Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/24

8 weight on the end. You observe, the weight will be at the end of a Y, and if you give a rotary motion to the compound pendulum so formed, the weight will travel in an intricate but regular curve, dependent on the relative lengths of the two parts of the pendulum as it swings forward and backward and right and left at the same time. This curve was made by such a one, only more complicated, and arranged so as to trace a line on a plane surface. The curves so formed, curious to say, correspond actually to the musical vibrations of various chords."

"It's interesting, but rather intricate, and I don't see how it helps us much with Hudson," said Valeska. "How about this calendar, and what's the 'Number fourteen' for?"

"That," said the Master of Mysteries, "is a page from a universal calendar; that is, a calendar that can be used for any year. This is the last page of the pamphlet, as it takes just fourteen different diagrams to include all the calendar possibilities,—seven different diagrams in which the year begins on a different day of the week, and another set of seven for the leap years. There's a list in front, probably giving the number of the diagram to be used for each individual year."

"Oh!" exclaimed the girl. "That reminds me, now. I did see something about a 'two-hundred-year calendar'. Where was it? Let me think. Yes, I have it. It was in an account of a body that was found drowned. Stupid of me to overlook that! I'll see if I can find it."

"Get it," Astro said, "while I think this over."

She flew to her file and began to go hurriedly through the sheets of paper. "Here it is! Here it is!" she cried. Then she read breathlessly: