When the Trackers got to the Pump House they expected to see some complicated mathematical formula for water pressure per square inch and the distance and elevation from the Raritan River and rotation and velocity of the pump’s turbines.
But what they saw, scrawled in purple chalk on the Pump House door, stopped them dead in their tracks!
4 🡪
“That’s it! Just one number… 4!” shouted Cooper. “The P.M.D.’s outdone himself this time!’
“How can we solve this with only one number?” cried Chelsea.
“Yeah, and what’s up with that arrow?” exclaimed Maya.
“But we have to solve it!” declared Gabby, nervously checking her watch.
Very quietly Jamal spoke as if he were talking to himself. “I’m not sure it’s a number,” he said. Everyone looked puzzled and quickly crowded around him.
“What do you mean, Jamal?” asked Simon seriously.
“Uh…I think it might be a word,” Jamal said.
“You mean f-o-u-r or f-o-r?” asked Simon.
“No, I think it’s the prefix, f-o-r-e. I had to learn about prefixes in Latin. They come before the root word. Mr. C, is fore a golf term?”
But before Mr. C could answer, Cooper jumped in. “Jamal, you’re a genius! Mr. C had to yell fore all the time when I was his caddy,” said Cooper with a big grin.
