The Mystery of the Pirate's Treasure (13 page)

Jolly frowned at the unfamiliar gizmo. “It don't look like a compass,” she said, but she released her grip on Cody and followed her directions. After a few failed attempts, she managed to slide the bar over and find the app.

“Good! Now touch the square,” Cody said, encouraging the woman.

“This one?” she said, pointing to the icon Cody had described.

“Yep, just tap it and the compass will appear. Then you can enter the coordinates and find the right bush.”

Jolly looked at Longbeard; he nodded his agreement.

Cody held her breath, hoping her plan worked. Otherwise …

With a last menacing look at Cody, Jolly tapped the app.

A loud siren filled the air.

C
ody's trick had worked! When Jolly touched the app icon on Cody's cell phone, the place filled with the ear-piercing sound of a police siren.

“You just hit the ‘Panic' button and called the police!” she shouted to the surprised couple.

Longbeard and Jolly froze, eyes darting around in search of the cops. Jolly dropped the phone.

“Come on!” Longbeard said. “We gotta get outta here!”

Longbeard took off in the direction of the van. Jolly ran after him.

Cody picked up the phone and quickly followed, hoping the siren would attract the attention of anyone around who could help. By the time she reached the van, after Longbeard and Jolly, the cops had arrived. Quinn and M.E. were being helped out of the van by one of the uniformed officers. Dry tears streaked M.E.'s face. Two other officers were putting Longbeard and Jolly in handcuffs.

“Good,” Cody said breathlessly when she saw her friends were safe. Luke appeared moments later from behind the trees where he'd hidden Chad. Cody noticed his arm was covered in blood and cried, “Luke! What happened?”

Luke looked down at the mostly dried blood and tried to rub it off. “Oh, I'm fine. It's Chad's blood. Must have got some on me while I was untying him.”

“Where's Chad?” Cody asked, anxiously glancing toward the spot where they'd hidden him.

Just then, a couple of EMTs appeared from the trees, pushing a gurney. Chad was lying on his back,
bandaged, with an oxygen mask over his face. Cody and Luke ran to his side as he was wheeled toward the waiting ambulance.

“Mr. Bour! Are you okay?” Cody asked, looking down at his bandaged head with concern.

Chad pulled the oxygen mask down. “Ay, thanks to you kids, I'm gonna be okay.”

He started to replace the mask, then said in a gravelly voice, “Did you figure out the puzzle?”

M.E. and Quinn, who had joined them, shook their heads, along with Cody and Luke.

“Come by the hospital later, and I'll tell you how to decipher it,” he said, then replaced the mask and closed his eyes.

“Is he going to be all right?” M.E. asked one of the EMTs.

“He'll be fine,” the woman said. “He's got a pretty bad gash on his head, but he'll be all right. You can see him this afternoon.”

Cody turned around to ask the police officer nearby a question and noticed a large crowd had gathered. Ms. Stad and Mr. Pike were standing
behind a yellow police line, eyebrows raised, mouths open. The other students were buzzing on the sidelines, no doubt trying to figure out why the police were there, who the two people in handcuffs were, and what was wrong with the docent guy on the gurney. Not to mention why their four classmates were involved.

“Hey, Cody!” Matt the Brat yelled from the sidelines. “You're in deep doo-doo this time!”

Ms. Stad shot him a glance that stopped Matt from saying anything else. She warned her class to stay put, then ducked under the police line and headed for the Code Busters.

“What on earth is going on?” she asked when she reached them. “Are you all right?”

The officer who had freed Quinn and M.E. spoke for them. “They're fine, thanks to their quick action. And so is Mr. Bour. If it weren't for these kids, he might have been in real trouble.”

Ms. Stad bit her lip. Silently she gave each of the four kids a hug. “What exactly happened?” she asked again.

Quinn shrugged. “We were just looking for the treasure that Mr. Bour had talked about.”

“He had this treasure hunter's map and a journal page that were clues,” Luke added. “We thought maybe the Code Busters could figure it out.”

“But I thought that was all legend,” Ms. Stad said. “Mr. Bour was just trying to make history come alive for you students.”

“Yeah,” Luke agreed, “but when we talked to him after the presentation, he said there really had been a treasure hunter: a descendant of Hippolyte de Bouchard who might have found the treasure. He's the one who left behind the map and puzzle that Chad had.”

“What puzzle?” Ms. Stad asked. “What are you talking about?”

Cody became distracted as she watched the officers place Longbeard and Jolly in the back of one of the police cars. She wondered what would happen to them.

M.E. answered Ms. Stad's question. “We found a message that had a nursery rhyme hidden inside.”

“ ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,' ” Quinn offered. “Only we couldn't figure out what the rhyme
actually
meant. We were going to ask you, Ms. Stad, since you know so much about hidden messages in nursery rhymes.”

Ms. Stad smiled proudly. “Well, let's see. I do know that it's a rhyme about pirates who were searching for loot that was supposedly hidden inside ‘the monkey.'

“Oh, remember what Chad said. ‘Monkey' means ‘cannon,' ” Quinn said.

Unfortunately, there aren't any cannons at the Carmel Mission. There used to be, but they were melted down and formed into bells.”

Ms. Stad looked at the disappointed faces of the Code Busters. She patted Cody and M.E.'s backs, smiled at Luke and Quinn, and said, “But it was still fun doing the treasure hunts and orienteering codes and other puzzles, right?”

The kids nodded, but their hearts weren't in it. They'd hoped to find treasure, and they'd found only dead ends, unanswered questions, and bad guys.

“Students!” Ms. Stad hollered back to the crowd
of kids watching the scene. “Time to head back to camp.” She turned to the police officer. “Are these kids free to go?”

“I have a couple more questions; then you can have them back,” the officer said.

“All right, I'll have one of my parent volunteers wait for them in the courtyard and make sure they return to camp safely. Thanks, Officer.”

“Thank you, ma'am. You've got some smart kids here, you know.”

“Oh, I know, Officer,” Ms. Stad said, smiling at the group. “I definitely know.”

The officer took down the statements of each Code Buster, one at a time. Since Cody had been the first one questioned, she sat on a bench to wait for the others and think about the puzzle. Pulling out her notebook, she flipped open to the page where she'd copied Bouchard's journal entry. Together the Code Busters had solved the odd message when they realized “Pop Goes the Weasel” was hidden inside. But there had to be more to it …

Quinn joined her on the bench.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I think there's something more here.”

“But Stad said the rhyme meant the treasure was hidden inside a cannon—and there are no cannons around here.”

“I know, but look at these numbers at the bottom,” Cody said, pointing to the row of random numbers.

“Yeah, so? We figured they were some kind of numeric code, remember? But we couldn't decode them without the key. That's how codes work, dude.”

Cody rolled her eyes at Quinn. “I
know
that. But that's just it.”

“What's just it?” Luke said, appearing next to them. “What are you guys working on?”

“Cody thinks there's more to the puzzle,” said Quinn, “and that these numbers have something to do with it:

10-19-12-4-23-22-19-17 4-10 13-14-23-12-22-13

But unless we have the decoder, we're not going to be able to figure it out.”

“I think we have the decoder,” Cody announced. “I think it's right here on the page.”

Luke looked down at the message. “Where?”

“Remember how French words are sometimes used by pirates?” Cody said.

“Yeah,” Luke answered. “You think it's French?”

“No, but remember what we learned about how the French resistance used to code their messages?”

“You mean, by counting pages, lines, and words—or letters—to encode them,” Quinn said.

“Well, what if Bouchard's descendant, the treasure hunter, did that, using these numbers? And instead of using page numbers, lines, and words, he just used letters?”

M.E. came bouncing toward her friends, a grin on her face. “I'm done. That was fun. Anyway, I guess we should get back to—” M.E. glanced down at the nursery rhyme page Cody held in her lap and stopped midsentence. “Hey, what's up?” She sat down on the bench next to Quinn.

“Cody's trying to figure out what the numbers mean,” Quinn said, nodding toward the journal entry. She began writing numbers in order, under each of the letters in the first row of the rhyme. Then
she located the numbers written at the bottom of the journal entry and wrote down the corresponding letter.

Checking the number 10, she wrote down the corresponding letter, which was T. The next number was 19, which equaled R. She continued to write down letters for numbers in the code until she recognized a word.

She tried the set of letters in the next row, but the letters didn't form a familiar word.

After she tried the next two rows, she was about to give up when she decided to return to the top row.
This time it worked—they had the second word!

“Just one more word!” Cody said excitedly. Using the same top row, she decoded the last few numbers.

“Whoa!” she said to the others, who were grinning at the message. “Now we really
have
to talk to Chad!”

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

M
s. Stadelhofer is awesome,” M.E. said, as the kids entered Community Hospital in Monterey, accompanied by Mrs. Van Tassell, one of the parent volunteers. Ms. Stad had called the Code Busters' parents to tell them what had happened. Then, the police had gotten the Code Busters special permission to visit Chad, as a reward for their “heroic efforts.”

“I know!” Cody said. “It was so nice of her to let us
visit Chad while the other kids went back to camp. I hope he's okay.”

“You don't have long, guys,” Mrs. Van Tassell said. “Remember, he's recovering from that attack and will need lots of rest. Five minutes.”

Cody was excited to see the docent and make sure he was all right. Not only had the police arranged for the kids to visit him, but an officer had stopped by the camp to inform the Code Busters they'd be getting a commendation from the mayor.