26 Another Clue

Chapter 26 ANOTHER CLUE As soon as Coke and Pep got out of the water, their parents were all over them, like bats under a bridge. "Where have you two been all day?" "We told you to meet us outside the museum!" "Why were you in the river?" "What were you thinking?" "You had us worried sick!" "We were scared to death!" "We filed a police report!" Pep looked to her brother, as usual, to do the talking. "Okay, here's what happened," Coke tried to explain. "We were kidnapped from the museum by these guys in bowler hats. They locked us in a

第二十六章另一条线索可口可乐和佩普刚从水里出来，他们的父母就像桥下的蝙蝠一样围在他们身边。 “你们俩一整天都上哪儿去了？”“我们告诉过你在博物馆外面等我们！”“你为什么在河里？”“你在想什么？”“你让我们担心死了！”“我们都吓死了！”“我们报了警！”佩普像往常一样，把目光投向她的哥哥，让他来说话。 “好吧，事情是这样的，”可口可乐试图解释。 “我们是被这些戴圆顶礼帽的家伙从博物馆绑架的。 他们把我们锁在

room all afternoon. Then they tied us up and brought us out to the river. They put us in a boat and the bats came out and—" "Don't give me that, mister!" Dr. McDonald shouted. "We've heard enough of your wild stories!" The parents were even angrier when they found out the twins no longer had their cell phones. Not a word was spoken in the car on the way to the Econo Lodge Arboretum in North Austin. Coke and Pep knew that any excuse they could come up with wouldn't fly with their parents. "You are not to leave this room tonight," Dr. McDonald said coldly after they had checked into the hotel. "You are not to turn on the TV. You are not to take anything out of the minibar. Do you understand me?" "Yeah," both twins replied glumly. "In case of emergency—and there better not be an emergency—your father and I will be listening to music at Antone's on Fifth Street,"

整个下午都在房间。然后他们把我们绑起来，带到河边。 他们把我们放到一条船上，蝙蝠就出来了，然后——”“别跟我胡扯，先生！”博士。 麦当劳喊道。“我们已经听够了你那些荒唐的故事！”当父母发现双胞胎没有手机时，他们更生气了。 在前往北奥斯汀的经济小屋植物园的路上，车里一句话也没说。 可口可乐和佩普知道，他们想出的任何借口都不会让父母信服。 “今晚你不能离开这个房间。” 他们入住旅馆后，麦克唐纳冷冷地说。 “你不能打开电视。 你不能从小冰箱里拿任何东西。 你明白我的意思吗？”“是啊，”双胞胎都闷闷不乐地回答。 “万一有紧急情况——最好不要有紧急情况——你父亲和我将在第五街的安东尼酒吧听音乐。”

said Mrs. McDonald. "You two can sit here and think about what you did." After their parents left, Coke and Pep took showers and changed into dry clothes. They tried reading for a while, but it was hard to focus after what they had been through. "Want to watch TV?" Coke asked. "Mom and Dad told us we weren't allowed to watch TV." "How are they gonna know?" "They'll know," Pep said. "There's probably a chip in the TV that records what we watch." "You're paranoid." There was nothing else to do. A thought popped into Pep's head. They had received a new cipher when they were at the Museum of the Weird. She didn't remember it, but her brother would. She got out her notepad and had him write the cipher down: 7-14-12-4-14-5-19-7-4-2-17-8-2-10-4-1912- 0-18-19-4-17

麦克唐纳太太说。“你们俩可以坐在这里，想想你做了什么。” 父母离开后，可口可乐和佩普洗了个澡，换上了干衣服。 他们试着读了一会儿书，但在经历了这些之后，他们很难集中注意力。 “想看电视吗？”可口可乐问道。 “爸爸妈妈不让我们看电视。” “他们怎么知道？”“他们会知道的，”佩普说。 “电视里可能有一个芯片，可以记录我们看的东西。” “你偏执。”没有别的事可做。 一个想法突然出现在佩普的脑海里。 他们在古怪博物馆的时候收到了一个新的密码。 她不记得了，但她哥哥记得。 她拿出笔记本，让他把密码写下来：7-14-12- 14-5-19- 4-2-17-8- 10-4-1912- 0-18-19-4-17

Coke looked at the numbers and shook his head. It was impossible. "Think of it this way," Pep said. "Each number probably stands for a letter. We just have to break it down and figure out which one." Pep wrote out the alphabet, and then put the numbers 1 through 26 under the letters. "This would be the simplest solution," she continued. "The number 7 is under G, so 7 probably means G. The number 14 is under N, so the second letter is N." "There aren't many words that start with GN," Coke noted. "Gnat, gnome..." Pep went on, and decoded the first ten letters. It spelled GNLDNESGDB. "I made a mistake somewhere," she said, looking up. "This doesn't make any sense."

可口可乐看了看这些数字，摇了摇头。 这是不可能的。“这样想吧，”佩普说。 “每个数字可能代表一个字母。 我们只需要把它拆开，找出是哪一个。” 佩普写出了字母表，然后把数字1到26放在字母下面。 “这将是最简单的解决方案，”她继续说道。 “数字7在G下面，所以7可能是G的意思。 数字14在N下面，所以第二个字母是N。” 科克指出：“以GN开头的单词并不多。 “小昆虫,gnome……”佩普接着说，他破译了前十个字母。 它拼写为GNLDNESGDB。“我哪里搞错了，”她抬起头说。 “这没有任何意义。”

"Maybe you put the wrong numbers under the letters," her brother suggested. Pep looked at the letters and numbers for a few minutes, and then crossed out everything she had written. Below, she wrote the alphabet out again, this time starting with a zero under the letter A, number 1 under the letter B, number 2 under the letter C, and so on. "So now the 7 is under the letter H," Pep said. "So 7 must mean H. And 14 is under the letter O, so 14 must mean O. The first two letters are H-O." "M is above 12, so 12 means M," Coke said. "E is above 4, so 4 means E." "The first four letters are H-O-M-E," Pep said, writing them out excitedly. They continued like that, matching up the numbers with the letters directly above them.

“也许你把数字写错了，”她哥哥建议道。 佩普看了几分钟字母和数字，然后划掉了她写的所有东西。 下面，她又把字母表写了一遍，这次从字母a下面的0开始，在字母B下面的1开始，在字母C下面的2开始，以此类推。 “所以现在7在字母H下面，”佩普说。 所以7一定是h， 14在字母O下面，所以14一定是O。 前两个字母是H-O。” “M高于12，所以12意味着M，”科克说。 “E大于4，所以4表示E ” “头四个字母是H-O-M-E，”佩普兴奋地写着。 他们继续这样做，把数字和它们正上方的字母匹配起来。

Soon they had the whole message: HOMEOFTHECRICKETMASTER "Home of the cricket master!" Pep exclaimed. "That's what it means! But what's a cricket master?" "There used to be a video game called Cricket Master," Coke recalled, "I think I played it once at somebody's birthday party." Pep went to the other side of the room to get her mother's laptop computer. They were told that they weren't allowed to turn on the TV. Nobody said they couldn't use the computer. She Googled "Cricket Master." Naturally, twenty-seven million results came up. A lot of them concerned the video game Coke had mentioned. There was also a British cricket player named Jack Hobbs, who was known as "the Master." But none of the results seemed to mean anything important. "We struck out again," Pep said. "'Cricket master' has nothing to do with anything." "Nothing has anything to do with anything!"

很快他们就知道了全部信息：板球大师的家！Pep喊道。 “就是这个意思！”但是板球大师是什么？”“以前有一款电子游戏叫《板球大师》，”可口可乐回忆说，“我记得我曾经在一个人的生日派对上玩过。” 佩普走到房间的另一边去拿她妈妈的笔记本电脑。 他们被告知不许打开电视。 没人说他们不能用电脑。 她在谷歌上搜索了“板球大师”。 自然，出现了2700万条结果。 其中很多都与可口可乐提到的电子游戏有关。 还有一位名叫杰克·霍布斯的英国板球运动员，他被称为“大师”。 但这些结果似乎都没有什么重要意义。 “我们又失败了，”佩普说。 “‘板球大师’和任何事情都没有关系。” “什么事都没有关系！”