TheCodeBreakers
message. And surely had there been such a key pattern, Holmes would
have discovered it. The inventor of the cipher, Elsie's father, Patrick, "the
boss of the Joint," may have gotten the idea for the dancing men from a
cipher based on human figures in the semiofficial Manual of Signals by
Albert Myers, the founder of the "U.S. Army Signal Corps, or from the
same unknown place as the inventor of a slightly later United States
patent that uses manikins for cipher symbols, or from the ubiquitous
Carbonari, whose call-sign is made by extending the arms horizontally in
the form of a cross and the reply by pressing two fists one above the
other on the breast. Holmes may well have known of these possible
sources. But even if Patrick did borrow the idea from one of them, he has
altered the arrangement so thoroughly that cryptanalysis is left as the
only way of resolving the problem.
annaabi.ee 
