other
person; and the latter, aware that the Bible acted as the key, looked
up the place in the Book and learned what the word was.

The number of pages vary, however, in Bibles of different size. It was
natural that the location must be a constant in order that the recipient
of the note could always find it. So I began again:

Suppose Jason, looking through his Bible, found the word "feet" in the
book of Genesis, the first chapter, the third verse, and the fourth word
of the verse. If he should send the symbols "Gen. 1, 3, 4" to his
friend, the man could easily look up the place and see what he meant.
And in this case he wouldn't have to have any certain edition of the
Bible. The fourth word of the third verse of the first chapter of
Genesis is the same in all copies of King James' Bible over all the
world.

Now I was working on sure ground. I had no doubt but that "dqbo"
represented a certain point in the Bible--the letter "d" probably
representing the book, "q" the chapter, "b" the verse and "o" the word.
Once more my attention was called, with particular vividness, to the
fact that all the words in the column were of four letters, proving in
my mind that this last contention was true.

My heart was racing as I moved to the next step in working out the
cryptogram. It was simply that of finding what method had been used to
transform such a symbol as "Gen. 1, 3, 4" into such a sign as "dqbo." If
instead of four-letter words I was working with sequences of numbers
such as "1, 1, 3, 4" I would have felt that the problem was solved. "1,
1, 3, 4" would have plainly meant the first book, the first chapter,
the third verse, and the fourth word.

To transform letters into numbers--that was all that remained. Again I
went back to "dqbo" and took the simplest method of transformation. "D"
was the fourth letter in the alphabet. "Q" was the seventeenth letter in
the alphabet. "B" was the second letter in the alphabet. "O" was the
fifteenth letter in the alphabet. I wrote down the numbers:

4-17-2-15

And I felt sure that they meant the fourth book, the seventeenth
chapter, the second verse and the fifteenth word in the Holy Bible.

Shaken, so nervous I could hardly hold my hands still, I stopped a
moment to rest. This was the crisis. I was either at the verge of
absolute success or hopeless failure. If when I looked up the place I
found some word that couldn't possibly be used in such a message I
wouldn't have the