Virginia cipher decryption

import sys

def readTxt (path1, path2, place):
    parm = ''
    file_object = open(path1)
    all_the_text = file_object.read()
    temp = all_the_text.split('\n')
    for t in temp:
        parm += t[place-1:place]
    print(parm)
    fp = open(path2, 'w+')
    fp.write(parm)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    readTxt("G:\\a1.txt", "G:\\a2.txt", 3);