example, they tapped out
GN
for ‘good night’ or
TY
for ‘thank you.’ ”

Quinn reached over to the wall next to him and tapped “1-3, 3-4, 3-4, 3-1.”

Code Buster’s Solution found on
this page
.

The ranger smiled at Quinn. “Great! You figured it out. You might want to join the park rangers someday and give this tour yourself.”

“Nah,” Quinn said. “I’m going to join the CIA.”

S
weet. Even the prisoners used codes,” Luke said. He and Quinn did a knuckle bump.

“There must be a million ways to create codes and secret languages,” Quinn added. “I’ll never learn them all! Right now, I’m trying to learn Egyptian hieroglyphs and the runic alphabet.”

“All right, everyone,” the ranger called on her bullhorn. “Please follow me into the dining hall.
That’s where the prisoners ate their meals. It was affectionately called ‘the gas chamber,’ thanks to all the beans that were served.” The students giggled. “You’ll find a map of the cell house on the back of the tap code sheet.”

The students shuffled through the hallway where Quinn had discovered the two chairs that had turned out to be false clues. Cody saw him linger, giving the seats a last look, then he followed her and the rest of his classmates into the dining area. The large room was empty, except for some long benches that remained in the back. Cody imagined school-cafeteria-type tables with hungry prisoners sitting on the benches, hunching over their food trays. She wondered if they had the same type of cafeteria food their school had, like sloppy joes, fish sticks, and greasy pizza. She had a feeling it wasn’t much different.

“The food here at Alcatraz was supposed to be the best in the entire prison system,” Ranger
Huynh announced. “Each prisoner was assigned a row and a seat, such as A-1, A-2, and so on. They had only twenty minutes to eat, and gobbled the food up quickly before other prisoners could steal from their trays.”

Cody had a sudden thought. The ranger had said the rows and seats were lettered and numbered. Maybe the torn message they’d received earlier referred to seats in the dining hall, rather than chairs, like they’d first suspected. As the large group of students followed the ranger to the kitchen area beyond, Cody waited until her dad was inside and out of sight, then she waved the other Code Busters back toward the benches.

“S’up?” Luke asked, watching the rest of the crowd file into the next room.

“The benches!” Cody said softly so the group wouldn’t hear. “I think that’s what the message meant. Remember how the letter
B
stood out from
the other letters? And the number two was mentioned a couple of times? Maybe they refer to Seat B-Two in the dining hall.”

“Let’s check it out before Stad and Mr. de Lannoy notice we’re missing,” Quinn said.

And my dad
, Cody thought.

Quinn ran over to the second row of benches, the others right behind him. “This is Row B,” he said, and he pointed to the second seat. “And here’s Seat Two.”

Luke leaned over for a closer look. “Nothing here, dude, except some scratches. Probably carved by the prisoners with their forks.”

Cody shook her head. “They didn’t have metal utensils.”

“No, but some did have shivs,” Quinn said.

M.E. scrunched her nose. “What’s a shiv?”

“Like a homemade knife,” Quinn answered. “Prisoners use anything they can, like a toothbrush handle or broken comb, and sharpen it to a point.
I saw a picture online that was made from a pork chop bone.”

“Yikes,” Cody said. The thought of a shiv made her shiver. “Wouldn’t want to be stabbed with a pork chop bone.”

“I wouldn’t want to be stabbed with anything,” M.E. added.

Luke knelt down and peered under the bench. His eyes widened, and he reached underneath.

“You found something!” Cody said, excited. “What is it?”

He pulled a small piece of paper from the underside of the bench. Remnants of clear tape were still stuck to it.

“A note!” M.E. squealed, then clapped her mouth shut.

“Shh!” Quinn reminded her. He glanced into the next room, hoping the teachers hadn’t heard them.

“Open it!” Cody whispered.

Luke unfolded the white sheet of paper, looked at it, then held it up for the others to see.

(4 /\/ |) |_ 3 () /\/ + # 3 VV 4 + 3 |2

Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on
this page
,
this page
.

“I don’t get it,” he said, after scanning the message. “What’s it supposed to mean?”

Quinn took it from Luke’s hand. “Hey, I recognize this code. Online gamers and hackers use it when they don’t want just anybody reading their messages. They call it LEET code, or 1337, which is LEET written backward and upside down. It uses numbers and symbols to make letters.”

“How do you decode it?” Cody asked, studying the message.

“It’s pretty easy. Just sound it out phonetically. Watch.” Quinn took out a ballpoint pen and his notebook from his backpack, and wrote: (,) (_) ! /\/ /\/ “What do you see?”

“I see some parentheses, a comma, a dash, an
exclamation mark …”

“Okay, now think of the symbols and numbers as alphabet letters.”

She deciphered the first letter. “That looks like a
Q
,” she said aloud. “Then
U
. Then
I N N
. Quinn!”

“Right. So now try to read the words on the other side.”

“You’ve already figured it out?” Cody asked him. He nodded. She flipped the paper and studied the first series of numbers and symbols.

(4 /\/ |) |_ 3

The first symbol resembled the letter
C
. She wrote the letter underneath the symbol. Next came the number
4
. What letter did it look like? Sort of an
A
. She jotted it next to the
C
. The next symbol was obvious—
N
—
made with diagonal lines. The letters
D
and
L
were also easy. The last letter of the first word was tricky, though. It just looked like the number
3
.

“I’m stuck,” Cody said.

Quinn wrote down the number
3
, then held it upside down for Cody to see. “Sometimes the letters are reversed.”

“So the number
3
must be an
E
.” She added the letter, then read when she’d deciphered: “Candle!”

“That’s awesome,” M.E. said. “Let me try the next one.” She took the notebook and the pen from Cody and studied the next two symbols: () /\/

“Oh, it’s an easy one,” she said. “It has to be ‘on.’ ”