Tommy beamed. "Outstanding, Wilbur." He picked up his pace and strode rapidly over to the desk. He turned back as the others joined him. "Okay for me to open these drawers?"
Wilbur nodded. There was no chance he was going to say no at this point. The hook tugged on his adrenal gland.
Tommy carefully pulled out the first. Seeing it was empty, he moved to the second. It, too, proved vacant. The last drawer on the right stuck stubbornly on its rails but after a hard pull came loose. Still empty.
Tommy moved to the other side and investigated the final two drawers as he'd done on the right-hand side, but the desk contained nothing of interest. "I guess if there was anything else in here it's long gone by now," he said.
Sean looked underneath the desk's seating position and noticed the little flap dangling from the main panel. "And now it appears we know where the document was found."
He stepped back and let the others crowd around — each peering under the desk to see the hidden storage place.
"Classic," Adriana said.
"You've seen this sort of thing before?" Wilbur asked.
She shrugged. "You break into enough places, you'll see lots of things."
Her comment unsettled the museum director, but Tommy quickly intervened. "What she means is, it's not that uncommon. There must be a mechanism of some sort that got knocked loose to open the hidden door." He flipped over on his back and squirmed under the desk to get a closer look.
He turned on his phone's LED light and held it up to the rectangular hole in the wood. "It's pretty amazing craftsmanship," he said. "The hinges are invisible from the outside. And the seam is cut along the grain in the wood so it appears natural." He flipped the door up until it was almost flush. Tommy didn't close it all the way because he wasn't sure how to get it open again. From what he could tell, that could prove to be a tricky proposition.
"Whoever designed this definitely wanted to keep something hidden."
"Do you see anything else in there?" Reece asked, hunching over to catch a glimpse.
"No. Just the shelf where the document was probably stored. Nothing helpful… Wait a second." He leaned closer to the desk bottom and peered into the hole.
"What is it?" Wilbur asked. His impatient excitement had reached full climax.
"Not sure," Tommy said. "It's small. I mean tiny. I can barely see it. Looks like it was burned into the top of the wood." He craned his neck to the side. "It's a sequence of symbols."
"Symbols?"
"Yeah." Tommy's voice strained slightly. "They're not letters. Just a bunch of random signs."
"Take a picture with your phone," Sean said.
"Really? Thanks, Captain Obvious. I was just about to do that."
Sean chuckled at his friend's comeback. "Just saying; you're taking your sweet time."
"Is he always this impatient?" Tommy asked Adriana.
"I wouldn't know," she answered. "He spends more time with you than he does with me."
Tommy pointed his phone's camera into the recession. "Fair enough." He snapped a few images with the flash and then two more without. A second later he pulled himself out from under the desk and set the device on the desk surface.
A quick tap of the first image brought it to full size on the screen. He pinched his fingers together and then spread them apart to zoom in on the blackened symbols.
"See?" he said.
"Looks like a cipher," Sean said.
"Half of a cipher," Adriana corrected.
"Right."
"Where's the other half?" Reece asked.
"That's the thing about a cipher. The key is always kept somewhere else."
Tommy listened as he continued inspecting the symbols. "He's right. It's the best way to keep a code like this safe. People would give the key to someone they trusted or hide it in a place no one else could find it. Well, other than a person they intended to receive the message."
Wilbur hovered over the group. His fascination reached a fever pitch. "How do you find the key?" His eager voice nearly trembled in the excitement.
"Well, that's the hard part. You never really know. It could be anywhere. Chances are the key is somewhere far from here. Might be in some of his personal property or something like that. Difficult to tell."
"Sometimes," Adriana said, "the things that seem hardest to find are right under your nose." She turned her head back toward the work table where the Mathews document was encased in protective plastic.
The others followed her gaze and realized exactly what she was saying. Well, everyone but Wilbur.
"What?" he asked. "The paper?"
"Sometimes there are codes put into things like that," Sean answered.
"I didn't see anything unusual."
"You're not supposed to. It could be a sequence of words in a certain order that gives it away. Or maybe it isn't meant to be seen."
"What do you mean, isn't meant to be seen?"
"What he means is maybe it was written in invisible ink," Tommy answered.
Wilbur's eyes were already at the point of bursting from their sockets. Somehow they widened just a bit more. "Invisible ink?"
"Yeah. You've heard of it before, right?"
Wilbur nodded. "Yes, but I've never actually seen it. You think there might be a hidden message on the document?"
"It's worth a look. Tell me, for preserving larger items, you probably do some shrink wrapping, right?"
"From time to time."
"That means you probably have a heat gun lying around."
"Sure, but…" Wilbur saw where Tommy was going with the conversation. "That's pretty hot. Won't it damage the paper?"
"Not if we're careful," Sean reassured him. "It's protected by that plastic now. If we keep the tip of the gun far enough away, it should distribute the heat evenly."
Wilbur slowly nodded. "Ah yes. Of course. I'll be right back."
The visitors watched as the man scurried away like a chubby rat in a maze. When he disappeared through the door, they made their way over to the table and inspected the document again.
"You think something might be on this?" Reece asked.
"Only one way to find out," Tommy said.
To the naked eye, nothing stood out right away. While they waited, they pored over the document to see if there was anything out of the ordinary in the way it was worded. After a few minutes of reading and rereading, though, they didn't find anything that remotely looked like a cipher key.
Wilbur nearly burst through the door, proudly clutching a red-and-black heat gun. "Here it is," he announced. A minute later, he'd plugged it into a short extension cord close to the table and held it up for one of the Americans to take.
Tommy and Sean gave a questioning look at each other as if to ask who wanted to do it.
"It's your show," Sean said. "I'm just the co-star."
Tommy sighed and grabbed the gun. He flipped the button, and warm air began flowing through the nozzle. He kept the device several inches above the plastic so as not to overheat the protective layer and accidentally melt it. His hand passed the heat gun back and forth, spreading the warmth evenly across the surface.
"How long does it usually take for the ink to appear?" Wilbur asked in a hushed tone, as if speaking too loudly might mess up the process.
"Not long," Sean answered. "In fact, it should show up right about now."
Everyone leaned in closer, anticipating the moment of truth. The hidden message, however, never appeared.
Tommy gave it a few more passes with the gun and then switched it off. "I was afraid of that."
"What are you doing?" Wilbur asked with desperation in his voice.
"If there was anything written on this document in invisible ink, we would have seen it by now."
"Maybe you need to give it a little more time. Do you think the plastic is keeping the warm air from activating it?"