"No, monsieur, never. Madame has no pearls."
John laughed.
"Well, in that case, it must be emeralds or rubies."
"Emeralds or rubies," responded Cecily, "madame is most fond of them."
Three minutes later John was out of the house and hailing a taxi. As he relapsed back into the cushions, he fell into thought. "There is certainly," thought he, "more in these advertisements than meets the casual eye. Mrs. Beecher Monmouth detests pearls, she has none, never had any—and yet advertises them for sale!"
A quarter of an hour later, when John stepped into Dacent Smith's room, the elder man glanced quickly up from his desk.
"Well?"
"In regard to those three advertisements of jewellery," answered John, "inserted in the newspaper by Mrs. Beecher Monmouth, I should be glad, sir, if you would have them decoded."
Dacent Smith raised his eyebrows slightly.
John narrated what had occurred at his private interview with Cecily, and Dacent Smith was instantly of the opinion that Mrs. Beecher Monmouth's harmless advertisements were a matter for closer scrutiny. In the first place, he telephoned to his department and ordered that inquiry should be instituted at the newspaper office as to any earlier advertisements which may have been inserted in the paper by Mrs. Monmouth. If the three advertisements were a code message the intelligence decoding department would find its task vastly more easy if a considerable batch of advertisements in the same code were submitted. A brief code message, as John was now well aware, is always difficult to read. The longer the message, the easier is it to decipher.