The Devils Paw | Page 5

him.
"Oh, yes, I've views of my own," he confessed. "Some day, perhaps,
you shall know what they are."
"A man of mystery!" his friend jeered good-naturedly.

Julian lit his cigarette and watched the smoke curl upward.
"Let's talk about the duck," he suggested.
The two men sat in silence for some minutes. Outside, the storm
seemed to have increased in violence. Furley rose, threw a log on to the
fire and resumed his place.
"Geese flew high," he remarked.
"Too high for me," Julian confessed.
"You got one more than I did."
"Sheer luck. The outside bird dipped down to me."
Furley filled his guest's glass and then his own.
"What on earth have you kept your shooting kit on for?" the latter
asked, with lazy curiosity.
Furley glanced down at his incongruous attire and seemed for a
moment ill at ease.
"I've got to go out presently," he announced.
Julian raised his eyebrows.
"Got to go out?" he repeated. "On a night like this? Why, my dear
fellow - "
He paused abruptly. He was a man of quick perceptions, and he
realised his host's embarrassment. Nevertheless, there was an awkward
pause in the conversation. Furley rose to his feet and frowned. He
fetched a jar of tobacco from a shelf and filled his pouch deliberately:
"Sorry to seem mysterious, old chap," he said. "I've just a bit of a job to
do. It doesn't amount to anything, but - well, it's the sort of affair we
don't talk about much."

"Well, you're welcome to all the amusement you'll get out of it, a night
like this"
Furley laid down his pipe, ready-filled, and drank off his port.
"There isn't much amusement left in the world, is there, just now?" he
remarked gravely.
"Very little indeed. It's three years since I handled a shotgun before
to-night."
"You've really chucked the censoring?"
"Last week. I've had a solid year at it."
"Fed up?"
"Not exactly that. My own work accumulated so."
"Briefs coming along, eh?"
"I'm a sort of hack journalist as well, as you reminded me just now,"
Julian explained a little evasively.
"I wonder you stuck at the censoring so long. Isn't it terribly tedious?"
"Sometimes. Now and then we come across interesting things, though.
For instance, I discovered a most original cipher the other day."
"Did it lead to anything?" Furley asked curiously.
"Not at present. I discovered it, studying a telegram from Norway. It
was addressed to a perfectly respectable firm of English timber
merchants who have an office in the city. This was the original: `Fir
planks too narrow by half.' Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it?"
"Absolutely. What's the hidden meaning?"
"There I am still at a loss," Julian confessed, "but treated with the

cipher it comes out as `Thirty-eight steeple on barn.'"
Furley stared for a moment, then he lit his pipe.
"Well, of the two," he declared, "I should prefer the first rendering for
intelligibility."
"So would most people," Julian assented, smiling, "yet I am sure there
is something in it - some meaning, of course, that needs a context to
grasp it."
"Have you interviewed the firm of timber merchants?"
"Not personally. That doesn't come into my department. The name of
the man who manages the London office, though, is Fenn - Nicholas
Fenn."
Furley withdrew the pipe from his mouth. His eyebrows had come
together in a slight frown.
"Nicholas Fenn, the Labour M.P.?"
"That's the fellow. You know him, of course?"
"Yes, I know him," Furley replied thoughtfully. "He is secretary of the
Timber Trades Union and got in for one of the divisions of Hull last
year."
"I understand that there is nothing whatever against him personally,"
Julian continued, "although as a politician he is of course beneath
contempt. He started life as a village schoolmaster and has worked his
way up most creditably. He professed to understand the cable as it
appeared in its original form. All the same, it's very odd that, treated by
a cipher which I got on the track of a few days previously, this same
message should work out as I told you."
"Of course," Furley observed, "ciphers can lead you - "
He stopped short. Julian, who had been leaning over towards the

cigarette bog, glanced around at his friend. There was a frown on
Furley's forehead. He withdrew his pipe from between his teeth.
"What did you say you made of it?" he demanded.
"`Thirty-eight steeple on barn."'
"Thirty-eight! That's queer!"
"Why is it queer?"
There was a moment's silence. Furley glanced at the little clock upon
the mantelpiece. It was five and twenty minutes past nine.
"I don't know whether you have ever heard, Julian," he said, "that our
enemies on the other side of the North Sea are supposed to have
divided