"It's obvious, up to a point," I asked. "It's a table of the first eight natural integers and their squares, except for the number seven, which for some reason is split in two."
"It took me quite a while to recognize what happened to that seven," Dorsey said. "Listen to it again." He spooled the thread back and I listened again to the fractured seven: "DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT ... DIT-DIT." Then again the forty-nine clicks, seven-squared. Dorsey switched off the player.
"Let's have the distillate of your cerebrations now, Brother Bogardus," he said, dropping into the deep, red-leather easy chair beside the thread-player.
"It's syncopation, Brother Dorsey," I said.
"I'd never have given my own modest observations so high-flown a title," Dorsey said. "I'd simply have called it, country boy at heart that I am, 'Shave-and-a-Haircut, two-bits!'"
"So it is," I said. "Now we've deciphered that broadcast, and listened to the singing commercial. But I'm still puzzled, Bud. We don't have the sponsor's name and address; and I'm not at all sure I caught the name of his product. What's he advertising?"
"His presence," Dorsey said. "I interpret the message as a simple CQ."
"Seek you?" I asked.
"Yes. Radio-ham code for, I'm lonely—will somebody please talk to me?'"