"Make it so! Oh, please do. Won't you?"
Vaux's arm fell to the desk top. He sat thinking for a few minutes. Then he picked up a pencil in an absent-minded manner and began to trace little circles, squares, and crosses on his pad, stringing them along line after line as though at hazard and apparently thinking of anything except what he was doing.
The paper on which he seemed to be so idly employed lay on his desk directly under Miss Erith's eyes; and after a while the girl began to laugh softly to herself.
"Thank you, Mr. Vaux," she said. "This is the opportunity I have longed for."
Vaux looked up at her as though he did not understand. But the girl laid one finger on the lines of circles, squares, dashes and crosses, and, still laughing, read them off, translating what he had written:
"You are a very clever girl. I've decided to turn this case over to you. After all, your business is to decipher cipher, and you can't do it without the book."
They both laughed.
"I don't see how you ever solved that," he said, delighted to tease her.
"How insulting!—when you know it is one of the oldest and most familiar of codes—the 1-2-3 and a-b-c combination!"
"Rather rude of you to read it over my shoulder, Miss Erith. It isn't done—"