This was the message that he read:
Please procure sardine tin opener mariner’s compass and bottle of champagne. Shall arrive 6.45 bringing Crataegus Coccinea.—Carrados.
“Could anything be more absurd?” she demanded.
“Sounds as though it was in code,” speculated her husband. “Who’s the foreign gentleman he’s bringing?”
“Oh, that’s a kind of special hawthorn—I looked it up. But a bottle of champagne, and a compass, and a sardine tin opener! What possible connexion is there between them?”
“A very resourceful man might uncork a bottle of champagne with a sardine tin opener,” he suggested.
“And find his way home afterwards by means of a mariner’s compass?” she retorted. “No, Roy dear, you are not a sleuth-hound. We had better have our lunch.”
They lunched, but if the subject of Carrados had been tabooed the meal would have been a silent one.
“I have a compass on an old watch-chain somewhere,” volunteered Bellmark.
“And I have a tin opener in the form of a bull’s head,” contributed Elsie.