The fifth word

The clue. The will itself was ordinary. The odd thing was a sheet from Nolan's desk calendar, clipped to it. On it were Davenport's name and address, and four words:

Nom Utes Sweden Hurts

Nolan had probably moved the jewels to a new hiding place a week or so before. Perhaps he tried to phone Davenport and could not reach him, so, as he was dying, he wrote the four words.

Encyclopedia thinks. He leaned back and closed his eyes, as he always did for his hardest thinking. Then he asked one question: 'Is there a young fir tree in Mr Nolan's palm-tree nursery?'

There was: exactly one, on the south side of the house. 'How did you know?' asked his father. 'The four words say so.'

Mrs Brown tries. She had taught English in high school, so she took each word as a word:

• Nom = short for 'nominative', a grammar term;
• Utes = an American Indian tribe;
• Sweden = a country in northern Europe;
• Hurts = hurts.

She could make nothing of it.

That is the point of the story. She read the words as words. The code needed them read as letters, and the key was right there.

The key: a calendar. The words are days of the week, with d-a-y taken off and the rest rearranged:

• Monday → m-o-n → NOM;
• Tuesday → t-u-e-s → UTES;
• Wednesday → w-e-d-n-e-s → SWEDEN;
• Thursday → t-h-u-r-s → HURTS.

Four words, four days. So the answer is the fifth day, the one Nolan never wrote: Friday → f-r-i → FIR.

The jewellery was found inside a twenty-gallon jug of earth, in which the young fir tree was growing, just as Encyclopedia had foreseen (known in advance).