Foreword
(with apologies to Sir A. Conan Doyle)

"What is it?" asked Watson as he followed Holmes into their Baker Street rooms.

"A note.  A cipher of some sort," replied Holmes as he picked up a piece of paper from his desk and held it up to the light from the window.  "It has apparently been left here to elicit reader attention."

Holmes rubbed the paper between his thumb and forefinger, tore off a corner, and examined the wood fibers with a lens.

"Inexpensive foolscap Watson.  I would say it was written by a right-handed man in his forties with brown hair, blue eyes and wire framed spectacles."

"You can determine his features using your deductive reasoning?"

"Don't be naive.  It's called writer's prerogative."

"Do you mean to say that this foreword is a tongue-in-cheek affair and is not to be taken seriously?

"Precisely my dear fellow," replied Holmes.

"I am not sure that I approve," bemoaned Watson as he walked over to where Holmes was standing and looked at the note.

"It appears to be a list of numbers," observed the doctor.  "What kind of code is it?"

"A numerical one Watson," chuckled Holmes.

Watson gave his friend a cold eye.

"Can you decipher it?"

Holmes set down his lens, looked at the note again and rubbed his chin with his long fingers.

"I observe two separate lines of numbers.  Perhaps two sentences, or possibly an address.  It could be the title and author of a book or a gentleman's calling card.  Notice the range in numbers Watson.  From 12 to 62,029,287,178."

Holmes stood silently and thought for a minute.

"Since there are no letters or words nor any clue of an external reference, I deduce the cipher must be a simple substitution scheme."

"You mean the letter A is 1 and B is 2?"

"Not quite that simple Watson.  I speculate the writer passed grade school.  No, I would say it is more likely he used a numerical base other than ten which uses the alphabet for numbers greater than 9.  The simplest numerical base, which could include all the letters, is base 36.  And it would explain the high numerical values in the note."

"I don't follow you Holmes."

"If you use the 26 letters of the alphabet in addition to the ten numerical digits 0 through 9 you have a total of 36 digits.  The letter A in base 36, for example, is actually the decimal number 10.  The letter Z is equal to decimal 35.  A two-digit number requires a carry over of the base 36."

Watson gave Holmes a perplexed look.

"The number 1A in base 36 for example is 1 times 36 plus 10 which equals decimal 46."

Holmes sat down at his desk and cleared off an area to work.  He picked up a fresh quill, dipped it in India ink and scratched out a conversion table.

"Our mystery writer encrypted his words by proposing they are actually base 36 numbers and then converted them to their decimal equivalents.  For example, he would take a word such as 'THE' and use it as a base 36 number whose decimal value is 38,210 which happens to be the first word of our cipher."

Watson wrinkled his brow and scratched his head.

Holmes ignored Watson's fixed state of confusion and proceeded to translate each number on the paper using his base 36 conversion table and an abacus.  After several minutes he stood up from his desk, read the note to him-self, then handed it to Watson to read.

"What do you make of it?" asked Watson.

"We are obviously dealing with a writer who possesses a starving ego Watson.  He could damage our reputations."

"What can the reader do?" asked Watson.  "Perhaps no new accounts of our adventures should be told."

"Nonsense Watson.  'The Kiss of Death' must be told.  Although there may have been other cases that presented more challenging problems, this account contains fresh ideas, a captivating plot and ominous peril.  It is true to form and helps to keep us alive.  It is life itself Watson, and I believe it to be good fiction.  What do you say?  Are you up for another adventure?"

"Absolutely Holmes.  I'm right behind you."

"Then turn the page.  The game's afoot!"

Preface | Table of Contents | Chapter 1

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