“Of course,” Furley observed, “ciphers can lead you—”
He stopped short. Julian, who had been leaning over towards the cigarette bog, glanced around at his friend. There was a frown on Furley’s forehead. He withdrew his pipe from between his teeth.
“What did you say you made of it?” he demanded.
“‘Thirty-eight steeple on barn.’”
“Thirty-eight! That’s queer!”
“Why is it queer?”
There was a moment’s silence. Furley glanced at the little clock upon the mantelpiece. It was five and twenty minutes past nine.
“I don’t know whether you have ever heard, Julian,” he said, “that our enemies on the other side of the North Sea are supposed to have divided the whole of the eastern coast of Great Britain into small, rectangular districts, each about a couple of miles square. One of our secret service chaps got hold of a map some time ago.”
“No, I never heard this,” Julian acknowledged. “Well?”
“It’s only a coincidence, of course,” Furley went on, “but number thirty-eight happens to be the two-mile block of seacoast of which this cottage is just about the centre. It stretches to Cley on one side and Salthouse on the other, and inland as far as Dutchman’s Common. I am not suggesting that there is any real connection between your cable and this fact, but that you should mention it at this particular moment—well, as I said, it’s a coincidence.”