or two?”
Tuppence shook her head very energetically.
“Then all I can do is to give you all the information that I can. We have reason to believe that a special agent has been despatched from Moscow to this country. We don’t know what name he is travelling under, we don’t know when he will arrive. But we do know something about him. He is a man who gave us great trouble in the War, a ubiquitous kind of fellow who turned up all over the place where we least wanted him. He is a Russian by birth, and an accomplished linguist—so much so that he can pass as half a dozen other nationalities, including our own. He is also a past master in the art of disguise. And he has brains. It was he who devised the No. 16 code.
“When and how he will turn up, I do not know. But I am fairly certain that he will turn up. We do know this—he was not personally acquainted with the real Mr. Theodore Blunt. I think that he will turn up at your office, on the pretext of a case which he will wish you to take up, and will try you with the passwords. The first, as you know, is the mention of the number sixteen—which is replied to by a sentence containing the same number. The second, which we have only just learnt, is an inquiry as