“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.
“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.
“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.”
“Last week. I’ve had a solid year at it.”
“Not exactly that. My own work accumulated so.”
“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?”
“There I am still at a loss,” Julian confessed, “but treated with the cipher it comes out as ‘Thirty-eight steeple on barn.’”