Mr. Salt's study was the biggest and nicest room in the house.
In the middle of the room, four tables were pulled together to hold up the heaps of documents that had been piled on top of them. Most of them were in Dad's handwriting and contained his personal notes and story ideas, but the depths of that pile also held curious newspaper cut-outs, dictionaries for strange, rare languages, maps to faraway countries, copies of police and FBI reports, antique first editions of rare books, and unknown people's personal diaries.
Summer also knew for a fact that somewhere in Dad's study there'd a secret safe (possibly more than one), but it was not worth looking for as it only held what Mr. Salt considered to be his greatest treasure: the manuscript of his next upcoming book. For all his skepticism towards danger that characterized him, Mr. Salt was deeply paranoid when it came to one specific fear: he was convinced that greedy reporters would be lurking on every corner seeking to steal his book, and reveal it to the audience before the publisher could. When he was close to finishing a book, not even the sisters were allowed to come near the study.
Summer walked to the head of the table and picked up some pages from the top of the pile.
One of them was a letter from the editor, with a picture of the next book's cover.
For some reason, all of dad's covers had guns and roses in them, whether they also featured mean-looking yet scantily dressed men and women to hold them or not.
Another page turned out to be the cover page of an earlier draft, with the current title at the top:
#23th novel
"Dear, stop or I'll shoot first!" by Stephen J. Salt
while some previous titles had been crossed out:
Who Took My Squirrel?
Three Men and a Rowboat.
The Red Rose.
The Omega Clue.
It was then that Summer spotted the blue dossier which lay in pile inconspicuously. As she pulled it out, a bunch of old photos fell out. Intrigued, she sat down and began to read.
Mouse, not nearly as excited by a bunch of files as Summer, opted to inspect Dad's souvenirs instead.
Right next to a big cabinet that held Dad's awards (plaquettes, diplomas and trophies) from various writers' associations, there were a bunch of shelves that held the collection that Mr. Salt dragged back home with him from his trips.
Just like with the documents, it was sometimes difficult to tell which one of them was junk and which ones highly valuable.
Mouse right now was examining a monkey statuette, about 10 inches tall, with glass (?) gemstones for eyes.
Meanwhile, Summer was making an amazing discovery.
Mr. Salt in the research of his novel had stumbled upon an ancient mystery called the Omega Code.
The code was used as a secret language first by the Soviets, but was subsequently stolen and utilized by the Americans during the Cold War. It was based on an old African language that nobody ever was able to decipher. Thus, the code hold significance not just for scholars of ancient history, but also to intelligence agencies who wanted to gain access to USA or Russian state secrets.
To Mr. Salt, this was only material to work from; but Summer could see that without noticing it, her dad has collected all the evidence he'd have needed to solve the code.
It was all there, waiting for a person who could decipher them, such as herself, to come along.
What should the sisters do?
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