“I agree,” said Mary, “but how you waste time, Euan! We could have been at the Albany by this time!”
In a first-floor oak-panelled suite at the Albany, overlooking the covered walk that runs from Piccadilly to Burlington Gardens, they found an excessively fair, loose-limbed man whose air of rather helpless timidity was heightened by a pair of large tortoise-shell spectacles. He appeared excessively embarrassed at the sight of MacTavish’s extremely good-looking companion.
“You never told me you were bringing a lady, Euan,” he said reproachfully, “or I should have attempted to have made myself more presentable.”
He looked down at his old flannel suit and made an apologetic gesture which took in the table littered with books and papers and the sofa on which lay a number of heavy tomes with marked slips sticking out between the pages.
“I am working at a code,” he explained.
“Ernest here,” said MacTavish, turning to Mary, “is the code king. Your pals in the Intelligence tell me, Ernest, that you’ve never been beaten by a code ...”
The fair man laughed nervously.
“They’ve been pullin’ your leg, Euan,” he said.
“Don’t you believe him, Mary,” retorted her cousin. “This is the man who probably did more than any one man to beat the Boche. Whenever the brother Hun changed his code, Brother Ernest was called in and he produced a key in one, two, three!...”
“What rot you talk, Euan!” said Dulkinghorn. “Working out a code is a combination of mathematics, perseverance, and inspiration with a good slice of luck thrown in! But isn’t Miss Trevert going to sit down?”