Edgar Allen Poe's "The Goldbug"

http://www.pambytes.com/poe/stories/goldbug.html

Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted It my inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat:

53++!305))6*;4826)4+.)4+);806*;48!8`60))85;]8*:+*8!83(88)5*!;46(;88*96*?;8)*+
(;485);5*!2:*+(;4956*2(5*-4)8`8*; 4069285);)6!8)4++;1(+9;48081;8:8+1;48!85;4)485!528806*81(
+9;48;(88;4(+?34;48)4+;161;:188;+?;

"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me on my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn

them."

"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher ? that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, atonce, that this was of a simple species ? such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."

"And you really solved it?"

"Human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve"

Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"

http://members.tripod.com/~msherman/holmes/return/dancing.men.txt

http://www.gkvonline.com/ret_Men.htm

FILM : Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon (1942) :This story is loosely based on the 'The Dancing Men', but only in the use of the drawings themselves. The plot of the film centres around stopping the Nazis getting their hands on a new bomb sight, wrapped in a code of dancing men, which then leads Holmes towards the capture of Moritary.

"WHAT ONE MAN CAN INVENT ANOTHER CAN DISCOVER"

http://www.math.ucla.edu/~mjm/197.1.00w/pop_crypto.shtml
 
 

Part 3