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Authors: Harry Harrison
Tags: Science-Fiction
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report with a glow of pleasure, turned the page and saw the drawing. There it was, just as they had found it when they had finally opened the safe. A drawing of a bishop with a line of chess notation written below it.
1.R–K4XB
Which means in chess notation Rook to square Knight 4 takes Bishop.
When I read it the warm glow of pleasure was replaced by a chill of worry.Had I given myself away to the police? Would they analyse the clue and be waiting for me?
‘No!’ I cried aloud. ‘The police are lazy and relaxed with little crime to keep them on their toes. They may puzzle over it – but they will never understand it until it is too late. But The Bishop should be able to work it out. He will know that it is a message for him and will labour over it. I hope.’
I sipped at my beer and had a good worry. It had taken me tedious hours to work out this little mind-twister. The fact that The Bishop used a chess bishop as his calling card had led me to the chess books. I assumed that he – or she, I don’t believe that anyone had ever determined The Bishop’s sex, although it was assumed the criminal was male – cared about chess. If more knowledge was needed he couldconsult the same book that I had. With very little effort it could be discovered that there are two different ways of noting chess moves. The oldest of them, the one that I had used, named the squares of the file after the piece that sat at the end of the file. (If you must know, ‘ranks’ are the rows of squares that stretch from side to side of a chessboard. ‘Files’ are the rows that stretchbetween the players.) So the square on which the White King sits is King 1. King 2 would be on the next one up. Or rather it
should
be calledWhite King 2 because it is also Black King 7 from the point of view of the other player. (If you think that this is complicated don’t play chess – because this is the easiest part!) However, there is a second form of chess notation called Algebraic Notationthat assigns a letter and a number to each of the 64 squares on the board. The eight files, looking at the board from left to right for White, are lettered from ‘a’ to ‘h’. So Knight four can be either b4, g4, b5, or g5.
Confusing? I hope so. I hope the police never think it is a code and get around to cracking it. Because if they do I am cracked as well. This little bit of chess movement containsthe date of my next crime, when I am going to ‘take bishop’, meaning take The Bishop card to a crime. Meaning also I am going to take credit for being The Bishop. Also meaning I am taking The Bishop to the cleaners.
I have the scenario clear in my mind. The police puzzle over the chess move – then discard it. Not so The Bishop in his luxury hideout. He is going to be angry. A crime has been committedand he has been blamed. Money has been taken – and he doesn’t have it! My hope is that he will worry over this chess move, see it as a clue, scribble away at it and eventually solve it.
By thinking about the fact that Knight is a homonym for night. Night four – what can that mean? The fourth night of what? The fourth night of the Modern Music Festival in the city of Pearly Gates, that is what.And this fourth night is also the 24th day of the year, which is – that’s correct – also known as Knight 4 in its first permutation. That is if b is understood as the second letter of the alphabet, so b4 can be read as 24. With this added verification The Bishop would be sure that some crime would take place on the fourth night of the festival. A crime involving money of course. My mental fingerswere crossed in the hopes that he would be more interested in me than in informing the police in advance about the crime.
I hoped that I had struck the right balance. Too complex for the police, but capable of solution by The Bishop. And he had exactly one week to solve it and come to the festival.
Which also meant that I had one week to hype myself up and depress myself
1.R–K4XB
Which means in chess notation Rook to square Knight 4 takes Bishop.
When I read it the warm glow of pleasure was replaced by a chill of worry.Had I given myself away to the police? Would they analyse the clue and be waiting for me?
‘No!’ I cried aloud. ‘The police are lazy and relaxed with little crime to keep them on their toes. They may puzzle over it – but they will never understand it until it is too late. But The Bishop should be able to work it out. He will know that it is a message for him and will labour over it. I hope.’
I sipped at my beer and had a good worry. It had taken me tedious hours to work out this little mind-twister. The fact that The Bishop used a chess bishop as his calling card had led me to the chess books. I assumed that he – or she, I don’t believe that anyone had ever determined The Bishop’s sex, although it was assumed the criminal was male – cared about chess. If more knowledge was needed he couldconsult the same book that I had. With very little effort it could be discovered that there are two different ways of noting chess moves. The oldest of them, the one that I had used, named the squares of the file after the piece that sat at the end of the file. (If you must know, ‘ranks’ are the rows of squares that stretch from side to side of a chessboard. ‘Files’ are the rows that stretchbetween the players.) So the square on which the White King sits is King 1. King 2 would be on the next one up. Or rather it
should
be calledWhite King 2 because it is also Black King 7 from the point of view of the other player. (If you think that this is complicated don’t play chess – because this is the easiest part!) However, there is a second form of chess notation called Algebraic Notationthat assigns a letter and a number to each of the 64 squares on the board. The eight files, looking at the board from left to right for White, are lettered from ‘a’ to ‘h’. So Knight four can be either b4, g4, b5, or g5.
Confusing? I hope so. I hope the police never think it is a code and get around to cracking it. Because if they do I am cracked as well. This little bit of chess movement containsthe date of my next crime, when I am going to ‘take bishop’, meaning take The Bishop card to a crime. Meaning also I am going to take credit for being The Bishop. Also meaning I am taking The Bishop to the cleaners.
I have the scenario clear in my mind. The police puzzle over the chess move – then discard it. Not so The Bishop in his luxury hideout. He is going to be angry. A crime has been committedand he has been blamed. Money has been taken – and he doesn’t have it! My hope is that he will worry over this chess move, see it as a clue, scribble away at it and eventually solve it.
By thinking about the fact that Knight is a homonym for night. Night four – what can that mean? The fourth night of what? The fourth night of the Modern Music Festival in the city of Pearly Gates, that is what.And this fourth night is also the 24th day of the year, which is – that’s correct – also known as Knight 4 in its first permutation. That is if b is understood as the second letter of the alphabet, so b4 can be read as 24. With this added verification The Bishop would be sure that some crime would take place on the fourth night of the festival. A crime involving money of course. My mental fingerswere crossed in the hopes that he would be more interested in me than in informing the police in advance about the crime.
I hoped that I had struck the right balance. Too complex for the police, but capable of solution by The Bishop. And he had exactly one week to solve it and come to the festival.
Which also meant that I had one week to hype myself up and depress myself
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