Coded message

Robbie and his friend Nick were not happy!

Double French with Miss Knowles was nobody's idea of fun. To make matters worse, there was a test schedules for later that afternoon.

As Miss Knowles was muttering something about a conjunctive known, there was a knocking sound behind Robbie and Nick that seemed to be coming from the radiator.

Robbie whispered in Nick’s ear that it was probably an air-lock. Robbie had learned this from Dad and knew that you had to bleed radiators to sort out this problem.

Halfway through the French test later that afternoon, the knocking started again.

“Maybe it’s morse code?” Said Nick in a loud whisper.

Unfortunately, Miss Knowles heard the whisper and deducted a mark from Nick.

Robbie however, found this interesting. Maybe it was someone sending code. Nothing for it, this was a problem that needed to be solved.

So after school, Robbie and Nick went to the room above their classroom as that’s where the knocking seemed to be coming from.

It was the girls toilet!

“That’s it” said Robbie. “A girl is sending us a coded message from the toilet”

The boys were excited as can be and shot to the library to borrow a book on morse code so that they could decipher the message.

The school librarian was happy to find such a book. It hadn’t been borrowed for quite some time and had a thick layer of dust. The librarian blew the dust from the cover which unfortunately caught Robbie in the left eye and made him drop his heavy pencil case on to his foot.

The next day the boys sat eagerly in class, not listening to the teacher but waiting for the next coded message. At the same time as the day before, the knocking started.

Nick seemed the quickest at deciphering the code and came up with the following message

Wnyt a bpti uf iy bhfsl

The boys stared at this message for quite a time until Robbie declared

“Want a bite of my bagel. That’s what it says! A girl is inviting us to share her bagel!”

The boys were beside themselves with excitement.

“How do we find out who sent the message” Asked Nick.

Robbie thought for a while and then answered.

“Simple! We borrow a dress from lost property and a lipstick that I can take from Mum’s handbag. She has loads! When the knocking starts, you ask to go to the toilet. Quickly change so that you look like a girl. Go into the girls toilet and see who is sending the message”

Nick thought this was a brilliant plan. He was very worried about dressing up as a girl but didn’t want to look like a wimp.

So after school, Nick managed to borrow a dress whilst Robbie distracted the teacher by complaining of a sharp pain in his left, big toe. In the evening, Robbie took a lipstick Whilst Mum was on a lengthy phone call, arranging her next book club meeting and the boys were ready to go.

So the next day, when the knocking started again, Nick held up his hand and asked if he could go to the toilet.

Off he shot, quickly changed into the dress and slapped on some lipstick although some of that mysteriously ended up on his nose. He charged through the girls toilet door and found………Nothing!! Not a soul was in there.

Nick scratched his head, walked out of the girls toilet and almost collided with Miss Gurney, the head teacher.

“You girl, you know that lipstick is not allowed in school” She bellowed.

Nick fled like the wind. Despite his fear, Nick couldn’t help but think how draughty it was running in a dress. He changed back into his normal clothes, wiped off the lipstick with a tissue and rushed back to class.

Miss Gurney had spotted a distinctive mark on the back of the fleeing child's dress and she knew that this dress belonged to Rosie Leach, one of the naughtier children in the school.

So Rosie was summoned to Miss Gurney’s office and was completely bemused when she was given a detention, after all, Rosie had been singing with the school choir at the time of the alleged offence. But Miss Gurney was quite fierce and Rosie thought it best not to argue.

The knocking on the radiator never occurred again. Robbie and Nick both got a C their French tests and Nick’s Dad could not work out how his son had got lipstick on his nose.

Little did the boys know that Miss Jarvis, the music teacher had been planning a school concert in her spare periods. She had listened to her i-pod for songs that could be used and was prone to tapping her foot in time to the music on a radiator pipe in her room. The noise had echoed down the pipes and, well, you know the rest!

 

With thanks to Melinda P for suggesting the two words lipstick & solved.