The Secret Message Read Online Free PDF Page B

Gordon. Give him the handkerchief and put my coat round his shoulders. Get him on his feet.’
    Giles groaned as a key rattled in the lock. Gordon whimpered, ‘Quick, he’s coming.’
    The guard entered with a cup of water to see Gordon still coughing and holding up the other visitor. It was the prisoner on the bed who spoke first. ‘Thank you. My brother is too upset to say any more. I’d like them to go now. Goodbye, Gordon. Look after him for me. Have a good life, Freddy. Make the most of it. Oh Gordon … give him back this watch. Tell him … tell him our few years together were the best of my life.’
    Holding the handkerchief to his eyes andstill stunned, Giles was helped from the room. Gordon supported him all the way back to their quarters, and then put him to bed.
    With handkerchief tied over his eyes, Giles lay in a confused daze until morning. At seven o’clock he shuddered at a sudden rally of rifle shots somewhere in the distance. A chilling echo ripped through the freezing silence and he shrieked uncontrollably, as if a blade of ice had pierced his heart.

    ‘Freddy left a note in your coat pocket,’ Gordon said. ‘I know you can’t see it, so I’ll try to read it to you. I’m really sorry, but it doesn’t make sense. It’s just a lot of numbers. I can’t really do numbers.’
    Giles asked him to read them aloud very slowly, each number at a time. It was a struggle, but at last Gordon managed todeliver Freddy’s final message:
    3:12, 1:1, 1:1, 1:22
    2:15, 4:3, 2:1, 1:3, 2:9
    1:16, 2:15, 1:5, 3:3, 4:16
    2:15, 1:4, 1:16
    1:1, 4:1, 2:9
    2:4, 2:15, 2:4, 4:16
    As well as being a good artist, Freddy wrote a few poems. Gordon found the last one in Freddy’s kit bag. It was written the day before they killed him.
    NOT HERE
    Don’t weep long after I have gone
    But laugh and know that love lives on.
    Don’t trudge through sodden fields in driving rain
    In some vain hope to meet again.
    I won’t be there.
    Don’t loiter in the cloistered must
    In holy light through stained-glass dust,
    To mourn on cold and silent pew
    Reliving all the times we knew.
    I won’t be there.
    Don’t linger in each fingered sheet
    Of scribbled words left incomplete,
    Nor flick through faded photographs
    Rekindling long-forgotten laughs.
    I won’t be there.
    Don’t wallow in the hollow void
    Of empty dreams with hope destroyed,
    Nor cling to trinkets left behind,
    Or rotting wreaths round crumbling shrine.
    I won’t be there.
    Don’t think that on the brink of death
    I didn’t breathe my final breath
    Without the strength and hope you gave …
    To be my shroud inside the grave.
    But I’m not there.
    For aren’t I more than relics trapped,
    Or memories tied, all neatly wrapped?
    Like clasping hands round melting snow,
    Or songbirds caged … just let me go.
    For I’m not here.
    Like soaring larks, I’m flying free;
    I’m part of you, as you of me.
    And one day, when our pain is healed,
    The sun will warm the poppy field …
    And maybe in a hundred years
    A new beginning reappears …
    And I am there.
    I shall be there.
             Frederick Ovel (10th November, 1917)

Footnote
    There is still an untold part to the story, but even now it is too difficult to tell here.
    If someone wants to find the final piece of the jigsaw when I’ve gone and I’m safely out of this world – it is here:
    N5, Y8, N5, H9, Y3
    H3, Y3, Y7, Y5 29:29
    H9, Y7, H8, Y3 8:17.

S AM’S D ISCOVERY
    I put down the book and snuggled under my duvet. I think I must have stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then I stared at my three pictures on the wall. The story was so sad, and yet it didn’t all make sense.
    It wasn’t difficult to work out the first coded message. It used the same poem code as before. But I just couldn’t understand the other code in the footnote.
    I still had a big question and I was sure that footnote would answer it. Perhaps you’ve already guessed. I had to wait till morning before I could find