Angel shook his head.
“You may think I am shockingly dense,” he said frankly, “but even with your lucid explanation I am still in the dark.”
Jimmy chuckled.
“Suppose you went to Dover to-night, and sat at the end of the Admiralty Pier. It is a beautiful night, with stars in the sky, and you are looking toward France, and you see——?”
“Nothing,” said Angel slowly; “a few ships’ lights, perhaps, and the flash of the Calais Lighthouse——”
“The occulting flash?” suggested Jimmy.
“The occ.! By Jove!”
“Glad you see it,” said Jimmy briskly. “What old Reale did was to take the names of five famous lights—any nautical almanac will give you them:
Sanda.
Milford Haven.
Orkneys.
Caldy Island.
Kinnaird Head.
They form an acrostic, and the initial letters form the work ‘smock’; but it was too easy—and too hard, because there are two or three lights, particularly the fixed lights, that are exactly the same, so he dropped that idea.”