“I don’t see what you find peculiar about it, though,” said Tuppence. “Everybody used to have a collection of these sort of things about fifty years ago. You saved them up for winter evenings round the fire.”
“I wasn’t referring to the verse. It’s the words written below it that strike me as peculiar.”
“ St. Luke 11:9,” she said. “It’s a text.”
“Yes. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Would an old lady of a religious persuasion write a text just under a charade?”
“It is rather odd,” agreed Tuppence thoughtfully.
“I presume that you, being a clergyman’s daughter, have got your Bible with you?”
“As a matter of fact I have. Aha, you didn’t expect that. Wait a sec.”
Tuppence ran to her suit case, extracted a small red volume and returned to the table. She turned the leaves rapidly.
“Here we are. Luke, Chapter 11, Verse 9. Oh! Tommy, look.”
Tommy bent over and looked where Tuppence’s small finger pointed to a portion of the verse in question.
“ Seek, and ye shall find. ”
“That’s it,” cried Tuppence. “We’ve got it! Solve the cryptogram and the treasure is ours—or rather Monica’s.”
“Well, let’s get to work on the cryptogram, as you call it. ‘My first you put on glowing coal.’ What does that mean, I wonder? Then—‘My second really is the first.’ That’s pure gibberish.”