The Great Shelby Holmes and the Coldest Case by Elizabeth Eulberg

Author:Elizabeth Eulberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781681190587
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

“Watson!” Shelby snapped her fingers at me. “Are you paying attention?”

I nodded, but could hardly keep my eyes open. I’d been texting with my dad about meeting up later to do our Brooklyn Bridge walk. But first Shelby and I needed to crack this code.

We were in her bedroom after school with the ciphers spread on the floor. It seemed an impossible task for people fully rested. I’d been up for nearly twelve hours.

And we were going to have to do the same thing all over again tomorrow.

Being a figure skater was no joke.

Sir Arthur, Shelby’s English bulldog, rested his chin on my leg, his eyes closed. I know exactly how you feel, buddy.

Shelby, however, had as much energy as ever. Anybody want to guess why?

She licked her fingers after eating her twelfth candy bar of the day. Yep, TWELFTH.

So much for her parents’ ban. I think she was eating more sugar now, if that was even humanly possible.

Shelby got down to business. “Substitution ciphers have certain rules that have to be followed in order for someone to be able to understand them. Each of these figures represents a letter. During lunch, I broke it down to see any patterns.”

I looked at the drawings and felt hopeless. I had no idea how we were going to do this.

Shelby continued, “E is the most used letter in the English language. In the first cipher there was one character that appeared the most—four times. I tried to crack it using E, but couldn’t. I didn’t have enough data. However, with the most recent cipher and the subsequent reply, there was one character that had been used six times. So let’s assume this character is E,” she said, pointing to the stick figure that, if it was facing us, had its left leg lifted in the air with the right arm raised and the left one pointing down. “I’ll use dashes for the letters we don’t know yet.”

Shelby began writing in her notebook. Maybe we did have a chance to crack this thing after all. This was what she had.

Third cipher:

– – E – – – – – – – E

– EE – – – – – – –­

Jordan’s response:

– E – E –

So nothing. We had nothing.

“Okay, we have a break with Jordan’s reply.” Shelby circled -E-E-. “This could be one of three words: sever, lever, or, most likely, never. So now we know which characters are N, R, and V. ”

Shelby began writing so fast, I could hardly keep up.

Third cipher:

– – E – – – – – R – E

NEE – – – – – – –­

Jordan’s response:

NEVER

I felt deflated. That was it? We were never going to figure this out. NEVER. Or I guess I should say .

Shelby didn’t seem frustrated. She was practically giddy. “Let’s fill in the other ciphers now that we know E, N, R, and V.”

First cipher:

– – – – RE – – – N – – – – – – – – N –

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