A faint tinkling of the piano came to our ears. Mrs. Aitchkin was waiting to sing to us. I produced pencil and paper and threw myself heart and soul into Aitchkin's problem.
"Rules 2 and 3 are a little contradictory," I said, "and it will require no slight ingenuity to form a combination of letters which shall be pronounceable (Rule 5) and yet avoid the damnable appearance of a word (Rule 4). The concession about Russian names reminds me of something I have read about shaking hands with murder. In any case it is a barren concession, because, as we have seen, telegraphic addresses must be pronounceable. There is something sinister here," I continued. "This is the work of no ordinary mind. Some legal brain is behind all this."
Love of the bizarre and the latitude of the Russian Rule led me to make my first attempt with the name of that all-round Bolshevik sportsman, Blodnjinkoff, and I was endeavouring to abridge it to not less than eight and not more than ten letters without spoiling the natural beauty of the name when Aitchkin stopped me rather brusquely. And my next effort, "Plucrœs," he quashed, because he said that the implacable suspicion of the G.P.O. would be at once aroused by the diphthong. I fancy, though, from the narrowing of his eyes that he had some misgivings as to the derivation of the word.
I then set to work with alternate consonants and vowels (which must give a pronounceable word), dealing with difficulties under the other rules as they might arise. Meanwhile Aitchkin, after the manner of an obstructionist official of the worst type, sat over me with the rules, condemning my results. Even "Telegrams: Hahahahaha London," merely caused him to sniff contemptuously.
"You'll like this one," I exclaimed—"Arleyota. This is a combination of the word 'barley' (the 'b' being treated as obsolete like the 'n' in 'norange') and the word 'oat' with the 'a' and 't' transposed."
Aitchkin was interested. Breathing heavily, he tested the word with each rule in turn, while I sat relaxed in my chair. I pictured Arleyota passed by the Department and brought into a hushed chamber before a solemn conclave of experts. How they would probe and analyse it during those momentous ten to fourteen days. And what a sensation there would be when they discovered that Arleyota begins and ends with the indefinite article.
Aitchkin thrust the papers into his pocket and rose abruptly, jamming the stopper more tightly into a decanter with his podgy hand.
"Not too bad, Arleyota," he said loftily; "I'll get them to polish it up at the office to-morrow." (So I was right about the lady-typist).
He opened the door and we passed out.
"But it ends in TA," he shouted against the Roses of Picardy which now came with unbroken force from the drawing-room. "'Ta' is a word, you know."