The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her close to me. "Honey," I said, "forgive your old Mary. We are all overstrung, overwrought. I didn't mean to speak so sharply."

"There is nothing to forgive, dear," she said. "But-I don't understand. What did I say, or do, that made you feel like being cross to me?"

"Nothing," I told her. "I'm all on edge-that's all."

"I know. Were you looking for something else, on the table? There was nothing else in her bag."

"I was wondering," I said, "about that foreign looking letter she got on the second of July. Did she burn it, with the other things?"

"Oddly, she didn't. I found it in her desk; or, rather, beneath her typewriter. Either she forgot about it; or knew that none of us could read it."

"It was written in a foreign language?"

"No. In code. Here it is."

Code, indeed! When I took it from its envelope, this is what met my eyes.

"Paexzazlytp! f-y nyx ogrgrsgo, rn fgao atf jan j-asn, ahzgo zkg c. ahhalo, vkgt nyx clplzgf rg lt zkg kypulzae, zkaz nyx palf, vlzk nyxo lrlzazgf r-yta e-lpa prleg, ‘p-yoon, yef fgao, l- rafg -- "

I have copied only the first lines on the first page. There were four sleazy pages, all closely typewritten. Not a scratch of handwriting on it. What I judged to be the signature, was, "Slrsl."

"Do you know who wrote this? " I asked.

"I am sure, if I dare be sure of anything, that it was written by a man named Lewis Bauermont."

I counted the letters of "Lewis" on my fingers. Five. The number of letters in the signature, "Slrsl."

"If he signed his name Lewis," I said, "then ‘S' would be, ‘L,' and ‘l' would be ‘e' and so on. Get a pencil, dear. Let's see if we can work it out."

She came and looked over my shoulder at the jumbled letters.

"No," she said, "you see, the letter ‘s' comes twice in the last word, and there are no duplicate letters in Lewis. I am sure it will be more difficult than any substitution of letters. I don't know anything about codes; but I have a notion that the letters are mere symbols of something else-numbers perhaps, that work out with a key quotation."

"I'm going to have a try at my idea, anyway," I insisted.

I went and sat at the desk. She sat beside me, and handed me a pencil.

"Perhaps," I suggested, "the man who wrote this, signed some nickname. Did he have one?"