ecret Code Book is Missing

ome time ago Baron Von Lodge was the head of a small country near Switzerland known as Lilliland.

The Baron’s key person in all of Lilliland’s transactions was Professor Hamblin.

Professor Hamblin maintained an office next to the Baron’s in Lilliland Castle. Very little in Lilliland went on without the Professor’s knowledge. The Professor kept a lot of secret documents in his office and he had a philosophy of hiding things in plain sight.

One of the things that he kept on the bookshelf was a book that had all the secret codes for all the bank accounts. The bank accounts were identified by number and not by name. Swiss banks, as well as Lilliland banks, were involved. Anyone with the codebook could easily access any of the accounts.

Unfortunately, every two or three years, the Professor donated some of his books to the Lilliland Library for use by the people of Lilliland. In the stack of books taken to the library, quite by accident, was the secret codebook. The outside cover of the book had the title of a cookbook but the Professor, and only the Professor, knew otherwise.

When the accident was discovered, the Professor panicked because in the wrong hands it could easily bankrupt Lilliland by withdrawing all the money in all the accounts.

Quickly going to the library, the Professor found out that the codebook was loaned out to a library member. He obtained the name and address of the person and dashed out to the person’s house.

Fortunately, the person was at home and did have the book. The Professor asked to see the book to make sure that everything was intact. He quickly found that all the pages were there and the person who borrowed the book said that he had not opened it yet.

The Professor explained that it was not a cookbook, but a bank codebook and offered the man a reward and his choice of any cookbook that he wanted.

It was a close call but everything worked out fine. The Professor changed the name from cookbook to bird book. He also made sure that his bird book was never to be donated or loaned to anyone again.