Chapter Three: Message in Code

From Treasure in the Yukon

Like I said at the beginning, it had been a bad day.

I didn’t feel so brainy as l trudged home from Scruggs’s house. I guess he gave it to me straight all right, while we had our catch outside.

I always figured that I knew Scruggs well enough, once he got into the youth group at church back in the spring. I mean, he kept to himself pretty much, but we always Said “hi” to each other. Also, since he’d come back from California, I thought he’d been friendlier, and we were both on the church softball team.

But while we had our catch, he told me he felt awkward with me—felt like people laughed at him all the time, and it was worse when he was with me. He said he didn’t want to go to Canada with me and my family because he thought that he might not fit in.

Really, it was just a nice way of saying he didn’t like

me. I didn’t have to be a detective to know that.

Then when I got home, the place was in an uproar. Seems that a colony of ants had invaded the clothes hamper during the day. They were swarming over all the clothes in there but were showing special interest in my shirt with the blueberry stain on the sleeve. I would have made a strategic retreat until things cooled off, but my mother saw me and gave me a scolding for being so careless. I shook the clothes out outside, put them in to rinse in the big sink in the laundry room, and vacuumed the carpet upstairs to get rid of the ants.

Then I sat in my room and planned how everybody was going to be sorry as soon as I got rich and famous as a detective or something better.

My older sister Penny came in. Penny’s okay for a sister. She’d even be okay for a brother. She’s not afraid of most things that scare girls, and she makes a real good pitcher until she tires out.

“Uncle Justin called a few minutes ago,” she said. “The equipment’s okay, and he’s bringing it back with him tonight.”

“Great,” I said. “Scruggs won’t go. And I know Mom and Dad won’t let me go alone. They think I’ll get in the way by myself.”

“Why won’t he go?”

“That’s the killer, Penny. He doesn’t like me.”

“Did he say that?”

“Not in those words, but he says he’s uncomfortable with me. It’s like he thinks that I think that he’s not good enough.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed next to me and leaned her head down on her hands. “He used to bully us to pieces.”

“Sure, I know that, but if I can forget it, why can’t he?”

“You can forget it, but maybe other people can’t. And if they can’t, Scruggs can’t. Come on, it’s dinner time.”

I knew what she meant by that. Some of the kids at church still weren’t supposed to hang around Scruggs, and it wasn’t because he was still such a bad kid, because Scruggs wasn’t bad anymore. I’d never seen anybody change like Scruggs had changed. He quit using bad language; he’d quit trying to convince Al at the Quick­Mart to sell him cigarettes; and he’d quit picking on people.

But Scruggs came from Foster Care, and some people at our church say that if a kid comes from a broken home he’s just going break up his own home some day, and if he ever got exposed to crime and stuff, he was more likely to be a criminal. Dad says that’s ignorance. And he reminded me that Christians believe in our own unworthiness before God, so it’s wrong to think others are so unworthy that Jesus can’t give them the same victory He gives others. “Scruggs demonstrates the grace of God in his life,” he told me.

And Scruggs was really trying to be good. The only bad thing that had happened since he got back from San Francisco was that he used saltpeter in an experiment and blew the dry wall out of Mrs. Bennett’s basement. But that was an accident.

Anyway, some of the kids weren’t supposed to go near him, and Scruggs knew it perfectly well, and I guess it hurt his feelings. I guess it would hurt anybody’s feelings.

At dinner I decided to ask my dad about it, and see if I could convince him to let me go anyway, but then somebody knocked at the back door.

“I’ll get it,” Dad said as Mom started to stand. “Relax and eat, honey. I wonder who could be knocking at five o’clock.” In a minute he came back, and he looked kind of puzzled.

“It’s a telegram,” he said, sitting back down. He looked thoughtful.

“I didn’t know people sent telegrams anymore,” Penny said. “Isn’t it cheaper to call?”

“Yes, if you have access to a phone. Apparently somebody didn’t. It’s for your brother Justin,” Dad added to Mom. “But it was addressed to me. I wonder why.”

“What’s it say?” I asked.

“Well, I guess I might as well read it to you, for all the sense that it makes,” he replied, then read:

“Justin: Pat no Nile Enemy. See King scion. We bear thong tool.”

He glanced up. “It’s signed, ‘Jimmy and Nelson.”’ “That’s the last name of Justin’s partner—Dr. Nelson,”

Mom said, “He’s been trying to get more research in before the expedition. I think that he’s flying in from the Yukon to meet Justin here tomorrow. Jimmy is their assistant—Jimmy Gray Beaver.”

“Maybe all of that is some kind of technical jargon,” Penny offered.

“Isn’t a scion a kind of ruler?” I asked. “He mentions kings and scions. It sounds more like a trip to Egypt than to the Yukon.”

“Especially with the Nile thrown in there,” Penny added. “I think it’s a code. Maybe the Nile stands for the Yukon River.”

“Uh-oh, if you two are hunting up more trouble, I think it’s time to batten down the hatches,” Dad said.

“Peabody, Wisconsin, has barely recovered from your last adventure.” (You can read about that in Derwood, Inc.)

Just then the phone rang, and Penny and I raced to get it before Dad could say anything. She beat me because she sat closest to the kitchen door.

“Hello, hello!” she exclaimed into the receiver. “This is Penny Derwood!” like she thought somebody was going to read a clue to her right over the phone. Disappointment flickered across her face. “Yes, he’s right here, Scruggs,” She sighed in defeat and handed the phone to me.

I took the receiver. “Scruggs?”

“Jack, why don’t you come over after dinner?” Scruggs asked. “I’ve been talking to my mother, and she wants me to reconsider.”

“Sure! And I’ve got more to tell you. I’ll see you in half an hour!”