Another Look At The Code ..
We all know that in every line of over 7 letters in the code the 7th letter is an A .. some genius spotted that a couple of years ago but not being a cryptographer he didn’t get much further. In any case and seeing the code is getting some attention over at CM we thought a new look at it here might be in order.
If we only use the letters following on from and excluding the 7th letter we end up with this …
.
Line 1 – BD (2, 4) = 6
Line 2 – NETP (14, 5, 20, 16) = 55 = 10
Line 3 – IAQC (9, 1, 17, 3) = 30 = 3
Line 4 – MSTGAB ( 13, 19, 20, 7, 1, 2) = 62 = 8
Maybe some clever person might be able to make sense of all that, I can’t, however one theory that might hold water is that the sums of the letters of each line refer to a particular quatrain and inserted in each quatrain was a message (written in faint pencil or in urine which we know becomes visible after being heated) . The problem there however is that the Rubaiyat disappeared not long after it was handed in to DS Leane on the 23rd of July and before it was photographed, not even the Naval Intelligence cryptographers got a look at it and had to make do with using a ‘similar copy’ supplied by DS Leane on the 29th of July, six days later.
A suspicious mind might wonder about all of that.
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Link below gives an explanation of each quatrain:
https://www.bobforrestweb.co.uk/The_Rubaiyat/verse_by_verse_notes.htm
The Somerton Man .. 
I don’t think we will ever know fully because it is a code that relates to what certain persons were doing at that time. To me it’s just a simple message for our man instructing him.
He came to Adelaide from Melbourne so we read the first letter of every line as “M” which means person based in Melbourne, this line is an instruction to you. If you plug the events into the code you get: Melbourne, rail, get Overland , and be aboard before December (which he was). The second line is crossed out because it was ambiguous and the first line written above it. Then the third line is Melbourne, Boxall is my partner and not Thomson’s partner. Then you have the train line with the level crossing sign “X” which is written above the letter “O” to illustrate the Overland train, and the instruction Melbourne leave / Adelaide by Overland. Adelaide is a quiet city. Melbourne (written as a ditto to avoid MTT Adelaide). Time to move to SA Moseley Street Glenelg, Adelaide Beach, and the letter B points down to the waves on the beach. The Rubaiyat was sent to him, probably c/- the front desk of the hotel he stayed at in Melbourne. Take the book with you as a recognition signal is what you would do. When you smell a rat, you tear out a part which keeps the signal, the Tamam Shud and you dump the book in the car out the front of the pub where you had lunch in Jetty Road Glenelg.
To me the code is not going to tell you who he was, but it will tell you what he was. A spy, because if you wanted your mate to come to Adelaide on the Overland train, either call the hotel desk to put the call through to his room, or send a note in plain English to him.
To me, he came from the USA on a Pan Am flight, arrived in Sydney, had a connecting flight to Melbourne. His cover was that he was part of US Govt, possibly CIA, his intention was to use that cover to infiltrate Australian intelligence, that he had committed offences so serious that breached US national security and he was terminated.
So will we ever find out who he was? Probably not because of that. There is one avenue, Pan Am flight manifests, but they do not seem to be anywhere because it was so long ago and Pan Am is long gone.
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If the lines begin with ‘M’ for Melbourne, what if Bowes’ magic midway ‘A’ are Adelaide? and these are notes for moving Melbourne to Adelaide.
And then maybe your line becomes “Melbourne, Rail, go Overland, And be [personally I think these sort of words would be left out] Adelaide by December”
But I was more thinking if they’re notes on transitioning between cities….sort of “Melbourne, vacate house; Adelaide organise rental” type thing….
Melb: Take bin in; make pasty. Adelaide: need even tougher pencils/pastry (or “extra toilet paper” or “every ticket price”).
And if you go the spy flavour:
“Melbourne: Last Identity already been obsoleted/offed/overridden/etc; Adelaide: Identity ‘Quiet/Quaint/Queer Chap/Civilian'” (and you can get rid of the ‘B’ if you like…)
Although bottom line could be something like:
“Take Tram (to) Melbourne* Train Station; Adelaide: Moseley Square Tram, Glenelg..and Bingo!”
*Interstate trains go from Southern Cross AKA Spencer St, and the main Melbourne station is of course Flinders St – and both are referred as such AFAIK. So IMO it would be a bit wierd to reference “Melbourne Train Station”
It’s a lot of fun to make up the stories that fur sure. But in all likelihood if it is notes written to self then all bets are off on how to interpret them.
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Lived there for years and got the Alamein train to the city and back to Burwood every day. Yeah, Flinders Street or Spencer Street. Everyone knows you mean “station”
We’re adrift in a sea of possibilities and the only ones who really know are now dead.
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Unless you’ve spent half a lifetime reading le Carre, Furst, Household, Wright, Pincher, Buchan, Herron, Greene, Vincent, Ambler, Andrew, Littell etc and have read information about MI5 and what transpired in Australia in the 40’s and 50’s you probably don’t know the lengths people in the spying business go to in order relay secret messages, micro-writing aside .. and spies are known to have great imagination, not willing to use the same method too many times.
As far as the Somerton Man is concerned I’ve no idea if he was involved in espionage, similarly with Jessica Harkness but there were so many grave inconsistencies in the investigation that I’m hard pressed not to think there was some order in the apparent chaos. Some evidence withheld, some planted, some deliberately lost. Then there were the main two players, Harkness and Freeman, both silent to their graves, decades later.
Perhaps the coroner will put and end to doubt and rule that SM is indeed Carl Webb .. but until then we are free to speculate, right no-one?
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No one that I’m aware of has come up with such a multi faceted and riveting yarn as No One has, although I’ve heard that Erich Von Dunny can has.
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I’m counting plenty of ifs Dave .. and we’ve had plenty of them over the years.
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‘MST”= Moseley Street?, perhaps, but are the letters MS trying to say something else. The letter M looks to have been altered and, why the serif on the letter S? Even the letter T, looks as if it was an afterthought and squeezed into the gap.
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Dave, I wrote the book .. meaning I’ve been there and done that.. either make some constructive sense or do some homework .. and I may be wrong but have the sense that you know F.ck all about matters espionage in SA in the late 40’s and 50’s .. so prove me wrong old mate, otherwise your contributions here aren’t worth the effort of reading them. Ok?
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Ignore it. It’s the Carl Webb camp trying to protect their turf by creating diversions and nonsense.
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Could MSTGAB Mean:Must Stop To Get Artifact Book? Over to you Bowes.
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IAQC=I Am Quite Convinced/Concerned?
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The first letter could be M or W . The Second line, forth letter ,A it seems to have an O or 0 under it? It also looks like a 4 to me. If what we are seeing is only what the police traced over I wonder if the writing was created over a few sittings if he used the book to rest on? It reminds me of a book my grandad used to carry to rest his newspaper on while doing crosswords. The letters don’t seem to be consistent at all, I work with kids in the primary school years and you get to recognise if someone else has helped with handwriting homework cause the letters slope differently or they start in a different position etc. His B’s and A’s are different each time he writes them. I wonder if we are looking at something that was writing over a few sittings, the faint pencil being transer from a newspaper or what ever he was actually writing on, then the police have traced over the indents and faint marks?
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Like mine better ..
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Pretty good at covering their tracks in 1948
We still don’t know his name
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Speaking of which ….. Here’s a unidentified bloke found dead, that’s one, they take his prints, that’s two, then they find his suitcase, three, but instead of matching his prints with all those very printable hard surface objects in the case, they settle for a thread used to repair his clothing which matches a spool of thread found in his (?) suitcase.
How does that work?
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